Uh, someone should explain to Andrew Sullivan that the leader is scared shitless of dear ol’ Rush who is the kingmaker of the republican party.

Poe’s law kicks in, and just doesn’t let go. $550 to be told that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes by someone who left her job cause she isn’t a quitter who complains about tele-promters from notes on her hand. All so they could chant a movie line variation at her.

Will there be people lined up right in front of the presidential primaries yelling “Stop, Sarah Stop!” so she will know?

Palin reminds me of something I heard during the superbowl. Paraphrased: “The Patriots are showing the Colts that they came here to play the game.” Duh! Of course they are! Short of content, the commentators just flap their lips. Now, I’ve always thought sports chatter was the most inane thing I’d ever heard–that is, until I heard Palin open her mouth.

“We win, they lose?” Are you kidding me? Attitudes don’t make things happen. Plans, contingencies, divergent approaches to problem-solving, those make things happen. Palin is such a frickin’ cheerleader, and you know, Bush was the same. Rather than “We’ll work at this,” “We’ll find a way,” or anything else that implies effort, she speaks in terms of results only: “We win, they lose.”

That’s the job of cheerleaders: to stand on the sidelines drawing attention, driving up the crowd’s excitement, and maintaining attitude. That’s not what a coach does, and players couldn’t perform properly if he did. In a tough stretch, when a coach pulls his players aside, he doesn’t say, “Ok, everybody, we’re going to win and they’re going to lose.” He gives them practical direction.

To Palin the Coach, international relations is a game of the Harlem Globetrotters, not a meshing of societies–not even a competitive sport. We’re not even strategizing to win, it’s just assumed that the game is permanently slanted in our favor. She excites the crowd because, to her, the side with the most clapping hands and (dare I say it) the most whooping catcalls is the side that wins.

Brewski–

Richard “only ciriticize[s] the GOP and rewrite[s] history on a daily basis to do so” far less than you only criticize the DNC and rewrite history on a daily basis to do so. You make your short lists of liberal causes you support, but you spend pages and pages assaulting Obama on every little thing. Richard, on the other hand, has been highly critical of Obama’s military policy and the health care bill. Be careful where you cast aspersions.

Dwight Sheldon Adams

Larry hates, he admits it himself. Such sentiments feed the beast, and are mostly misdirected. Look inward Larry.

The wingnuts think gov’t doesn’t work, and they’re hell bent to prove it.

Cav,

If the Dems had been successful in putting together a good health plan together that provided universal access and lower costs, it would indeed have meant the demise of the GOP for a decade. But the failure was not because the GOP just said no. It was a failure because, in fact, the Dems did not come anywhere close to coming up with a plan that provided universal coverage and lower costs.

If they had, then not only would have the Dems man on the street supported it, but also the indepedent man on the street, I would have supported it, and pretty much everyone other than the hard core rightwing nutcases.

So lets say that you will never get that 20%. So if the Dems had come up with a good plan they would have had something like 70-80% popular support. Sort of FDR-like numbers.

The fault does not lie with Palin, or Hatch or Bush or Cheney or Boehner or racist nutcases. The fault lies with the Dems who couldn’t come up with a good plan.

..and right now, Lucy is watching Charlie Brown sky through the air, after tempting him to the kick. The cold, hard, November ground coming up all too quickly…he notices the leaves are down, and the skeletal branches of the dormant trees. As he glides by his opportunity, out of the corner of his eye, he spots the football. In Lucy’s hands.

Where progressives are getting their Tea Party information. Hating won’t keep a party from losing. Apropos to a nation training children to the dizzying heights of 30th @#$%^&* place in international competency testing.

http://www.publiusforum.com/2010/02/08/marvel-comics-captain-america-says-tea-parties-are-dangerous-and-racist/

cav:

Good point. One would think a group attempting to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction toward both Dems and Repugs would have the good sense to use their $100k to buy a more moderate, and certainly more intelligent, voice than that of Sarah Palin. Indeed, and as you say, the choice of Palin does not speak well to the question of intelligence re tea baggers.

It has always worked. Tea Partiers are not die hard Bush supporters. Sure there are those, but the unhappiness in spending and its tea party outlet encompasses a great deal more than that.

The idea that it does not IS the incompetence of the Democrat party. Apparently Massachusetts taught the left wing of the party nothing. What the movement becomes is less relevant than what it means for the future of both parties. Less and less people have faith in government as it grows and spends beyond its limitations and mandate under Constitution.

Jim do you understand politics yet? People vote for people they like, and a lot of folks like Sarah Palin, and have the same vote as you do. Lot’s of people “liked” Obama, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t pissed on the progressive parade.

Are progressives less intelligent for being bamboozled by Obama? Is his rap once believed by progressives evidence of a stupid constituency no matter the depth of its education?

I will leave you to the reality of 2010, and then beyond to 2012. This nation could easily elect Palin.

Bowl–

One man’s Jell-O is another man’s deficate. Funny how “the founders genius” didn’t protect us from our present wars. I wouldn’t hold your breath if you’re relying on the Constitution to keep us out of any more of them. It’s not “how this system works” that creates present-day policies; it’s the choices we make.

