Tea Party

Wherefore Art Thou Tea Party?

Posted by on December 12, 2010 at 10:30 am. 7 Comments :

It has been a little more than a month since the mid-term elections. Voters, fueled by anger and dissatisfaction with the progress of the economic recovery, drove the majority Democrats from power and placed a sort of blind faith in the Republicans who put us into this stubborn recession in the first place. And even though the change in party control has not yet taken place there is a noticeable change in the nation’s political mood. Have you seen it?


Prior to the election the Tea Party was an omnipresent factor in campaigns, rallies, and in the media. GOP candidates clung desperately to Tea Party support groups. Self-appointed leaders like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck gathered frenzied Tea Partiers to theaters and malls across the country. And Fox News was a virtual Tea Party telethon where you couldn’t go five minutes without hearing another representative calling Democrats socialists and President Obama a traitor.

So where are they now? The fact that the presence of the town howlers was so ubiquitous a few weeks ago makes their sudden disappearance all the more curious. It’s as if the tsunami rolled onto the beaches causing profound havoc and fear, and then just as quickly receded back into the ocean leaving waste and destruction in its wake.

Most striking is the change in guest bookings on Fox News. Pre-election it was nearly impossible to escape the grimacing scowls of Fox-sponsored Tea Baggers. At times it seemed as if they were co-hosting with Fox & Friends, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, and others. There was a permanent tea stain on the network that had even branded the party as its own in its promos (recall the “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties”).


Post-election the programming is decidedly different. The Tea Party soap opera has been canceled after just a single season. The only public spokespeople for the formerly hyped movement are GOP operatives and the freshman class of congressional Republicans. Every now and then a former cast member will show up in a desperate bid for relevancy, not unlike one of the Brady kids or Joey from Friends. More often than not their appearance is limited to responding to some embarrassing utterance such as Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, who was brought before the bar to respond to his absurdly discriminatory and elitist proposal that only property owners should be allowed to vote.

And speaking of elitist, that personality trait was a featured target of derision from within the ranks of the Tea Party. They frequently focused their animus on politicians and pundits whom they regarded as out of touch or overly bound to positions of power and influence. Today, however, there is nary a squeak of objection to the same rich and powerful in the public sphere advocating for tax policies that make them richer and more powerful. At the same time the benefits flowing to this self-serving privileged class would balloon the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s the same deficit that had previously made Tea Partiers quiver with outrage.

So has the Tea Party’s indignation dissipated or have they been shunted to the sidelines now that their usefulness has waned? The Republican Party relied on the motivational feverishness of Tea Baggers to realize their gains at the polls. They were beneficiaries of millions of dollars in contributions and countless hours of organizational savvy from well-heeled lobbyists like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. Their names were on the lips of partisan propagandists like Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich whenever they were within earshot of a microphone. But now they would be lucky to be raised as an afterthought, and the money spigot has been turned down, if not shut off entirely.

To be sure, the Tea Party was always a pseudo-movement whose profile far exceeded their actual girth. Poll after poll revealed that their numbers never justified the attention they enjoyed. But their utility to the ambitions of Republicans brought them abundant recognition driven by the capacity of Fox News to plaster their mugs on TV 24/7. That utility having been exhausted, the Tea Party appears to be over.

The so-called Tea Party candidates are distancing themselves from their fan base. They are taking positions that would once have been castigated as treason. For instance, their infamous aversion to earmarks has been replaced with a more pragmatic sounding advocacy of producing results for the folks back home. Even Tea Party favorites like Michelle Bachmann (chair of the House Tea Party Caucus) have embraced a new strategy that calls for “redefining” the term earmark. And isn’t it convenient that the new definition passes their test for supporting what they previously promised to oppose?

Furthermore, the cacophonous call of Tea Partiers as rebels and outsiders has been dimmed to a whisper. Many of the stalwart amongst them, including such luminaries as Rand Paul and Pat Toomey, have announced that their congressional offices will be run by former corporate lobbyists – the most inside of the insider contingent.

It is undeniable that the Tea Party has been abandoned by their heroes. And this forsaking is possible because the usurpers know what the the polls have shown all all along. There will be little consequence for their betrayal because the Tea Party is an impotent facade.

