Tea Party - Official Thread

[QueEx]

The tea party's least favorite Republicans

<font size="5"><center>
A POLITICO survey:
The tea party's least favorite Republicans
</font size></center>

P O L I T I C O
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
March 13, 2010



The tea party movement exploded onto the political scene in 2009 as a backlash to the agenda pushed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, but a little more than a year later, a POLITICO survey found tea party activists unhappy with many of the biggest names in the Republican Party.


And that could complicate GOP plans to harness the energy of the tea parties as they head into the November midterm elections with hopes of rearranging the balance of power in Washington.


In a survey of more than three dozen grass-roots tea party leaders from 29 states, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, was the Republican most cited as a disappointment. Asked which three national Republicans they were most unhappy with, McCain was named by 18 respondents.


Other congressional Republicans considered disappointments included moderate-leaning Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, as well as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.


But also receiving multiple votes were two prominent party spokesmen, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele (who finished second to McCain), and two possible candidates for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination, former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.


Those surveyed made it clear they hold greater disdain for Democrats, but they are also strongly opposed to tolerating Republican politicians who stray even slightly from the principles tea party activists hold dear. For the most part, those principles are fiscal restraint and limited government, but for a smaller group they include conservative social issues and a hawkish foreign policy.


“Save for Ron Paul, I'm not really happy with many Republican officials,” said Marc Delphine, a leader in the Beaverton, Ore., tea party. Other respondents, though, blasted Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texas Congressman, for requesting earmarks or for his isolationist foreign policy.


And fewer than half of the tea party leaders surveyed said the GOP had been responsive to concerns raised by the movement (most respondents said neither party had truly heard and acted on their concerns), with many expressing outright hostility for the party, its preferred candidates and leaders, as well as their efforts to court tea party activists.


“The Republican Party wants to use us — to take advantage of our energy and our people and the demonstrations — and we’re not interested in that,” said John Stahl, chairman of the Berks Tea Party in central Pennsylvania, which he estimated has about 400 active members.

FULL ARTICLE: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34363.html

 

[QueEx]

Weak tea? Partiers fear fallout

<font size="5"><center>
Weak tea? Partiers fear fallout</font size></center>


P O L I T I C O
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
3/22/10


<font size="3">Ready and eager to transition from opposing health care reform to targeting the members of Congress who made it happen, tea party organizers find themselves grappling instead with reports of ugly behavior at this weekend’s protests in Washington that could stymie efforts to broaden the movement’s appeal.</font size>


While the thousands of tea partiers who thronged the Capitol grounds on short notice in advance of Sunday’s House healthcare vote was proof of the movement’s continuing energy, their impact was undercut by accounts of racist and homophobic epithets directed at Democratic lawmakers by a handful of individuals among this weekend’s crowd.

Tea party organizers have struggled in recent months to clamp down on fringe elements that have sprung up around – and sometimes within – the movement, including white supremacists and conspiracy theorists who believe that the government played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (“truthers”) or that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to be president (“birthers”).


<font size="4">Tattoos Last Forever</font size>

Some tea party and GOP leaders quickly denounced the slurs shouted at House Democrats, pointed out they were not representative of most tea partiers and urged protestors to stay focused on the movement’s core issues of limited government and taxation. Others suggested either that reporters and lawmakers had fabricated the incidents, or said the epithets came from tea party opponents who had infiltrated the crowds. Some even demanded apologies from Democrats who they said falsely accused them.

Regardless of who yelled what, the reports themselves could be problematic for the tea party movement, said Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, the small government group that helped organize tea partiers’ congressional office visits last week.

“Tattoos last forever,” said Brandon, quoting his boss, FreedomWorks chairman and former House Republican Leader Dick Armey. “If the movement gets tattooed as at all sympathetic to those (racist and homophobic) views, I won’t want to be involved in it anymore. It’s very distracting not only to our side, but also to the debate and the country.”

Jenny Beth Martin, an Atlanta-based leader of the influential national umbrella group Tea Party Patriots, has played something of a self-policing role at tea party events, including last weekend’s rallies, urging protestors not to engage with counter demonstrators who at times confronted tea partiers.

Of the reported epithets, she said “we do not allow that kind of thing to happen within our events because it is wrong and we’re not going to put up with it. I don’t think it’s good for any movement to have reports of crazy people doing things like that. More than the movement, I don’t think it’s good for America for that kind of thing to happen.” Pointing to her group’s denunciation of a self-proclaimed tea party leader photographed with a racist sign, Martin said “if we saw that kind of thing happening, we would kick the people out. We have a history of doing that.”


