27 thoughts on “Wake Up, Tea Partiers!”

  1. Jesus Christ. What the hell are we supposed to do? You know, some of us have to work for a living. Some of us can’t even find enough work to live, but we do it anyway — drive an hour to a part-time job, as that’s the only thing we’ve been able to find. Just speaking for myself, I don’t f***ing have time to do any of this political s**t. I’m on the verge of declaring myself a one-woman “Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn” party, and I mean it. Let them spend all the money. Let them drive the country into bankruptcy. Let them live in their own mess. I need a good laugh.

  2. That sure sounds tempting, but historically, it usually ends with somebody else coming in and forcing you to perform manual labor at the point of a sword for the rest of your life.

    As has been often said, this is the last bastion of freedom (such as it is) left on the planet. We have nowhere else left to go.

  3. From the letter delivered to Wisconsin businesses by the State Employees Union:

    “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

    In other words, give us space in your window, at no cost, to advocate for our point of view, or we’ll try to cripple your business.

    Is this a variation on the old-time protection rackets?

  7. I’m with Andrea. I first saw the Kaus argument via Insta. My reaction was, why? I get the politics, but lets look at what is happening. The Democratic Party is claiming that “This is what Democracy looks like” when unions protest recently elected legislators that are voting. When they lose that effort, “this is what Democracy looks like” is supposed to be the Judicial branch overruling the Legislative and Executive Branch, simply because legislators, who fled the state, couldn’t read a bullentin board outside the legislative chambers that read “vote tonight”. Supposedly the Republican Party, which followed the Wisconsin Constitution and legislative rules is wrong; while the people who violated the Wisconsin Constitution and fled their duty are right?

    Look, if people around the nation are buying this bullshit; I’m not seeing it. As pointed out in Kaus’s PPS, other states are doing the same thing as Walker, and there is less heartburn there. Really, it seems all the Democratic Party and the state government unions have is Wisconsin. And so far, it looks like the fools are doing a great job showing themselves to be clowns without any help from us.

    And if for some reason they succeed, then I’ll just point the creditors in the direction of Wisconsin (and Illinois, California, New York, Georgia). I know, “first they came for…”, but if the idiots let protestors and judicial activism push them to bankruptcy; then someone should come for them.

  8. Regarding Andrea’s post, I sympathize completely.

    We all have to choose our battles. For some, the battles are local politics; for others, they are much more personal.

  9. Regarding Andrea’s first comment, this is exactly what gives the left an advantage. For most people, politics is only a small part of their lives and government should stay out of the way for the most part. For leftists, politics is literally everything, since they believe that the government should control the economy, redistribute wealth to ensure fairness, and regulate all manner of activities.

  10. Funny, no one tries that crap in Texas. I wonder why?

    /sarc

    On a serious note, it is important that this law is implemented so the union doesn’t get to keep its war chest and the partisan judiciary doesn’t get to legislate from the bench.

  11. I don’t like nationalizing state and local elections, so if the cheeseheads want to go to all the trouble to elect an explicitly anti-public-union governor and legislature, suffer through the legislative battle and the rioters in the streets, and then undo the whole thing by electing an incompetent union tool to the bench — well, let them. It will be a powerful lesson to voters in other states.

    No national action can save you from local stupidity. That should be engraved on the front of each polling booth. Caesarism never works, folks. Solve your local problems locally, or slide into feudal serfdom in a futile search for Ultimate Dad to set everything right.

  12. You are correct rickl, that is an advantage. However, other than the slim chance that Wisconsin will overturn the enacted legislation in the courts (the case is on a trajectory to be reviewed prior to Prossor leaving office even if he loses); I don’t see where the Democrats are winning the argument.