The question now is whether the former Tea Bagging tools will raise any kind of a ruckus at having been taken advantage of so brazenly. Is there really any fight in that crowd? Are they nothing without their AstroTurf benefactors? Do they resent having their “movement” hijacked by entrenched Washington insiders? And do they really even care about the principles they professed to hold? Will they reject the elitists who advocate for the wealthy and privileged at the expense of average Americans? Will they lobby for reducing deficits even if it means the upper/ruling class have to share in the nation’s suffering for a change?

Time will tell, but I’m not optimistic that many of the Tea enthusiasts can be wrested from their perch. Most will continue to fawn over Palin and Beck. And those whose eyes are actually opened will be ostracized and exiled from the tribe. Having imbibed the tea, it will be difficult to break the addiction. It is a sort of heroin/Kool Aid cocktail with a mighty grip on its victims. Without the unrestricted access to Fox News they they will fade away into the obscurity that almost every other third party has sunk into. And most likely, no one will notice their passing. As for Fox, they will report that we have always been at war with Oceana.

Yet Another Poll Reveals The Tea Party Craze Is A Fraud

Posted by on November 24, 2010 at 3:02 pm. 16 Comments :

Grand Old Tea PartyDespite all the evidence of repeated surveys, the media continues to treat the Tea Party as if it were an influential player in contemporary politics. They salivate at plastering their pages and airwaves with red-meat melodrama that lacks relevance or substance. That’s how they end up so pathetically far off course whenever another poll is taken that casts the Tea Party in a realistic light. And that’s what the Associated Press just did:

Tea party backers fashion themselves as “we the people,” but polls show the Republican Party’s most conservative and energized voters are hardly your average crowd.

According to an Associated Press-GfK Poll this month, 84 percent who call themselves tea party supporters don’t like how President Barack Obama is handling his job – a view shared by just 35 percent of all other adults. Tea partiers are about four times likelier than others to back repealing Obama’s health care overhaul and twice as likely to favor renewing tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans.

Exit polls of voters in this month’s congressional elections reveal similar gulfs. Most tea party supporters – 86 percent – want less government intrusion on people and businesses, but only 35 percent of other voters said so. Tea party backers were about five times likelier to blame Obama for the country’s economic ills, three times likelier to say Obama’s policies will be harmful and twice as apt to see the country on the wrong track.

These aren’t subtle shadings between tea party backers and the majority of Americans, who don’t support the movement; they’re Grand Canyon-size chasms.

My only response to this latest revelation of the Tea Party’s impotence is to quote myself the last couple of times this was revealed:

Dec 19, 2009: The fact that the Tea Baggers have failed to create a significant presence despite being bankrolled by some of the biggest and wealthiest AstroTurf lobbying organizations in the country (i.e. FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity), and having the promotional backing of Fox News, illustrates just how unappealing most Americans regard that brand of disruptive griping.

Oct 5, 2010: [T]he Tea Party is a fringe cadre of extremists who have little in common with average Americans. So why do they get so much attention in the press? Well, partly because the press loves controversy, even if they have to invent it. And partly because the Republican Party is anxious to hitch its wagon to the Tea Party express in hopes of enhancing their electoral prospects. But the main reason the Tea Party gets so much attention in the press is because they have their own press (i.e. Fox News, talk radio, etc.) that pours out their propaganda in a flood of fury, fear, and foreboding.

There is plenty of data available for the press to frame the issues honestly. They just seem to prefer spinning fables. A survey released earlier this week showed that a majority of Americans support extension of the Bush-era tax cuts only for those earning less than $250,000. It also shows that a majority want to keep the new health care bill as it is or expand it. And this is after months of harsh, and mostly false, rhetoric bashing these policies from Tea Partiers and their media accomplices.

It’s been two years now. Is the media ever going to report honestly on this phony “movement.” You would think they would tire of embarrassing themselves over and over again.

Literacy Testing For Clowns Elected To Congress

Posted by on November 12, 2010 at 10:59 am. 6 Comments :

While some people may think this is a good idea, it would present a variety of unanticipated problems (like being able to form a quorum). But rest assured, this is not a joke:

Michele Bachmann: Clown

SAO PAULO — Grumpy the clown won election in a laugher, getting more votes than any other candidate for Brazil’s Congress. Now he has to prove that he can read and write.

The Sao Paulo Electoral Court held a closed-door exam for the clown turned congressman-elect on Thursday to determine if he meets a constitutional mandate that federal lawmakers be literate.

