Why Obama Supporters Can’t Shake the Zealotry Label
Of late, I’ve been impressed that the opinion pieces AOL has linked on furnished on its main page come from sensible folk on both sides of the political aisle, but yesterday, they linked a piece by a writer from the left-wing publication, The Nation, which offered the standard, dishonest narrative about the Tea Party movement. This wasn’t an opinion piece based on the movement, but yet another opinion piece based on the movement as defined by its extremes.
Telling us just exactly Why Tea Partiers Can’t Shake the Racism Label, Paul Wachter dredges up a few examples of obscure tea party activists who said some rather hateful things. Now, by the Wachter standard, the Democratic Party is sure having a tough time proving that its rank-and-file don’t believe Barack Obama is the Messiah or that the president’s supporters don’t believe opponents of Obamacare are domestic terrorists.
Not just that, this left-winger, while bashing Tea Parties, presumes to tell us just exactly what our problem is, “What might help the tea party avoid accusations of racism would be if it were more forthcoming about what exactly it stands for.”
Um, Paul, we’re against Obama’s big expansion of the federal government and for freedom. Other reporters who took the time to talk to Tea Party activists figured it out. He might have also figured it out had he done the some instead of writing about the angry right-wingers who live inside his head.
Wow, this guy is just plain filled with bile. Expect to see more such screeds on so-called mainstream news outlets in the coming days.
To the credit of AOL, while they did publish this silly screed, they posted it together with a report of the attempts to crash the Tea Party: ”Opponents of the Tea Party movement are planning to crash the group’s rallies this week as a way to portray the conservative activists as out of touch with ordinary Americans.”
Christopher Weber who wrote the piece did some reporting; Wachter did a lot of projecting.
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I received an email from the Tea Party Patriots warning me that some very silly people may show up to Tax Day events wearing Nazi uniforms and such. If they want to play Halloween, I don’t suppose they can be stopped — but we should certainly point and laugh freely.
Why is it that name-calling, nose-holding, sticking-out-tongues and blowing raspberries at people is taken seriously by the mainstream media, but citizens gathering to voice their concerns about the direction of the country is regarded as sinister?
We live in a weird world.
Comment by Lori Heine — April 14, 2010 @ 2:43 am - April 14, 2010
Thorny: Smell that, Rabbit?
Rabbit: *sniff sniff*… fear.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247745/
Comment by ThatGayConservative — April 14, 2010 @ 10:31 am - April 14, 2010
Not just that, this left-winger, while bashing Tea Parties, presumes to tell us just exactly what our problem is, “What might help the tea party avoid accusations of racism would be if it were more forthcoming about what exactly it stands for.”
Um, Paul, we’re against Obama’s big expansion of the federal government and for freedom.
If I ask you what you stand for and you say something as generic and safe as ‘freedom,’ then you’re not really answering the question. Ostensibly, everybody is for freedom, including Obama, liberals, and hundreds of millions of people in this country that don’t go to tea parties, so how does that differentiate you from anybody else? Saying ‘I stand for freedom’ in the United States is like saying you stand for breathing air and eating food. So what?
As for the ‘expansion of the federal government,’ well that’s not really much of an answer either. Republicans have always been against the expansion of the federal government (even though they’ve been in charge for most of its expansion over the past three decades), so what is it about the tea parties’ opposition to government expansion that distinguishes itself from the generic Republican opposition?
It seems to me that in the mind of the tea partier, since Obama has taken control of the government, anything that Obama does is considered an expansion. When George Bush was expanding government by initiating programs like No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Prescription Drug act, and implementing a policy of hugely expensive nation-building, apparently these weren’t big enough expansions of the federal government to warrant a couple of tea parties?
What Paul is saying is that conservatism in general has very little to no internal consistency and that makes it very hard to nail down exactly what you stand for. Bush ran on a platform of no nation-building, he did it anyway, and that’s one of the things that conservatives like about him the most. The tea party rage over Obama’s domestic spending is extreme, but Bush’s spending seemed to generate only a few lines of muted criticisms from a small number of people towards the end of his failing presidency, there certainly were not any protests though.
Do you see how that can be confusing to outside observers? Things that cruised right through the conservative gates of approval during the Bush years are now described in apocalyptic terms. You guys are only consistent in your inconsistency.
Comment by Levi — April 14, 2010 @ 11:37 am - April 14, 2010
Actually, Levi, the hilarious thing here is how you project your own problems onto other people.
