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TOPIC: "The Tea Party Test Case" (David Sirota, In These Times, 10/23/10)


Diamond

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"The Tea Party Test Case" (David Sirota, In These Times, 10/23/10)
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Read @ InTheseTimes.com

The Tea Party Test Case

October 23, 2010

By David Sirota

What is the tea party? Many have tried to answer that question ever since CNBC’s Rick Santelli first launched the backlash with his trading-floor rant against the poor.

Democratic operatives, for instance, say the tea party is merely a Republican Party facade. As proof, they point to GOP-linked corporate group’s involvement in tea party events, and cite the absence of tea party deficit and bailout protests during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Social scientists, meanwhile, suggest that the tea party is not the entire Republican apparatus, but specifically the extreme conservative edge of the GOP. The data add credence to that argument: As the Public Religion Research Institute and the University of Washington report, tea party followers are disproportionately part of the Christian right and are more racially resentful than the general public.

For their part, tea party activists brush off these pesky facts with nostalgic paeans about the Constitution and indignant bromides against partisanship.

“Although we are conservative in political philosophy, we are nonpartisan in approach,” insisted a tea party leader in a typical platitude. “Both parties need to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of our Founding Fathers.’”

Thus, with both sides at loggerheads, the only way to objectively define the tea party is to find a test case. And thanks to Wisconsin’s Senate race, we have exactly that.

On one side is Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, who has made his name championing many of the tea party’s purported views about the state, the Constitution and national sovereignty. For instance, when it comes to “big government,” Feingold has opposed wasteful pork barrel spending, worked to trim the defense budget and voted against financial bailouts. When it comes to the Constitution, Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Constitution-defying Patriot Act and has boldly questioned both parties’ willingness to let the state trample citizens’ civil liberties. And Feingold has been one of the few senators to consistently oppose NAFTA-style trade deals—pacts that usurp domestic control over our economy and lay waste to the very industrial heartland the tea party claims to cherish.

On the other side is Republican Ron Johnson, the antithesis of everything the tea party says it stands for. In business, Johnson built a company propped up by government grants and loans—otherwise known in tea party terms as “bailouts.” As a board member of a local opera house, he lobbied for funds from the same “big government” stimulus bill the tea party despises. During the campaign, he has touted NAFTA-style trade policies’ “creative destruction” of Wisconsin’s manufacturing economy. And rather than promoting the freedom the tea party says it values, Johnson has praised China’s repressive communist regime for its economic policies.

Candidate contrasts rarely get starker than this. And clearly, if the tea party is as nonpartisan as it asserts, then its supporters should be flocking to Feingold.

If that were happening, though, Feingold would be winning. Instead, polls show Feingold trailing Johnson—and as CNN notes, Johnson “owes much of (that) political success to the tea party.” Indeed, despite contradicting most major tea party positions, Johnson has been featured at Wisconsin Tea Party events; touted in the local media as a tea party favorite; called a “Champion of Freedom” by national tea party activists; and promoted by tea party opinion leaders like George Will as the epitome of “what the tea party looks like.”

This, of course, gets back to the questions surrounding the tea party’s true motive. Is the movement inspired by principle, as its leaders claim? Or is it propelled by partisanship?

Johnson’s recent success suggests the latter, and should Feingold ultimately lose, any debate about that reality will finally be put to rest.

David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times and author of the bestselling books The Uprising and Hostile Takeover. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com.

 

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I agree with David Sirota.

Tea party movement's endorsement of Ron Johnson is a tell all about their real drivers.

I hope Sen. Feingold gets reelected and continue to work as a moderate Dem and on campaign finance reform.



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Platinum

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Sen. Feingold is not a moderate Dem.

He is consistently ranked at the most liberal end of all ideology rankings, most notably receiving the most liberal Senator in UC San Diego's DW-NOMINATE ranking system.

How is Sen. Feingold a moderate then? Because his opponent is a Tea Party candidate, so he should be cast in whatever light is most favorable du jour, regardless of his actual record?

I'd be really interested to hear an explanation of how anyone came to the conclusion that Feingold is a moderate.

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As for Sirota, I think I've made no secret of the fact that David Sirota imo is singlehandedly perhaps the worst of the BOTs from the 2008 primary.

I wonder what the point is then in repeatedly citing the same sort of media people who tried to destroy Hillary in 2008.

Hillary Clinton Pretends She Never Praised NAFTA

by David Sirota

In response to Barack Obama's attack on NAFTA, the Hillary Clinton campaign has gone into meltdown mode. Here's Dow Jones' Marke****ch:

"Clinton's campaign fired back at Obama, charging the Illinois senator with misrepresenting Clinton's position on trade...'Recently [Obama] falsely claimed that Hillary said that NAFTA was a 'boon' to the economy. Now, Obama is resting his argument on a single paraphrase from an article written twelve years ago,' Clinton's campaign said in an emailed statement."

The Huffington Post has followed along with a laugh-out-loud piece in which the chief architects of NAFTA (many who are now wealthy corporate lawyers and lobbyists) are now saying, no, no, Hillary Clinton was really opposed to it. These are the same people, of course, who are looking for jobs in the Hillary Clinton White House.

What a total joke, really. This campaign clearly thinks we are all just a bunch of fools.

Hillary Clinton has made statements unequivocally trumpeting NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Buffalo News reports that back in 1998, Clinton attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and thanked praised corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." Yes, you read that right: She traveled to Davos to thank corporate interests for their campaign ramming NAFTA through Congress.

On November 1, 1996, United Press International reported that on a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton "touted the president's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region."

The Associated Press followed up the next day noting that Hillary Clinton touted the fact that "the president would continue to support economic growth in South Texas through initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement."

In her memoir, Clinton wrote, "Senator Dole was genuinely interested in health care reform but wanted to run for president in 1996. He couldn't hand incumbent Bill Clinton any more legislative victories, particularly after Bill's successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."

Yes, we are all expected to just forget that, so that Hillary Clinton's campaign can manufacture supposed "outrage" that anyone would say she supported NAFTA - all at a time her chief strategist, Mark Penn, simultaneously heads a firm that is right now pushing to expand NAFTA into South America.

What a total insult to America's intelligence.

 

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I think those of us who were involved in Hillary's campaign since before February 2008 remember what Hillary's stance was on NAFTA, and why Sirota was so completely off the mark with this article.

But then again, something like facts has never stopped David Sirota from his typical pointlessness.



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Platinum

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Eminence wrote:

I'd be really interested to hear an explanation of how anyone came to the conclusion that Feingold is a moderate.



Bump...



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Platinum

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Bump....still curious as to how the OP considered Feingold a moderate.

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