I shudder to think what would happen to the Republican Party’s freshman class if there were such a mandate here. Of course, because of our Constitution, we will never see a headline proclaiming that the “U.S. Tests Literacy Of Clowns Elected To Congress.” No sir. When we elect clowns to Congress they take their posts no matter how ignorant or unqualified they may be. In fact, they form their own caucuses (see Tea Party Caucus).

Voters Send Message To Washington: We’re Idiots

Posted by on November 3, 2010 at 11:05 am. 26 Comments :

The party’s over, America. And, unfortunately, it isn’t the Tea Party. Prepare to follow in the footsteps of the Romans, the Greeks, the Brits, the Grand Fenwicks. The empire has fallen into the grip of a powerful cadre of overseers who suffer delusions and celebrate ignorance.

This morning we will be plagued by ceaseless and insufferable speeches about what message the American people are sending. But the all too obvious summation boils down to a populace that has resolutely turned toward Washington and shouted: We’re idiots!

That’s right. We are a nation that can be easily manipulated by disingenuous flattery, horror stories of marauding, alien, socialists, and offers of extravagant and unpaid for gifts of tax cuts and magically disappearing deficits. We are a gullible lot and are anxious for anyone with a sword and a smile to rescue us from the certain doom that was manufactured by our reputed saviors. We are desperately grasping for the rays of light that emanate from our electronic herald of Armageddon, Fox News, as we pray for salvation and mercy. [Note: Two Fox News contributors were elected. John Kasich, governor of Ohio, and Pam Biondi, Attorney General of Florida]

It’s hard to put a positive spin on last night’s disappointing election results if you aren’t fully steeped in Tea Baggery. Turning the House over to an angry Republican mob is about as disturbing a development as can be imagined. The specter of a sobbing John Boehner pretending to grab the reins of power is ironic imagery, to say the least. And the inevitable gloating of repugnant characters like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Jim DeMint, and Glenn Beck is chilling indeed. But there are reasons to maintain hope.

First of all, Sarah Palin’s vaunted Mama Grizzlies were more like harmless Teddy Bears. Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Linda McMahon, and Carly Fiorina all lost. Each of those races were hijacked by Tea Partiers who arguably performed worse than the establishment Republicans they beat in the primaries. So Palin likely helped Democrats preserve their majority in the Senate. Thanks Sarah.

California was a particularly bright spot for Democrats. They won every statewide race and maintained a majority congressional caucus. And it looks like Colorado Democrats muscled through victories for both governor and senate over world-class wackos Tom Tancredo and Ken Buck respectively. Also, West Virginia’s John Raese and Alaska’s Joe Miller, both Papa Grizzlies, were rejected by voters. In Miller’s case the loss was a personal rebuke of Palin in her home state as her nemesis Lisa Murkowski trounced Palin’s Tea Party palooka with an unprecedented write in campaign. These, and other races that bucked the red tide, offer some solace and hope for future renewal.

So where does this leave America? As disheartening as it is that so many people would vote for so much stupidity, it probably doesn’t have as much of an impact on lawmaking as one might think. The Democratic House was repeatedly thwarted for the past two years by a Senate whose rules allowed a minority of right-wingers to impose gridlock. Now the Republican House will get to see what it’s like to pass bills that go to the Senate to languish and die.

Furthermore, Republicans have exceedingly over-promised their constituents. They campaigned on a platform of cutting taxes and reducing the deficit. But they offered no plans to achieve any of it. They are going to find that it is much easier to complain about spending than it is to actually cut programs that people support and depend upon.

The new Republican House majority is sitting on a precarious precipice. They have already announced that their top priority will be to insure that Barack Obama is a one-term president. The best way to do that is to prevent any progress on legislation that will benefit the country on economy and jobs. But if they do that they will be held accountable as well and will likely get shoved back into minority status. This congress has a heavy burden to produce tangible results. That is, unless the Tea Party is a pretentious facade of partisan Republicans that never had the courage of their convictions in the first place. Uh oh.

Washington is going to start making noises about working together for the good of the nation. They do this after every election, but it is even more important now. Their natural impulse will be to espouse the bipartisan rhetoric of compromise while ignoring the reality of it entirely. But due to the severity of the nation’s problems, Democrats and Republicans have something in common that may cause them to behave out of character. They both need to have trophies to display in 2012 in order to get reelected. They need to make progress on improving the economy and creating jobs, but that progress conflicts with what the GOP claims is their first priority, beating Obama.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the Republican House fails to move legislation that gets results. Will the Tea Party stay true to their professed ideals and throw the bums out? If not, then the dishonesty of their movement will be revealed. They will be exposed as nothing more than noisy Republicans. And the rest of the country will be justified in asking them politely to shut the fuck up.