You demanded Bush’s impeachment and imprisonment for war crimes. Yet when Obama does the same thing as for which you attacked Bush, you say nothing — and in fact support and endorse Obama’s behaviors. You call other people inconsistent because you refuse to acknowledge your own inconsistency based on your racism.
Your whining about the tea parties is nothing more than typical knee-jerk reactionary liberalism. That’s why you started with calling tea party participants racists and Nazis, why you used sexual slurs against them, why you claimed they wanted Obama dead, and all the other lines of bull that you have been spewing of late.
You are terrified. And as is typical for liberals, you cannot provide ideas or intellectual discussion; all you can do is namecall and attack. Your Barack Obama claimed that anyone who voted for Scott Brown was a racist misogynist teabagger who wanted people to die.
You lost in a landslide. You are losing popular opinion by the day. And you are desperate and frightened.Your words show it.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 14, 2010 @ 12:59 pm - April 14, 2010
“Do you see how that can be confusing to outside observers? Things that cruised right through the conservative gates of approval during the Bush years are now described in apocalyptic terms. You guys are only consistent in your inconsistency.”
Again, Levi, child, your ignorance and bigotry are showing.
I am not a conservative — I am a libertarian. Capital L — not Republican. And during the Bush years, I was as “progressive” a Democrat as any of the others who, like me, not only voted for Obama but worked for his campaign.
Like many of us, I complained bitterly during the Bush years — only to hope Obama would be different. He wasn’t. And hypocrites like you didn’t even care. He had a D in front of his name and you had power — which, as it turned out, was all you really wanted, anyway.
You aren’t about principle, and never have been. We see that now.
Thanks for playing. Go try and fool someone else.
Comment by Lori Heine — April 14, 2010 @ 1:39 pm - April 14, 2010
Levi, your “conservatives are inconsistent” statement does not stand up to scrutiny. Conservatives were very critical of President Bush and the Republican congress spending habits. That is why in 2006 congress switched from Republican to Democrat. With regards to Nation Building, the context of the question was in a pre-911 country. This changed radically and to ignore that is naive.
When it comes to Democrat principals, I agree they are very consistent – Power. Democrats will vote for their party no matter how there candidate acts.
Both voters are consistent, but Republican voters have ethical and fiscal standards where as Democrats have power retention standards. Unfortunately past Republican politicians poor behavior caused them to be voted out. This has caused power hungry Democrats to be voted in and is jeopardizing the country.
Comment by MikeM — April 14, 2010 @ 1:48 pm - April 14, 2010
“Unfortunately past Republican politicians poor behavior caused them to be voted out.”
Trolls, please take note of what Mike M says here. Many of us did not vote Republican in ’08. Now we see what we got with Obama, and PRECISELY BECAUSE WE ARE CONSISTENT AND DO HAVE PRINCIPLES, we will not make the mistake of voting for Obama again.
Principle — what a concept! The “progressive” trolls who come to this site screaming about the supposed inconsistencies of the tea-partiers ought to actually go and learn what principle and consistency mean before trying to lecture anyone else about them.
Comment by Lori Heine — April 14, 2010 @ 3:20 pm - April 14, 2010
Wow, seems to be a whole lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome going on here these days.
Comment by Countervail — April 15, 2010 @ 12:56 am - April 15, 2010
“Wow, seems to be a whole lot of Obama Derangement Syndrome going on here these days.”
Wow, the “progressive” trolls really are anxious to prove that they are either unable to read or really haven’t a brain in their pea-picking heads.
Comment by Lori Heine — April 15, 2010 @ 1:10 am - April 15, 2010
Levi, your “conservatives are inconsistent” statement does not stand up to scrutiny. Conservatives were very critical of President Bush and the Republican congress spending habits. That is why in 2006 congress switched from Republican to Democrat.
If conservatives were very critical of President Bush’s spending, then why didn’t they throw any tea parties? If the objective of throwing a political protest is to demonstrate to political leaders that you disapprove of their actions and want them to do something else, then why did the whole tea party thing occur after the Bush administration and not before?
In science, you observe the effect of different variables on the results of your experiment to try to figure out what is going on. This can be applied to politics as well. When Bush was spending, he was spending more than any President had in American history, but this apparently wasn’t enough to warrant a heavily critical tea party movement. Obama is the President now and he is spending more, and there are tea parties every weekend. The only variables that changed in this comparison is the identity of the President and the amount being spent. The conclusion must be that either Obama has hit some previously undefined threshold for spending tolerance to trigger a tea party phenomenon, or it is simply a reaction to Obama being in office. Given everything we know about Republicans, I’m going to go with the latter, especially considering how hysterical this whole phenomenon is. It just doesn’t make sense that you can be this outraged by Obama’s unprecedented spending and not outraged at all by Bush’s somewhat slighter but at the time still unprecedented spending.
