Glenn Beck Has A (White) Dream
Aug 25, 2010 The Teabagger Fail
What was that thing I said the other day about measuring the size of a crowd? Because we can argue all day about an estimate, but one thing you never want to do is measure a crowd before it’s arrived and then look bad if a small crowd shows up. It’s better to plan a bit small and be pleasantly surprised.
In obtaining permits for his “I have a (white) dream” rally in DC this Saturday, Glenn Beck told the Park Service to expect up to 300,000 people. Saying “I expect a miracle,” he has promised people a historic event. But if recent history is any indicator, turnout may be closer to his ticket sales for “Christmas Sweater.”
Some local figures:
Huntsville, AL April 15th 2009: about 2,000 people. (The organizers tried to say it was 4,000 but the media didn’t bite.)
Huntsville, AL April 4th 2010: 250-300 people. This was a Tea Party Express bus tour event.
Huntsville, AL April 15th 2010: about 2,500 people, though that number probably came from the organizers because there’s no attribution.
Florence, AL April 15th 2009: about 350 people.
Florence, AL April 15th 2010: about 150 people.
Breitbart’s “Uni-Tea” rally drew just 300, which is about right for a splintering movement. Plus, Beck’s sinking ratings are matched by sinking popularity. ThinkProgress has a digest of tea party organizers who regard him as a self-promoter.
Anyone in DC want to send pics or video of the crowd at this travesty? Because I smell a big, fat epic fiasco — and I want to see it. More importantly, I want to blog it because I, too, have a dream now.
Tags: crowd size, demonstration, Glenn Beck, protest, rallies, rally, tea party, washignton DC
Olbermann “Interviews” Sharron Angle
Aug 7, 2010 The Teabagger Fail
Genius. The difference between this and what Breitbart does is that Olbermann’s not pretending this interview is real.
Tags: Keith Olbermann, sharron angle
Sam Stein Succumbing To Beltway Syndrome?
Jul 14, 2010 The Teabagger Fail
Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is one of my favorite writers. An otherwise excellent article about Nevada’s tea party-republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is spoiled by the first sentence:
“The Tea Party movement is better-known for its alignment with libertarian, anti-Washington sentiment than for its ties to social conservatism.”
I don’t know how that is possible unless you haven’t been outside the Beltway in a while. Maybe HuffPo should rotate reporters? I have chronicled the tea party in my blog and video reporting; it has never failed to put piety front and center: the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, the Tea Party Nation bus tour, the April 15th tax day tea party of 2010, the Parker Griffith town hall last August… Sharron Angle is an example of right-wing psychological projection while Glenn Beck understands his audience perfectly. What about the tea party isn’t a faith-based platform?
In fact, this is the divide I’ve identified many times before: fundamentalist Randians and fundamentalist charismatics actually don’t like sharing a movement in common. The TPC in Nashville was actually protested by libertarians, who don’t like Sarah Palin. The sanguine Alaskan is an ever-popular figure because she is a true-believing product of charismatic Christian identity politics; her 2008 campaign appearances brought out the worst elements of what became the tea party “phenomenon.”
The tea party is a mass exercise in cognitive dissonance; its disorganization masks some very brittle fractures.
Tags: beltway syndrome, Huffington Post, libertarians, sam stein, sarah palin, tea party
Morning Awful: Tea Party Dissonance
Jul 14, 2010 Morning Awful, The Teabagger Fail
I know, I know — the North Iowa Tea Party is a leftist plot to sabotage the tea party “movement.” Except for the part where even the tea party “movement” condemns a sign comparing Obama to Hitler and Lenin:
Shelby Blakely, a spokeswoman for the national Tea Party Patriots, says the sign isn’t appropriate. She says her group opposes any comparisons of Obama to Hitler or Lenin.
Via Oliver Willis
Tags: history of tea parties, tea party
Angle Angles For Memory Hole
Jul 1, 2010 Teabaggers, The Age Of Stupid, The Teabagger Fail
This is the only past that has ever existed.
First rule about the memory-hole? You don’t talk about the memory hole. Second rule about the memory hole? You do NOT talk about the memory hole.
Tags: sharon angle
Playboy “Tea Party Confessional” Probably Genuine
Jun 30, 2010 The Teabagger Fail
In an era when Rolling Stone does journalism better than the New York Times, centerfolds scooping the Washington Post is your new normal. Of course, I only had time to read the article when it emerged — I was in Canada, after all — but it struck me as genuine. My more careful analysis today makes me even more certain. It illuminates splits within the movement that I have noted in this blog over the last seventeen months:
- The anonymous author is steeped in the libertarian movement: “(T)he homegrown activists I work with are the real deal,” Anonymous continues. “They may not read much, but they all know their Ayn Rand.” Teabaggers are more diverse than the author admits.
- “(T)he worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make lots of noise but can’t win without professional help. I love the irony of helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar.” As I’ve been saying since February 2009, the average tea party activist has no clue just how much of a Beltway creation their movement is. Which brings us to:
- Anonymous claims the tea party “know(s) the birther argument is a loser” and that Andrew Breitbart, not Sarah Palin, is the most important leader of the movement. This will be a surprise to the attendees of Nashville’s Tea Party Convention who saw Breitbart arguing with the birthers, who were raucous, loud, and definitely not “loved by Tea Partyers in a way Palin can never hope to be loved.” Just watch if you don’t believe me.
- “We’re playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives. In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that causes road rage.” What have I said a thousand times now about loud, fearmongering lies? Speaking of which:
- “Conservatives had been trying to take down ACORN for three decades. Where they failed, BigGovernment.com and my friends succeeded.” Nothing racist at all about the high-tech lynching of an uppity black organization, nosiree. All the more reason why Breitbart must be destroyed with his own content.