Good luck, America. We’re going to need it.

Fox News Hosts Election Night Tea Party Zone

Posted by on October 29, 2010 at 3:06 pm. 18 Comments :

Tea Party ZoneFair and Balanced Fox News:

Don’t forget to visit us on Election Day. We’ll have all the election coverage from Democrats to Republicans and also host a special Tea Party Zone that night. We’ll see you there!

So Fox is hosting a special Tea Party Zone on election night? That’s nice of them. But why isn’t there a special Labor Zone? Or a Progressive Zone? Or any other zone for segments of the electorate that aren’t represented by wackos, Wall Streeters, and white-wingers?

The reason, of course, is that Fox News is an avowedly partisan cheerleader for Republicans and conservatives. They hate America’s working class. They hate blacks and Latinos and seniors and environmentalists and anyone who opposes the entrenched corporatists and selfish Randians who are the backbone of the Tea Party.

In addition to their Tea Party Zone, Fox News has also announced that their television coverage will feature Mike Tobin’s reports direct from the Tea Party. Tobin will be dedicated to Tea Party news on election night. And again, there will be no reporter dedicated to covering any other point of view.

That’s just how Fox rolls.

The Democratic Path To Victory In The House

Posted by on October 29, 2010 at 12:06 pm. 3 Comments :

MurdochMuch of the media is already predicting a GOP takeover of the House of Representatives. They blast sensationalist headlines that declare a coming Apocalypse for Democrats. This view is being presented as if it is a foregone conclusion.

But there are reasons to suspect their confidence. Polling is notoriously dicey for midterm elections. The Tea Party has certainly fired up a segment of the Republican base, but it is doing the same for Democrats. The youth vote is being significantly under-represented in polling (most pollsters don’t even call cellphones). And the most potent force on the left, “Getting Out The Vote,” may turn expectations on their head as unions, African-Americans, Latinos, seniors, and other progressive constituencies mobilize their members.

Robert Creamer has authored an inspiring story to motivate voters and increase participation in GOTV efforts. Below are some choice excerpts and links to ways you can help.

The Democratic Path to Victory in the House
[T]o beat the odds and win, Democrats must be successful at four key tasks over the next five days.

1). Democrats and their allies must be successful at turning out larger than expected numbers of Latino voters. Polls show Latino voters breaking 65% to 70% Democratic, but their turnout in most Mid-terms falls well below both non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black voters.

2). Democrats need to successfully assure that two key issues are on the minds of the voters at the close of the race: Social Security, and outsourcing jobs.

3). In many districts it is especially important that Democrats are successful in emphasizing the strong personal relationship of voters – especially older voters – with their Member of Congress. And they must also be successful at disqualifying the alternative.

4). First and foremost, for Democrats to beat the odds next Tuesday, our get out the vote operations must function flawlessly. Basically, these operations must defy the “likely voter” models that have dictated the gloomy scenario in most polls.

To volunteer, go to OFA.BO/GOTV
To call swing districts: Call.BarackObama.com. That will automatically give you a targeted list of voters in a swing district.
To volunteer with MoveON with a campaign near your home, go here: www.moveon.org/2010
If you want to call from home, go here: pol.moveon.org/2010
If you want to go to a MoveOn campaign event, go here: pol.moveon.org/event/lastchance

Wednesday morning, don’t say to yourself, “wow, we only lost the House by one seat – and only by a few votes – and I could have changed that.”

There is a pathway for Democratic victory, but it requires we hit on all four of these key cylinders. Too much is at stake to allow any stone to remain unturned. Pick up the phone as soon as you finish reading this. We have five days to change history.

Good advice. Creamer lays out details for each of the points above that are important to know and to relay to your friends and family. The value of your participation in GOTV is incalculable. And it increases exponentially for everyone you persuade to join you.

Don’t let the media decide this election. Don’t let Rupert Murdoch and Fox News get away with installing a far-right cadre of some of the most dangerously demented candidates in history. If we prevail the Tea Party will be over. They can call it a day. And that alone would make the effort worthwhile.

