So, they are generally a bunch of people who get together to gripe, but not do anything about it? Sounds like typical Americans. Now the French on the other hand…
A new Washington Post canvass of hundreds of local tea party groups reveals a different sort of organization, one that is not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the political process.
The results come from a months-long effort by The Post to contact every tea party group in the nation, an unprecedented attempt to understand the network of individuals and organizations at the heart of the nascent movement.
Seventy percent of the grass-roots groups said they have not participated in any political campaigning this year. As a whole, they have no official candidate slates, have not rallied behind any particular national leader, have little money on hand, and remain ambivalent about their goals and the political process in general. […] The findings suggest that the breadth of the tea party may be inflated. The Atlanta-based Tea Party Patriots, for example, says it has a listing of more than 2,300 local groups, but The Post was unable to identify anywhere near that many, despite help from the organization and independent research.
In all, The Post identified more than 1,400 possible groups and was able to verify and reach 647 of them. Each answered a lengthy questionnaire about their beliefs, members and goals. The Post tried calling the others as many as six times. It is unclear whether they are just hard to reach or don’t exist.
[…]
There is little agreement among the leaders of various groups about what issue the tea party should be most concerned about. In fact, few saw themselves as part of a coordinated effort. The most common responses were concerns about spending and limiting the size of government, but together those were named by less than half the groups. Social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion rights, did not register as concerns.
“Tea Party” more like Breakfast Cereal – FRUIT LOOPS AND CUCKOO FOR COCO PUFFS – and certainly not ready to govern !!!
I’m a tea-bagger. Just ask my wife.
That why both of the “main” or best known teaparty swift boat operations are ASTROTURFED==ie, bought, supplied, loaded, and aimed by a small group of Super Rich Anti-Americans who want to destroy the middle class in the name of the free market.
Fools, Tools, or Ideologues? Whatever, except for the comatose ones, they ain’t clear thinking.
Yea, Verily.
Teabaggers are a loose collection of woman abusing Republican loonies that Sara Palin ordained as a separate political group.
This is a Republican party opportunity to regroup since the Teabagger movement has skimmed the floating turds from the old party.
I see a sliver lining here for the GOP.
So, they are generally a bunch of people who get together to gripe, but not do anything about it?
You mean…like um, this blog?
[Touché! — UD]
The intelligent arguments put forth here by the D’s* seems to indicate how worried they are about next Tuesday.
*douche bags
Whine all you want, Uncle Dave, Bobbo and Dallas.
With the tea-party movement just clobbering the impotent democrats, what does that say about the effectiveness of the dumbocrats?
We will see how little they do next Tuesday.
The Tea Party is drawing out and sucking up the bottom dwellers who have traditionally been the “I’m voting “X” ’cause my pappy voted “X” and his pappy ‘fore him.” kinds of idiots for whom no idea is stupid enough to deter them.
Eventually, they are a self-identified poison pill for any political organization.
No idea is stupid enough to deter them but it taints any party associated with them enough to switch mainstream voters away from itself.
Nobody wants to be associated with the Loony Party except for Loonies.
Fence-sitting people will vote Democrat because this bottom third of the voting populace is the self-identified Republican bottom scrapings called the Tea Party..
msbpodcast – your rant sounds more like a description of the folks who voted for Obama.
msbpodcast – Try to be honest. Do you really believe there are fence-sitting people after 20 months of the Messiah’s Hope n Change?
If there are any, then they must have been living in a shack with no electricity.
Conspiracy!
The so-called tea party express is nothing more than a straw man created by the Democratic Underground, CIA’s Alex Jones, and Reader’s Digest magazine. They have created a group of Manchurian Candidates to infiltrate then co-opt true economic conservative groups like the one started by Dr. Ron Paul.
Hmm, Manchurian…all of a sudden Chinese food sounds good. LUNCH TIME!
Geez. Take a seat and relax. While I fully expect the Tea Party will fade to non-existence soon, you have to remember – they’ve only been around for a little over a year. Look at the Libertarians. How long have they been around and how little influence do they have? In truth, it’s quite amazing what the Tea Party has managed to do in such a short time. And who knows? If they win enough seats in the Congress maybe they’ll live on and prosper. Personally, I hope not. The GOP is the religious right to me. The Tea Party is more like the Taliban…
Bobbo said: Surely when the Dem’s have the majority and there is an anti-Washington fervor in the electroare, there are going to be many sitting on the fence.
Want to run that through your logic analyzer once more?
On one side, you’ve got the Conservatives, Republicans, Independents. and the Blue-Dog Dems.
And on the other side, you’ve got the few remaining non-disenchanted student votes, the democrats who gave up and won’t even go to the polls, and the died-in-the-wool Democrats who are going to vote the straight-D party line.
I’ve got to give you credit for your undying optimism. Keep clinging to that hope that there are so many fence-sitters (just 8 days from the election) who will save the democrats’ bacon.
Fool, Tool, or Ideologue?
Looks like you’re stuck with FOOL
The Tea Party is drawing out and sucking up the bottom dwellers who have traditionally been the “I’m voting “X” ’cause my pappy voted “X” and his pappy ‘fore him.” kinds of idiots for whom no idea is stupid enough to deter them.
Or it sounds like the union drones who vote for a candidate because their union boss told them to.
