Is the Tea Party Movement Dying a Slow Death?
The Politico digs up enough stories of internecine fighting amongst the loose bunch of organizations supposedly responsible for, or furthering in specific locations, the Tea Party movement to generate a semi-convincing trend story that argues the movement may be "losing momentum."
While the sort of petty conflict the story highlights between your Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation, (your People's Judean Front and People's Front of Judea...), are worth noting (and unavoidable in politics),
I'd say that an idea (which I think is a more accurate description of the whole orbit of actions and groups lumped in as the "tea party movement") that can still gather 4,000 people to a Texas rally, as the story notes, isn't worth writing off yet.
More important than which particular organization involved in the movement grows or triumphs is what this newly energized mass movement pissed off at D.C. will end up standing for. Alas, that a planned February National Tea Party convention will have bailout-supporting warmonger Sarah Palin as a star is an alarming sign that what had promise as a mass anti-state movement will descend into personality cult anti-Democratic party populism.
Matt Welch's excellent first person account on the varied and interesting promise of the Tea Party movement as shown at its huge September rally in D.C.
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I'm amazed by the vitriol such a question can produce.
Anyway, there really has been a lot of disagreement amongst Tea Party supporters right from the beginning. As the months passed the term "Tea Party Supporter" and "Conservative" seemed to become synonymous. I'm not even referring to the press on the right or the left who either wanted to win Tea Party support or denigrate the supporters with their infantile "tea-baggers" moniker. I'm referring to Tea Party rally attendees themselves who started to refer to themselves as conservatives as election time approached, rather than the independents, libertarians or objectivists that many claimed to be in the beginning.
Furthermore, I agree that having stars who are "bailout-supporting, warmongerers" at February's convention pretty much disinvites me from attending the convention or making any donations.
Ironically, the question I hear most raised by Tea party supporters is "what is going to happen now?" There still seems to be a fear that the Tea Party will be consumed by the Republican Party, as the Republican Party has consumed so many other movements in the past. I think the answer may well be that it's too late to be afraid of that, since it's already happened.
I do not believe a broad anti-state movement can be fomented within the Republican Party. It requires a philosophical commitment to the non-aggression principle which neither Democrats nor Republicans seem capable of understanding. Without agreement on that one pivotal concept, if only at the Federal level, what future is there to the Tea Party?
When a gathering of purely republican politicians come together for the purpose to bash on the (shocking rivals) democratic government it bites with a sour taste to call it a tea party . Taxation without representation, is not along the same basis as " ...very very angry that Barack Obama won the presidency" hatefulness to in some way help the american working class.
Good idea, poor execution . Palin you've lost once again.
These "Tea Party" folks are NOT mad with DC. They are very very angry that Barack Obama won the presidency. Yep. He didn't have to resort to election fraud, trickery, faulty voting machines or the Supreme Court to "win" the presidency and...... he did it by an indisputable margin.
That's what really gets these "tea-baggers." These folks are only about their "rights" and not the rights of all Americans . They have been showing themselves for what they truly are which is nothing more than groups of unruly, uncouth, constitutional cherry pickers with a vile streak of hatred towards anyone who is different from them and/or disagrees with there very narrow view of politics or anything else for that matter.
They are easily led like Lemmings by the Limbaughs, the Becks, the Bachmanns, and the Palins of their political world who whip them up into hysterics at "rallies" and "town halls" which actually border on being riots and lynch mobs while hoisting grotesque signs which put their arrogant ignorance on display for the all the world to see. They definitely DO NOT bear any resemblance to the colonists in New England rebelling against King George III.
The American Revolution was born out of the Enlightenment period which I doubt most of the folks at these "rallies" and "town halls" could even tell you anything about much less be able to have a rational conversation with you regarding it's principles. This movement, motivated by fear and hatred, appeals to the worst demons of humanity. It is ugly, vile, and putrid.
Whether it dies a slow or quick "death" is irrelevant because it's very existence will forever mar the latest chapter in our history as a people in much the same manner as did segregation and Jim Crow of earlier generations.