    Similar legislation had been passed in other states since this past November. Attempts to duplicate protests like WI in those states have fallen flat. Most people will forget about a state issue from 2011 by November 2012. Obama’s approval is falling fast. And much of that is because of his trip to South America when Japan was in crisis, and now his opening of a third war nobody wants to fight. Those are national issues. So as much as the media is focusing on Wisconsin, I’m not seeing the Democrats doing more winning than Charlie Sheen.

  13. Actually this says it all from the article on the “Tea Party Giving Up”…

    [[[some conservatives just may not be feeling the rage right now]]]

    Any movement based on rage and without an formal structure never lasts long. The reason is simple, the majority are just hangers on who just move on when the anger burns out while the bitter core prefers to play the victim (I must go to work…) rather then invest the effort needed to go forward.

    Yes, the Tea Party bubble is deflating right on schedule. By the 2012 election they will be a relic of the past….

  14. Keep dreaming moron. Just because you were stupid enough to vote for Harry “Can’t Vote on a Budget” Reid, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to bail you out or play your game 15 months before it matters.

  15. Leland Says:
    “Attempts to duplicate protests like WI in those states have fallen flat.”

    Especially in states where Democrat lawmakers are pushing through union reforms. The unionistas are only concerned when a Republican wants reform.

  16. The unionistas are only concerned when a Republican wants reform.

    Even the dumbest dog knows you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

    Of course, comparing the intelligence of liberals to dogs is an insult to dogs everywhere. My apologies.

  17. Any movement based on rage and without an formal structure never lasts long.

    Really? You don’t think the Second World War in the Pacific, say, was driven quite substantially by Pearl Harbor, Bataan, and Iwo Jima? All those GIs just got themselves shot at because cool strategic reasoning suggested a readjustment in pan-Pacific power of the United States vis-a-vis the Empire of Japan?

    Or how about the Civil War? The French or Russian Revolutions? The Civil Rights movement of the 1870s or 1960s? The decades-long savagery of Hamas? The struggle of the Kurds? All this stuff was driven by calm rationality, and organized and steered from above by seasoned political experts?

    Good grief, Thomas. I think you may have let your enthusiasm for your conclusion dull your perception of the historical plausibility of your argument.

    I think it is precisely those movements founded on the strong and simple passions — and anger is certainly a valid example, more so than joy or sorrow, I expect — and organized spontaneously from the ground up that last and last. It’s the cerebral movements organized by intellectual artistocrats (metrification, free trade, nutrition pyramids) that tend to struggle to stay alive.

  19. Thomas is mistaken if he thinks the anger is burning out. It’s burning deeper.

    Yes, since a lot of people see the congressional Republican leadership as a bunch of accommodating, ineffectual wimps.

    Tick, tick, tick…

  20. Carl said ” I think you may have let your enthusiasm for your conclusion dull your perception of the historical plausibility of your argument.”

    Carl, I would say the same to you regarding “No national action can save you from local stupidity.” I imagine Vivian Malone and James Hood thought national action saved them from local stupidity, and perhaps by the end of his life, Gov. George Wallace might have agreed. ( I don’t want to derail a conversation about the tea party, so I won’t comment further.)

  21. Ah, the limitations of English, Bob, not to mention a sketchy pass through a reader’s atrophied Wernicke’s area. I meant “you” in the plural. As in, no national action can save y’all from your local stupidity. No doubt national action can save any small finite number of individuals from the predations of their neighbors, somewhat of a banality in this context.

    And, indeed, I’m hesitant to say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did any more to solve Southern problems of race in general than did its 1875 namesake.

    Which brings us to an interesting historical counterfactual: suppose the South had not started the Civil War, and the North had simply held firm — militarily, if necessary — in restricting its export to new states. Slavery had already proved itself economically inferior to free labor. By the 1850s the South only made real money in slave breeding, a business that ipso facto requires a continually-expanding market (which does much to explain the South’s otherwise inexplicable passion about Congress not restricting the export of the peculiar institution to the territories).