#9 “I’m voting “X” ’cause my pappy voted “X” and his pappy ‘fore him.”
That’s so much worse than the 96 percent of black voters that supported Obama because of race and will again.
So they are not a well coordinated highly funded group that campaigns to their base on cliché’s then continues the previous policies of the opposing group-think body (party) when in office regardless of what ‘side’ they claim to represent. Well that is refreshing.
Maybe if there were a dozen more groups like this from other political leanings, and those groups were to compromise on important issues, there would be better government.
People moan about or lionise these people based on their same tired fight against one of the two major, corrupt, manipulative and unrepresentative (in action not rhetoric) parties. The idea that everyone is worse than the two pathetic choices that get rotated through constantly says more about those that support those parties than the people that are sick of the same old crap.
People are too easily manipulated (including the neo-Tea Partiers).
I think the Tea Party f**ked up . They failed register their name as a trademark. Now there is a fake “Tea Party Express” created and funded by the GOP. It exploits the Tea Party’s name. I mean how many people know that the TPE has nothing to do with The Tea Party. People who like what the Tea Party has to say will vote for the Tea Party Express because they think it is the same thing.
That would be like Dell creating “Apple Express” and hoping people would buy their laptops thinking they bought a Mac.
Because of screw ups like this, the Tea Part is toast.
Or maybe they were so paranoid they didn’t want to tell the liberal Washington Post what they were doing?
They have already knocked off several Republican establishment candidates, but of course they are doing nothing politically.
And of course if they did do more things, this site and others would highlight how extreme they are.
One cable channel gives them a disproportionate amount of coverage and support, and the news media feels compelled to follow. This tells us just how much Roger Ailes has pwned journalists in this country.
Without Fox “News” (biased and unbalanced) the tea party doesn’t exist.
Olo Baggins got it wrong:
Without Fox “News” (biased and unbalanced) the tea party doesn’t exist. a rather weak explanation.
A better analysis:
Without Obama (hope and change) the tea party doesn’t exist.
jbenson…the first tea parties started well before the 2008 election and many (most?) primaries. How might you explain that, if it’s all about Obama? And if it’s all about Obama, then why not just be Republicans?
My explanation is that they wanted to find a way to put space between themselves and the moron they elected as president. Twice. OK, so maybe they still exist without Fox “News” unending cheerleading but they surely wouldn’t have candidates otherwise.
I can’t see any difference between the Tea Party and the John Birch Society.
#18. LDA- Well done. Not that it will mean anything to these morons.
#26 Hmmmm. Touched a nerve there. Interesting.
#26 BTW, I think you’re missing the point. I grew up reading the National Review and watching Firing Line. I saw the rise conservatism under Buckley and the grooming of Reagan. I also watched Reagan master both the Birchers and the moderates in the Republican party – outwitting them both.
That brand of conservatism is gone. The Birchers/Tea Partiers ate Bush Sr. for taxes and “not winning” the Iraq war. Waged war rather pathetically with Clinton and lost. Then they consumed the country and fed from the public purse all through Bush Jr. Conservatism is dead and no one can convince me that the Tea Party is “really” conservative.
History taught one thing. It’s pretty easy to outwit the Birchers/Tea Party bunch. Reagan and Clinton did it. It’ll be fascinating to see if Obama learns it in time or gets eaten alive like both Bushes.
#18 LDA – Actually, we have no idea what kind of work they will do since none has ever been elected! Help me out here: Is there even ONE Tea Party candidate standing for election? Aren’t the people we think of as Tea Party candidates all Repubs ENDORSED by the Tea Party? Harry Reid is always identified as (D) while Christine (Not A Witch) O’Donnell is (R). Anybody carry a (T) after their name?
No. The Tea Party is a “movement” not a political party. The designation of Tea PArty will not be on the ballot in any election this year. So, LDA, how are you going to evaluate how the Tea Party does in Congress?
You can’t because the Tea Party will NOT win a single seat this year.
And if they DO become an official party who will benefit? Democrats, as the TP draws away voters from the Repubs. Is that a bad thing? It is until we get Obama out of office. Anyway, for right now, the Tea Party is just a bad joke.
But as Will Rogers said: The problem with practical jokes is that very often they get elected
Actually the ones that are standing for election are Democratic Party plants, hoping to seep off some votes from the Republican.
# 30 Animby
We elect representatives on our behalf. My comment was regarding the polity not the representatives.
I find the fact that many of these people started forming groups due to their realisation that the two party (i.e. 1.1 party) system was a failure (when ‘Shrub’ was President) a more positive development than the prospect of the eternal revolving door of (mostly) liars and shills.
It is true that what is called the ‘Tea Party Movement’ now is a perverted version of the original but that took professional hijacking by the same operatives that always work to keep down real political activism.
The assertion that these people are less motivated or involved than the two party zombies (who must become apologists when they gain power and they don’t actually get what they were advocating) is just another method of dismissing them (elitists usually just say ‘the rabble’).
The shrill of the media and the party adjutants at the first sign of a (minor) threat to their power and gravy train shows how worried they are that one day the majority may stop swallowing their propaganda.
I don’t think they have much to fear but ‘hope springs eternal’.
I suspect that many of these people aren’t interested in “Washington Post”. They aren’t going to fill out a survey for it or even respond to it. As for as many of them are concerned it does not exist.