<font size="4">Dems to tie Tea Bags Around Republicans Neck</font size>

House Democrats expressed outrage at the treatment some of them received over the weekend, and signaled they will make it an issue for the tea party movement’s Republican allies. Referring to “this crazy stuff the Republicans are doing here,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), said GOP leaders “ought to be ashamed of themselves for bringing these people here to Washington, D.C. and they're acting like this.”

nd Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) took the house floor Saturday to blast “these teabagger protesters who have been out today” and to “call on the Republicans to say shame on the tea party for that type of behavior.”

The conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds responded that it was Clyburn who may “owe the tea party protesters an apology” for playing “the bogus racism card.” And Debbie Gunnoe, a tea party organizer from Navarre, Fla., who was in the House gallery for Ryan’s comments called on him to apologize for “making the generalization that a few rogue people are an example of the rest of the” tea party movement and “for calling all tea party people across the United States ‘tea baggers,’ which is a denigrating word with negative connotations. It’s as bad as calling a black person the N-word.”

Tea party leaders emphasized that racist and homophobic rhetoric is not welcome in their movement but asserted it’s difficult to police large crowds, with some pointing to the comparisons drawn by liberals at anti-Iraq war protests between former President George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler.

Other tea partiers interviewed Sunday pointed to video making the rounds in the conservative blogosphere showing other black Democratic lawmakers including Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) — who said he was called the N-word as he walked by tea partiers into the Capitol Saturday — wading through a crowd of protesters outside the Capitol.​

The 48-second video, which showed Lewis and others walking through one small stretch of tea partiers booing and chanting “Kill the Bill” — but not yelling epithets — was posted by Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism website as “VIDEO PROOF” that <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the “media (is) lying about racist attacks on black Reps by tea party protesters.”</span>


“There has been a narrative of labeling the entire tea party movement as racist or homophobic that is an attempt to discredit the people who are a part of it,” said Mark Skoda, a Memphis, Tenn., tea party organizer who attended Saturday’s protests and is part of a group called the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition that helped organize a Capitol Hill war room of sorts for activists headed to the House office buildings to lobby publicly undecided lawmakers on the bill.

His team urged tea partiers to be respectful, Skoda said, pointing out that immigration reform advocates and anti-war demonstrators rallied near the tea partiers Saturday and suggesting it was “a possibility” that some may “have tried to infiltrate” the tea party crowd to “portray the movement in a negative light.”

The end of the debate over the health care overhaul — which has emerged as the defining issue of the year-old conservative populist tea party movement — marks an important moment for tea party activists as they hurtle toward the critical 2010 congressional midterm elections trying to maintain their energy, recruit new activists, manage their fringe and decide to what extent they can support Republican candidates and causes.

Tea party leaders and activists for weeks have been quietly planning contingencies if Democrats were able to pass a health care bill. Many believe that despite not being able to defeat the bill, final passage could actually help the movement enter a new phase by re-energizing activists, mobilizing new ones and helping shift the focus to the coming congressional midterm elections.


<font size="4">More Tea After Bill Signed? </font size>

“This thing is only getting stated,” said Gary Armstrong, a tea party organizer in East Tennessee, who helped organize a 50-activist rally Saturday outside the local offices of Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who was considered one of the last nine Democratic holdout votes.

Armstrong asserted that final passage would be an effective mobilizing tool for tea party activists. “It’s all good publicity for the tea party. The sleeping giant is starting to wake up. Make no bones about it, he ain't awake yet.”

If Obama signs the overhaul bill, “there will be a nuclear explosion” of tea party activism, predicted Tom Whitmore, a Northern Virginia tea party activist who on Saturday was running the tea party war room. “Over the last year, people have developed this interest in their sovereignty, and they’re not ready to go back or to throw away all their hard work.”

To be sure, many activists don’t appear ready to let go of the health care fight and have announced plans to back state-level efforts to challenge the constitutionality of health insurance mandates in the bill that passed by the House. Others are angling for fights over anticipated congressional proposals to reform the nation’s immigration laws or to limit carbon emissions.

But the overarching focus of tea party organizers is prodding activists to turn their attention to November, and what they hope will be, in effect, “a referendum on the health care vote,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks. The group’s political action committee has been providing online tools for activists to put together comparative analyses of candidates and precinct-walking strategies, with a heavy focus on targeting supporters of the health care overhaul.

“I would absolutely rather win the policy than the Congress,” said Kibbe. “But it could be a net plus” for the tea party movement if the health care overhaul passes.


<font size="4">FreedomWorks, Tea & Republicans</font size>

FreedomWorks’s PAC and others that have sprung up around the tea party movement have to date mostly focused on supporting primary opponents to Republicans deemed insufficiently conservative.