Eight False Things The Public “Knows” That Just Aint So

Posted by on October 26, 2010 at 12:54 am. 16 Comments :

OurFuture.org has put together a list that should be in every American’s mailbox before election day. It’s a perfect manifestation of Mark Twain’s admonition that, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” So here is a short list of some things the GOTea Party “knows” for sure:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8‌) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

The fact that there are so many people who believe things that are demonstrably untrue is a sad reflection on the media that ought to be informing the public. And worse, it’s evidence of how the corporations that control the press so blatantly misrepresent the truth. That’s why it’s so important for the rest of us to pass along the information above.

Fox News: Architects Of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Posted by on October 20, 2010 at 1:54 pm. 3 Comments :

When Hillary Clinton coined the term “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” twelve years ago, many members of the VRWC ridiculed her and denied their own existence. Now Think Progress is in receipt of a private memo from the billionaire Koch brothers inviting some of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals and companies to a clandestine meeting last summer where they would strategize for the upcoming midterm elections. It’s a fascinating story that includes in-depth research on the participants in this cabal and their connections to political players and institutions.

The part I’m most interested in is the presence of the media in the group. Take a look through the list of participants and you can’t help but notice one name that keeps repeating: Fox News. Here is a list of the Fox News affiliated members of the Koch Klan:

  • Michael Barone
  • Glenn Beck
  • Charles Krauthammer
  • Steven Moore
  • Nancy Pfotenhauer

What’s striking about this is that these people are not attending the secret meetings as journalists. They are participating in the brazenly partisan campaign planning conducted by the biggest business special interests in the world. These media players are not bystanders. They are the architects of the conservative agenda. They join their boss, Rupert Murdoch, in this endeavor. Murdoch, it was recently revealed, has donated millions to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governor’s Association.

All of the usual suspects were present at the secret meeting, from the Chamber of Commerce to Big Oil to the pharmaceutical giants to defense, real estate, Wall Street, and the top right-wing think tanks. The attendees even included a couple of Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Talk about your activist judges. After attending these meetings (which reportedly occur biannually, with the next one set for Palm Springs in January), these media hucksters return to the airwaves to promote the agenda they helped to fashion. And, of course, there is no disclosure that they had a hand in the policies they are peddling.

Tea CrusadersThis is another example of a phenomenon that is increasingly confounding to me. How can the Tea Party, who describe themselves as average, middle-class, Americans who are seeking to restore Constitutional principles and make Washington accountable to “We the People,” continue to follow an elite assembly of wealthy corporatists whose interests are so far removed from those of the Tea Party? Why doesn’t the Tea Party, who fancy themselves as revolutionaries, revolt against these upper-crusty impostors who are so obviously trying to manipulate their movement to the benefit of their elite and wealthy friends? What sort of revolutionaries align themselves with the entrenched establishment?

If the Tea Party had any sense they would be repulsed by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Fox News and the business-allied GOP. They would reject these phonies who are perverting the movement they claim belongs to the people. They would refuse the dirty money flowing from the Koch brothers, the AstroTurfers (i.e. FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, et al), and foreign financiers like the Chamber of Commerce and Rupert Murdoch.

But then again, if the Tea Party had any sense they wouldn’t be the Tea Party as we know it. They are a sad crowd of gullible malcontents, and the more I contemplate their role in contemporary society, the more I pity them. I just wish their pathetic endeavors and delusions didn’t also cause the rest of the country suffer.

Newsweek Nails Tea Party Constitution Worship

Posted by on October 18, 2010 at 9:41 am. 9 Comments :

Tea CrusadersThis may be the best Conventional Media article of the year: How Tea Partiers Get the Constitution Wrong. It was written by Andrew Romano for Newsweek and is a fairly comprehensive look at how the Tea Party sanctifies the Constitution while simultaneously basking in their ignorance of it. It is worth reading in its entirety, but here are some choice excerpts:

“Tea Partiers engage with the Constitution in such a selective manner, and for such nakedly political purposes, that they’re clearly relying on it more as an instrument of self-affirmation and cultural division than a source of policy inspiration.”

This is demonstrated every time a Tea Bagger makes the fatuous claim that [fill in the blank] doesn’t appear in the Constitution. This can refer to anything from separation of church and state to gay marriage to income taxes. However, it never refers to the FAA, workplace safety, the minimum wage, or corporate welfare like farm subsidies or incentives to ship jobs overseas.