I’m not sure what you consider to be “more of the system working.” Any representative democracy would experience mindless bloc voting and obstruction. The challenge is to see to it that government takes a form and change according to need, rather than host parasites whose sole expressed goal is to destroy it.

The Constitution can be burned up for all the tea partiers care. They have an image in their head of what it is and what it requires, and that will suffice. If Palin is elected, it will likewise be a sign of her symbolic importance, rather than any real potential for positive influence that she has. Obama, unfortunately, was much the same for many who voted for him. But at least he had good ideas on top of his symbolic traits.

I mean, come on! Bush increases deficits for 8 years, starts two wars, doubles the national debt, supports/creates potential for great government abuses of civil rights, and the little talk there was of rebellion was patient. Then, in Obama’s first few months, while struggling with a pre-election recession, people are talking anti-government and secession and taking it to the streets! The founding fathers, who actually had some serious crap to worry about, still spent years attempting civil solutions before they seriously considered rebellion. The only reason the tea partiers can fight against horrendous government oppression as openly as they do is because they’re really not that all oppressed.

At present, the tea party movement is most fully defined by its willingness to laud propaganda. I’m sure that the majority of tea partiers have a determined ideology, with their own ideas about what government is and what it should do, and probably some intelligent thought behind them. So sad to see them sacrifice positive discourse by residing (quite contentedly, it seems) behind a mask of intolerance, impatience, regressivism, and paranoia, and to acquiesce to the deafening roar of the crowd.

If tea parties really bring together so many different perspectives, as people claim, and not just right-wing anti-government types, then I would like to hear what they are. Surely these people wouldn’t unitedly support a bare-bones government, like they seem to claim, if they were as varied as we’re led to believe. Or, if they would, they don’t seem to understand that they individually have very different ideas of what a bare bones government would be allowed to do.

The two perspectives I see coming out of the tea parties are anarchism and libertarianism. Any of them who pretend that their anti-government stance is anything else, I say to scale back the rhetoric a little. It’s one thing to be opposed to the present increase in spending. It’s another to go on and on about tyranny and draw parallels to 1700s Britain, Nazism, etc.

But for all of their nonpartisan Kool-aid backwash, there’s some definite Republican appeal in there. The tea parties are parties of symbology, not of ideology, and Republicans have held the high ground in the symbology department since at least Reagan, especially in the Two Americas concept. Palin is a Republican, not a tea partier, and she (like other Repubs) is capitalizing on this opportunity.

So we can suppose that the tea partiers themselves are reasonable people who have given up their chance to promote reasonable ideas in favor of groupthink and their stupefied, screaming hordes. Like most huge groups, they can’t all share ideologies to a relevant degree, so they simplify and simplify until they collectively represent little but a dull roar. They’ve given up the passions for which they joined the movement to passions which others may capitalize upon and co-opt–others like Sarah Palin and the Republican Party.

Still, with politics and media as they are, I’m not so sure any other group could have done any better. March onward, tea partiers, and cast your votes and your ideas into the cesspool of futility! I’ll keep watching, and if I see anything more noble than Sarah Palin come out of the party, maybe my opinion of them will change.

Dwight Sheldon Adams

Not really surprising since were watching popularity decline for both the majors.

If, as it seems, the tea-people are tending to the Palin end of the spectrum, where and when will the progressives start rallying?

Who’s to say we need to stop at three parties?

Being above the fray certainly is pleasant.

Recognize them for what they are to us: utterly irrelevant. Paying attention to national politics on this level only distracts us from doing whatever we can as individuals and local communities to prepare for the ramifications of all the ‘good’ policy, endearing positions and activities we’ve unleashed over the past thirty or so years..

Sarah is the new morning in america. And we’re forcing it upon ourselves with our preposterous attachment to hope. Pogo was right!

Good grief.

The Founding Fathers and the willing adherents who took up arms against their British masters and oppressors were thought at least immoderate and by most Tories, the majority in the colonies and completely unhinged.

It’s all perspective. Where would you have sided in 1776? With the existing power, or a long shot for all the marbles?

A good read is the memoirs of British soldiers during the Revolution, they could not believe that people with such an evidently rich life would risk all of it to oppose the greatest power on Earth.

Sarah Pailan, Fundy pole-dancer, crocheted the American flag with one hand tied behind her back.

I’m not making this up!

brew:

You need to do some research on the origin of the banjo.

The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslaved Africans in Colonial America, adapted from several African instruments.

Yes, like I said, everything American with soul comes from Africa or Appalachia.

Brewski–

I can define a certain category of culture as having “soul” all I want, but it doesn’t make it so. Personally, I think NASCAR, most country music, a healthy portion of bluegrass, square dancing, and Kentucky Bourbon have less soul than Walt Whitman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville, with a little bit of that human soul thrown in by the white Northerners who were willing to die to free the black soul from bondage.

“Soul” is a matter of values and opinions.

–Dwight