dagblog - Comments for "Tea Party, Birthers and anti-government types an asset for the Democratic Party"

Since their inception the

Montana — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:11:21 +0000

Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?

I wish that I shared your

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:04:15 +0000

In reply to Tea Party, Birthers and anti-government types an asset for the Democratic Party

I wish that I shared your confidence. But the extemism isn't new. It's been growing and evolving since the "New Right" became a force in the 1970s. You're right in a sense; it has turned off many people. That's why the entire northeast and west coast now vote reliably Democrat. But it has attracted at least as many people, which is why the south and the west now vote so reliably Republican.

More importantly, by pushing the righthand limit of mainstream American politics further to the right, the extremists have succeeded in reorienting the center. While the Republicans may be out of office for the moment, blue dog Dems now occupy the political space that was once occupied by moderate Republicans, and the Dem left wing is now pretty much a one man Kucinich show. In the short run, the extremism may help out the Dems in 2010. But Republicans will return to power sooner or later, and when they do, I fear that that they will lead the most conservative government in a century.

The only way that I see this trend reversing is through a fullscale backlash against extremist excess. That happened, for example, at the end of the Red Scare, when the country finally repudiated McCarthy, and his brand of paranoid extremism was banished to the fringe. But I don't think that we're close to that point, and I think that it will have to get pretty scary before we reach it.

I dunno. Maybe the crazies have just been taking over my brain lately, but we don't seem to be moving in the direction of moderation.