- The writer goes too far by describing a direct-mail campaign using new variable-print technology to send thank-you notes from Wall Street CEOs to voters. Having read that, the Democrats will absolutely steal the idea in the form of highly-effective TV ads.
The author makes this solid-sounding prediction:
The reality is the Tea Party as we know it will cease to exist within an election cycle. Its ideas won’t go away, but most of its leaders will. That’s because most self-appointed leaders in this world simply don’t know how to win. Mark my words: Without proper experienced guidance they will fuck it up. Rallies don’t win elections—votes do. Their egos are writing checks their organizations will never cash.
The author’s ego is writing a check his base won’t cash. The plan seems to be that K-Street fools enough scared white people into voting Republican to retake Congress in 2010, after which…what? There’s no plan for what comes next because this is all the right has left. Which brings me to the last, and most deadly observation:
Various Republican congressional leaders met for hours with our leadership and our finance team in the Richard Nixon suite at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Never in my career had I had a congressman look me in the eyes behind closed doors and say with such sincerity, “Give me a list of what you need me to do.” The second meeting drew 10 congressmen. There we sat, inside the Capitol Hill Club (which shares the building that houses the Republican National Committee), sharing ideas on how we can work together. The third meeting drew 17 congressmen.
The tea party phenomenon has been a K-Street product, manufactured and sold to Republicans from the very beginning. Activists and politicians alike are suckers in a confidence scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.
Rand Paul, Utter Hypocrite
Jun 23, 2010 Rand Paul, The Teabagger Fail
The White House sent Bernanke to the Hill to tell Congressional Democrats that stimulus and unemployment benefits are still necessary. Obama floated a $50 billion help package for cash-strapped states and came out with post-bipartisan aggressiveness last weekend. Nancy Pelosi has called out the GOP. Into this mix comes Rand Paul, libertarian opthalmologist:
As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again.
You have to admire the balls on the man. Not only do Americans need to lower their standards and take that Plan B job (the one that inevitably turns into Plan A), we must do so for the benefit of “the economy.” Said economy doesn’t have enough jobs to go around, and that is exactly the point: if we are all forced to take jobs we hate, put up with low pay and poor treatment, and do it with a smile, then we’ll be too busy scraping by to notice that guys like Paul are taking care of themselves quite nicely.
Because that’s exactly what Rand Paul is all about. Remember, he says that half his patients are on Medicare — and he’s opposed to cuts in Medicare reimbursement because “physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.”
But what are the chances of seeing Paul challenged on that? Yeah, you’re probably right.
How long have I been telling you the teabagging phenomenon is about self-dealing? A long time.
Rand Paul Borrows From Nixon
Jun 10, 2010 Rand Paul, Teabaggers, The Teabagger Fail
As Ms. Angle proves to be a pinata of goodies, the Kentucky tea party primary victor proves he can keep on gifting…and take a page from Nixon:
(T)he news from the Bluegrass State (via “The Rush Limbaugh Show”) is that Paul’s planning to write his own balanced budget proposal for the Federal Government.
But there’s a catch.
He doesn’t plan on doing it until after the election.
All the more reason why the media should closely question him on the issue of federal budgets. Whenever they get a tea party candidate to admit what he or she really believes, the tea party dies a little.
“Socialism” Charge Hurts The Tea Party
May 20, 2010 The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail
DNC Chairman Tim Kaine yesterday:
“I think for most thinking Americans, throwing that label around actually doesn’t hurt us,” Kaine replied. “It suggests an extremism and an ideological rigidity that isn’t where most Americans are. We are problem solvers.”
“A party that just relies on throwing labels around and refusing to cooperate, they might get a headline but they won’t get support of people,” he added. “We are going to promote smart solutions to these problems and If the other guys want to rely on labels rather than roll up their sleeves and actually help us govern a nation at a time when governance is needed — it is an abdication of responsibility but they are not going to help their case by doing that.”
He’s right. It’s the little boy crying wolf now; the Teabag Terror has been trained to regurgitate scare words so often, and for so long, that their usefulness has peaked. The same words were leveled at Obama during the 2008 election and failed to beat him; the tea party phenomenon is nothing but a doubling-down on the failures of yesteryear.
I have said this year would see Americans get tired of teabaggery, and this is exactly why.
Teabaggers Failing, GOP Flailing
May 19, 2010 2010 Elections, The Teabagger Fail
I’ll credit Brad Friedman for being the most insightful Twitter pundit last night. Republican races in Kentucky and Arkansas saw fewer votes than the Democratic contests; Joe Sestak, who was the toast of Netroots Nation last year, beat Arlen Specter. Murtha’s Pennsylvania seat went to a Democrat. Blanche Lincoln will face a runoff against Bill Halter.
Any honest appraisal of yesterday’s primaries has to conclude the GOP came out losers.
For months now, I’ve been saying the teabagger surge was overexposed; that November had potential to become a perfect storm of progressive advance. GOP leaders are drowning; the tea party phenomenon has become a millstone around their necks, pulling them hard to the right while the electorate stays in the middle.
Even right-wing media figures are starting to lose ground. Glenn Beck has hit a new ratings low, while Rush Limbaugh is reduced to the most tortured explanations for conservative failure. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are back to opposing Wall Street reform, even blocking a cap on ATM fees.
The teabagger fail is in full swing; it was inevitable from the beginning. See the sign up there? The Republicans are flailing in the water and being pulled down by the weight of the teabags. This is a recipe for fiasco, and Democrats are enjoying every moment of it.
