Posts tagged Tea Party movement

Beware The Cuckoo’s Egg

32
3 months ago
by filistro in
186274

Cuckoo’s egg in a reed warbler’s nest

The cuckoo does not build a nest or rear its own young. Instead it lays its eggs, one by one, in the nests of other, smaller birds. When the chicks hatch, the larger cuckoo chick imme­di­ately pushes the smaller babies out of the nest to their deaths and then ben­e­fits from the tire­less efforts of the lit­tle par­ent birds who exhaust them­selves, often to the point of their own death, by feed­ing the rav­en­ous inter­loper until it has grown much big­ger and stronger than they are.

This, in a rather sad way, is what has hap­pened to the Tea Party. (more…)

Lessons Learned

280
6 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

The dust is finally set­tling from the elec­tion. And I’ll be talk­ing more later about some of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Today, though, I’m inter­ested in some navel gaz­ing. There are many lessons to be learned from this elec­tion, by many parties.

I’ll cover some high-​​level views today, but next week I’m going to delve into some of the big­ger top­ics from the White House and Sen­ate perspective.

And, with that, here are some lessons.  (more…)

Attention, Please!

48
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Zuc­cotti Park filled with Occupiers

It’s now been over two months since Zuc­cotti Park was com­man­deered by the begin­nings of the Occupy Move­ment. As I noted sev­eral weeks ago, the group promised to demand “one thing”, but never quite deliv­ered on the promise.

Com­pare this to the Arab Spring in Egypt. The protests began on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 25, and Pres­i­dent Mubarak stepped down from office on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, just over two weeks later. The tim­ing mat­ters. (more…)

The Ideology Gamble

109
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Los­ing with Chris­tine seems like a funny way of winning.

Last year, peo­ple all over the polit­i­cal uni­verse were call­ing Repub­li­cans crazy for reject­ing the more mod­er­ate Mike Cas­tle, Sue Low­den, and Jane Nor­ton for the more extreme Chris­tine O’Donnell, Shar­ron Angle, and Ken Buck. After all, those three Sen­ate seats would have been enough to shift the major­ity from the Democ­rats to the Republicans.

The response from many in the Tea Party wing of the Repub­li­can Party is that it’s bet­ter to lose with a “real” con­ser­v­a­tive than to win with a RINO. Is that posi­tion really all that crazy? It’s worth inves­ti­gat­ing, given that this year’s lead­ing Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, other than Mitt Rom­ney, have all been work­ing dili­gently to find just how far off the right end of the polit­i­cal spec­trum they can go. (more…)

Rule By Extortion

78
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

Con­gress is more or less in recess. One might think this could give a short respite to the strong-​​arm tac­tics we’ve been see­ing from Repub­li­cans. But no, the Repub­li­cans are hold­ing occa­sional pro-​​forma ses­sions dur­ing the recess, sim­ply to pre­vent Pres­i­dent Obama from mak­ing any recess appoint­ments to fill the posi­tions in the Exec­u­tive branch that Repub­li­cans have been fil­i­bus­ter­ing for the last two years.

This is of a type for what the Dis­loyal Oppo­si­tion has been doing since the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Obama. We saw the Luntz reac­tions to health care reform even before there were any pro­pos­als to react to (a gov­ern­ment offi­cial between you and your doc­tor, gov­ern­ment takeover of health care, and so on). Dur­ing the debate, there was obstruc­tion, fil­i­buster, and out­right lies (see: “death panels”).

(more…)

Have They Had Their Fill of Tea?

19
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

Too much tea?

Fil­istro has writ­ten copi­ous prose about the Tea Party, and her belief in its des­tiny to rend the Repub­li­can Party in two. But right now, it seems that the Repub­li­can Party has had its fill of tea.

We saw how the Tea Party cost Repub­li­cans as many as three Sen­ate seats this last elec­tion cycle, by replac­ing lead­ing mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans with extremely con­ser­v­a­tive Tea Partiers in the pri­mary elec­tions. Three seats would have been enough to have 50 Repub­li­cans, and pos­si­bly a defec­tion on the part of Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man (I-​​CT), which would have handed the Sen­ate to the Republicans.

And, more recently, we saw how the Tea Party scut­tled sev­eral deals on the national debt, con­tribut­ing in part to the recent Stan­dard & Poor’s down­grade in United States debt.

(more…)

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