With regards to Nation Building, the context of the question was in a pre-911 country. This changed radically and to ignore that is naive.
That doesn’t make any sense. Having a policy of no nation-building is a good idea on its own merits, and it just doesn’t make sense that you toss out your good ideas when a crisis hits. It would be like keeping a fire extinguisher in your house to put out fires, but then as soon as a fire breaks out you throw your extinguisher out the window and then go roll around in the flames. If you create a list of reasons why nation-building is a bad idea, it reads like a grocery list of the things that have gone poorly in Iraq and Afghanistan; it takes a long time, it’s hugely expensive, it gets Americans killed, it more than likely adversely affects your diplomatic relations, etc.
When it comes to Democrat principals, I agree they are very consistent – Power. Democrats will vote for their party no matter how there candidate acts.
Both voters are consistent, but Republican voters have ethical and fiscal standards where as Democrats have power retention standards. Unfortunately past Republican politicians poor behavior caused them to be voted out. This has caused power hungry Democrats to be voted in and is jeopardizing the country.
I really can’t touch this. You’re very confused or just haven’t been paying attention if you think that the Republicans are still the paragons of ethical and financial restraint. And if your thesis statement about the big Democratic conspiracy is as brainlessly simple as ‘My ideological opponent just wants power!’ then you might need to find a different hobby.
Comment by Levi — April 15, 2010 @ 1:33 am - April 15, 2010
Given everything we know about Republicans, I’m going to go with the latter, especially considering how hysterical this whole phenomenon is.
Then you are not being scientific, because clearly the spending amounts have changed as well.
Of course, the reason you’re not being scientific is seen in this statement:
It just doesn’t make sense that you can be this outraged by Obama’s unprecedented spending and not outraged at all by Bush’s somewhat slighter but at the time still unprecedented spending.
Obama’s deficits are four times the level of Bush’s, minimum.
That isn’t “somewhat slighter”. That is simply delusional.
That’s typical of liberals, though. They ignore information that doesn’t support their bigotry and prejudices. Levi doesn’t want to admit that his Obama lied, so he humiliates himself publicly by claiming that Obama’s spending and deficits are not larger than Bush’s.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 15, 2010 @ 1:52 am - April 15, 2010
Obama’s deficits are four times the level of Bush’s, minimum.
That isn’t “somewhat slighter”. That is simply delusional.
That’s typical of liberals, though. They ignore information that doesn’t support their bigotry and prejudices. Levi doesn’t want to admit that his Obama lied, so he humiliates himself publicly by claiming that Obama’s spending and deficits are not larger than Bush’s.
And before Obama, President Bush’s spending was the highest we had ever seen. No one had ever spent anywhere near as much as George Bush, and you would think that the political group that gets so hysterically upset about spending would hold their own guy to a higher standard. Like I said, there are tea parties now because Obama reached some level of spending that you deem inappropriate but that conservatives never, ever defined, or you’re simply reacting like a four year old that lost a game and is throwing an epic temper tantrum.
Comment by Levi — April 15, 2010 @ 10:27 am - April 15, 2010
And again, Levi lies, having had that ‘no one complained about Bush’ mem shredded on this very blog.
Facts, like the lives of brown people, mean nothing to Levi.
Comment by The_Livewire — April 15, 2010 @ 11:12 am - April 15, 2010
Livewire, I’ve cited numerous such posts to Levi, but he just pretends we didn’t say what we said.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — April 15, 2010 @ 5:46 pm - April 15, 2010
And before Obama, President Bush’s spending was the highest we had ever seen. No one had ever spent anywhere near as much as George Bush, and you would think that the political group that gets so hysterically upset about spending would hold their own guy to a higher standard.
So let’s see; Levi says Republicans should hold Bush to a standard because he spent too much, but should not hold Obama to a standard at all for spending far, far, FAR more.
And we’ll flip that; Levi says that Bush spent too much, but then states that Obama’s spending far, far, FAR more is absolutely correct.
So Levi, either you believe in government massively increasing spending, in which case you are a hypocrite for criticizing Bush, or you hold people with black skin to a different standard than you do those with white skin, which makes you a racist.
Either way, you lose again, brat. Like always, your “morals” are easily shown to be nothing more than outright racism and irrational prejudices.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — April 15, 2010 @ 7:05 pm - April 15, 2010