Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.
The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.
True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”
What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?
But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.
When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.
Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and “values,” only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security.
But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.
Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.
Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.
In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.
In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.
And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.
The "Tea Party" is now an official political party in Florida.
An Orlando lawyer named Frederic O'Neal has registered the Tea Party with the office of the Florida Secretary of State, Politico reports, and intends to run candidates against both Republicans and Democrats in state and national races.
"The current system has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties. It's time for real change," O'Neal reportedly said in a press release.
One of Florida's most prominent Republicans, Gov. Charlie Crist, already faces a conservative challenger in his bid to become the GOP's 2010 Senate nominee. Conservative Marco Rubio is gaining credibility among the state's conservatives, and has won the endorsement of the anti-tax, pro-limited government Club For Growth.
The split among conservatives and moderates in the Florida GOP is part of a larger debate within the party about the future of its identity.
O'Neal, the new chair of the Tea Party in Florida, reportedly compared his party to the Conservative Party in New York's 23rd District -- another example of the GOP's moderate-conservative fissure. In a special election to represent New York's 23rd congressional district, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman drove out the local Republican Party candidate, Dede Scozzafava. The district is Republican-leaning, but the Democratic candidate ultimately prevailed over the Conservative in last Tuesday's election.
Even though the conservative lost in that race, "tea partiers" and other conservatives "remain convinced they're on the right side of history," CBSNews.com's Charles Cooper wrote. "And in writing down their morning-after election analyses... they also delivered a hard-edged message to the Republican establishment: Get behind us or get out of the way."
The Tea Party has been registered with the state since August and is one of 32 minor political parties certified in Florida, Politico reported.
I actually embrace this change in political alignments. The two party system is presently flawed and perhaps this, "Tea Party", movement will awaken the electorate.
If voters will not compromise on issues, their elected representatives usually won't either. This political polarization is a direct result of a serious disconnect between narrow interest groups and average Americans in varying regions of the country.
The article by Paul Crugman in yesterday's NY Times and the Jason Horowitz article in the Washington Post today are good examples of how the political battle lines are being drawn for the 2010 election cycle.
The conservative movement is obviously fractious and in danger of self annihilation. I think that is a good thing. Sometimes a complete collapse of an extreme ideology is healthy and provides the opportunity for clear objective thinkers to emerge and redefine a movement, (moderates).
The tactics that are being employed by the extreme right are counter productive for the country and ultimately for their own cause as well. Using babies as props in the Congressional chamber isn't legitimate to any purpose other than the absurd comedy Jon Steward was obliged to portray last night. GOP representatives insult the intelligence of average people on an almost daily basis.
Objective debates over all the pressing issues of our time are not being sincerely engaged. The concerns over a radical overthrow of traditional American values are not being advanced by a progressive agenda, they are being promoted by a conservative lunatic fringe seeking to dictate what brand of patriotism Americans must adhere to; [FOX’s clarion call to the wing nuts].
Their backers tout regressive philosophies bordering on comparable agendas used by the Taliban; limited women's rights, social discrimination premised by religious and national origins, economic class discrimination and general discriminations based upon political beliefs.
In short, the ultra-conservatives embrace the oldest fallacy in the book, the fallacy of false dilemma; you are either for us or against us and there is no room for compromise, there are no grey areas to contemplate, and my favorite; Evil vs. the virtuous, (usually defined by some extreme clergyman or politician propped up by one, i.e. Michelle Bachman).
This brand of ideology doesn't allow dissention, discussion or compromise. It is a dangerous political methodology and is precisely the sort of tactic employed by Adolph and his national socialist’s party in post WW I Germany.
Hopefully the conservatives will seriously wound themselves and not the nation. If and when they recover from their self imposed, "death of a thousand cuts", the movement might have a valid contribution to make.
I heard this tea party is official, we don't need to say anything, in fact, lawyers and judges were also involved, and before the election, it's very important, and its for the betterment of US citizen.