    If the embargo on export strangled the business of slave breeding, and slavery could not compete with industrialized free labor on the plantation — how long until the slavocracy collapsed? More or less than the 98 years between Appomattox Court House and “I Have A Dream?” At greater or lesser cost than the 600,000 deaths of boys in blue and gray, not to mention a century of lynching and Jim Crow?

    I don’t know the answer, myself, but anyone who raps one out quickly has no business rolling his eyes about the follies of 21st century “nation building” with Stryker brigades and UAVs.

  22. “Carl, I would say the same to you regarding “No national action can save you from local stupidity.” ”

    Who is being stupid here?

    The Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill has been met with, to my mind, a largly ineffective mass protest. It has also been met with, which we will see it was effective or not by April 5, an effort to elect Joanne Kloppenburg to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. You know, Scott Walker’s own version of Health Care Reform getting Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy.

    The Right Blogosphere is left to lamenting, “Oh, the humanity! The Left is politicizing a “non-partisan” judicial election to overturn what they could not accomplish at the ballot box!”

    Huh? Say again? The Supreme Court position is an elected position in Wisconsin, and this is indeed going to be decided at the ballot box on April 5. Someone characterized Mitch Daniels in Indiana as someone who thinks 10 moves ahead in playing chess. I don’t think that Scott Walker and Scott Fitzgerald think even one move ahead in the political chess game, and that a sleepy State Supreme Court election being turned into an existential contest would have been forseen by anyone planning their chess moves by even one move in advance.

    I am telling you that if David Prosser loses his court seat, it will be a bellweather that the Scott Walker program is broadly unpopular, much more so than the Capitol protests. The Right Blogosphere is as much as anticipating this ballot-box loss, suggesting that all of those wise voters from back in November have gotten an attack of the stupids by April. Carl Pham, here, is as much as calling “the cheeseheads” to be stupid in advance of April 5, as much as anticipating Wisconsin voters to repudiate in April what they put in effect in November.

    On the other hand, if David Prosser hangs on to his seat in the face of union electioneering, it will suggest that all this business of targetting Republicans in recall elections is all a bunch of futile posturing. But if David Prosser loses, so can Scott Walker. In a recall election.

  23. Carl,

    Last I looked at the history books there was a very formal structure for fighting WWII in the Pacific, starting with the President. Its called the chain of command. The same with the other wars you mentioned. But one of the bragging points of the Tea Party movement is their is no formal organization or planning behind it, its just a spontaneous revolution.

  24. rickl,

    Yes, the hard core Tea Party will punish the Republicans by voting for 3rd party candidates. The split conservative votes in the districts will give them back to the Democrats…

  25. But one of the bragging points of the Tea Party movement is their is no formal organization or planning behind it, its just a spontaneous revolution.

    Say what? You’re nuts. The Tea Party point is not that they lack organization, it’s that they were not organized — i.e. created, motivated, funded — by any central bigshot. The former is a statement abiout ways and means, the latter a statement about philosophical origins. Maybe you’re just confused by the fact that the same English word is used for two quite different ideas.

    Think of it as the difference between a volunteer and draftee army. They’re both organized, but one was organized by the spontaneous wishes of its members and the other by law and force.

  26. Carl,

    That is what I love about the Tea Party, they are everything and nothing!

    You make a statement that the Tea Party is A, and someone claims no, that is not what the Tea Party is. Then you make a statement that its not A and someone claims it is… It’s hilarious 🙂 Yes, I will miss the Tea Party as its a laugh a minute, better then a SNL routine.

    BTW the Last I looked the All volunteer U.S. Army still had Generals and a chain of command leading to the White House. So it does have a formal organization and is not spontaneous. So where is the formal organization of the Tea Party?

  27. Enjoy ye yuks while ye may, Thomas.

    The CNN poll released yesterday reported that the approval rating of the Tea Party people is only 48%.

    According to the same poll, the approval rating for the Democratic and Republican parties is the same: one point shy at 47%

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