“In the current Congress, conservatives like Michele Bachmann have suggested more than 40 additions to the Constitution: a flag-desecration amendment; a balanced-budget amendment; a ‘parental rights’ amendment; a supermajority-to-raise-taxes amendment; anti-abortion amendment; an anti-gay-marriage amendment; and so on. None of these revisions has anything to do with the document’s original meaning.” […]

“The truth is that for all their talk of purity, politicians like Palin, Angle, and Miller don’t seem to be particularly concerned with matching their actual positions to the Constitution they profess to worship. For them, the sacred text serves a higher purpose.”

Tea Baggers are quick to gush their reverence for the original intent of the Constitution – slavery, sexism, and all. And they are just as quick to disparage it and rush to desecrate it with oppressive and irrelevant amendments that are contrary to its underpinnings of freedom.

“Like other fundamentalists, they seek refuge from the complexity and confusion of modern life in the comforting embrace of an authoritarian scripture and the imagined past it supposedly represents. Like other fundamentalists, they see in their good book only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don’t sweat the details, and they ignore all ambiguities. And like other fundamentalists, they make enemies or evildoers of those who disagree with their doctrine.” […]

“The point is always the same: to suggest that the Constitution, like the Bible, decrees what’s right and wrong (rather than what’s legal and illegal), and to insist that only they and their ilk can access its truths. We are moral, you are not; we represent America, you do not. Theirs is the rallying cry of culture war.”

Umm…..Are you listening, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, et al?

“Thomas Jefferson put it best. In a letter to a friend in 1816, he mocked ‘men [who] look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched’“

The effort to transform the Constitution into a divinely inspired, holy document, and its authors into saints, is not new. I wrote about this last June in an article about the right-wing movement to advance the theory of American Exceptionalism, which is nothing more than warmed-over American Supremacy and just as repulsive as Hitler’s conception of a Master Race.

“[Beck] has declared that the Constitution was the result of divine inspiration and is as immutable as holy scripture. He regards the nation’s founders as saintly. One of those founders, Thomas Jefferson, expressly disagrees with Beck. On the matter of Constitutional immutability, Jefferson wrote that ‘…with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.’ That’s hardly an argument for strict constructionalism. And with regard to the divinity of himself and his contemporaries, Jefferson spoke disparagingly of the arrogance of one generation dictating the terms of existence to their heirs, castigating those who would ‘…ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.’“

It is encouraging to read an article like Romano’s in Newsweek. Hopefully it will be read and heeded by many more and this fallacious notion that the Tea Party has been ordained by God to restore our Constitution will be discarded for its arrogance and complete disconnection with reality.

Obama Billboard: More Tea Party Hate Speech

Posted by on October 12, 2010 at 12:45 pm. 15 Comments :

Another billboard has popped up on another highway that once again displays the repulsive character of the Tea Party faction of the Republican establishment.


This billboard was spotted in Colorado, on the I-70B between Grand Junction and Clifton. It features four caricatures of President Obama in poses popular amongst Tea Baggers: a Muslim terrorist with explosives strapped to his chest; a pimp/thug; a Mexican/illegal alien; and a gay man. So in one image the “artist” manages to reveal himself as a racist, a religious bigot, anti-Latino, and homophobic. The picture also displays the four Obamas “gambling” with America’s treasures and principles. And to top it off it refers to Democrats as “rats.”

This revolting display was put up by a cowardly sleazeball who wishes to remain anonymous. The person responsible is obviously ashamed of his viewpoint, and is afraid to embarrass himself by being associated with it. The same is true for the artist who, while identifying himself (Paul Snover), the sniveling jerkwad attempts to pass off any connection to the work as that of his anonymous patron:

“He was wanting to represent the influences he saw the president as having in his administration”

The truth is that Snover is also a right-wing crank and Tea Bagger. He is a member of uber-rightist web communities like ResistNet and Campaign For Liberty. His Facebook page shows that he “Likes” Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally and the Our Country Deserves Better PAC who launched the Tea Party Express. The fact that Snover can’t take responsibility for the highly charged opinions in his work illustrates the spinelessness of the movement with which he associates himself.

This billboard is presently being defended online by conservatives throughout the blogosphere. They laud the artist and the anonymous patron as heroes who are merely saying what the rest of America is thinking. Of course that’s a delusion on their part. However, the next time anyone from these right-wing quarters tries to argue that they aren’t racist and hateful, send them a link to this billboard. That should shut them up. It won’t, but it should.