But Michael Johns, a tea party activist from New Jersey who also is part of Skoda’s Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said the movement would be wise to turn its attention to targeting Democrats who supported the overhaul and — though it seems a harder sell — praising those who opposed the measure.

“We are in fact a nonpartisan movement,” he said. “We’re not about getting Republicans elected. And one of the things we’ve communicated is that Democrats who held their ground can expect some tea party support.”

Johns called the period after the health care debate “an important moment for the tea party movement.”

“We want to make sure that those who have been active in the movement over the last year — especially those that are new to political engagement — understand that there is no permanent victory, nor permanent defeat in politics or public policy.”

—Meredith Shiner and Marin Cogan contributed to this report.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34790.html

 

[VegasGuy]

Re: Weak tea? Partiers fear fallout

These antics by their rag tag teabag bullies will swing on the republican necks for years. That along with much video of President Obama trying to work with them to pass a comprehensive health care reform and their refusal to help average Americans.

-VG

 

[thoughtone]

With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party

They're against the government but they take what the government offers. The hypocrisy amazes me!

source: New York Times

With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party</NYT_HEADLINE>

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Tea Party supporters rallied Saturday in Searchlight, Nev., Senator Harry Reid’s hometown.

<SCRIPT type=text/javascript> var wImage = $('wideImage').getElementsByTagName("img")[0].getAttribute('src'); $('wideImage').getElementsByTagName("img")[0].setAttribute('src',"http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/global/backgrounds/transparentBG.gif"); var filter = "progIdXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='"+wImage+"', sizingMethod='scale' )"; $('wideImage').getElementsByTagName("img")[0].style.filter = filter; </SCRIPT><NYT_BYLINE>By KATE ZERNIKE

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.

Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.

In the last year, he has organized a local group and a statewide coalition, and even started a “bus czar” Web site to marshal protesters to Washington on short notice. This month, he mobilized 200 other Tea Party activists to go to the local office of the same congressman to protest what he sees as the government’s takeover of health care.

Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.

The Great Depression, too, mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times. Though, as Michael Kazin, the author of “The Populist Persuasion,” notes, they tended to push for more government involvement. The Tea Party vehemently wants less — though a number of its members acknowledge that they are relying on government programs for help.

Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.

The fact that many of them joined the Tea Party after losing their jobs raises questions of whether the movement can survive an improvement in the economy, with people trading protest signs for paychecks.

But for now, some are even putting their savings into work that they argue is more important than a job — planning candidate forums and get-out-the-vote operations, researching arguments about the constitutional limits on Congress and using Facebook to attract recruits.

“Even if I wanted to stop, I just can’t,” said Diana Reimer, 67, who has become a star of the effort by FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group, to fight the health care overhaul. “I’m on a mission, and time is not on my side.”

A year ago, Ms. Reimer’s husband had been given a choice — retire or be fired. The couple had been trying to sell their split-level home in suburban Philadelphia to pay off some debt and move to a small place in the city.

But real estate agents told them the home would sell for about $40,000 less than they paid 19 years ago — not enough to pay off their mortgage.

Then Ms. Reimer saw a story about the Tea Party on television. “I said, ‘That’s it,’ ” she recalled. “How can you get this frustration out, have your voices heard?”

She liked that the Tea Party was patriotic, too. “They said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the national anthem,” she said.

She had taken a job selling sportswear at Macy’s. But when her husband found her up early and late taking care of Tea Party business, he urged her to take a leave. When the store did not allow one, she quit.

“I guess I just found my calling,” she said.

Ms. Reimer, now a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, also found a community. Directing protesters to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill before the vote on health care this month, Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who has become a Tea Party hero, stopped to welcome her by name. “I should have known you’d be here,” he said, embracing her.

A Tea Party member from North Carolina recognized Ms. Reimer from Massachusetts, where she led crews knocking on doors in the snow for Scott Brown, the state’s new Republican senator. “Our slave master,” the man said, greeting her.

Ms. Reimer often wells up talking about her work. “I’m respected,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t know why. I don’t know what is so special. But I’m willing to do it.”

She and others who receive government benefits like Medicare and Social Security said they paid into those programs, so they are getting what they deserve.

“All I know is government was put here for certain reasons,” Ms. Reimer said. “They were not put here to run banks, insurance companies, and health care and automobile companies. They were put here to keep us safe.”

She has no patience for the Obama administration’s bailouts and its actions on health care. “I just don’t trust this government,” Ms. Reimer said.

Jeff McQueen, 50, began organizing Tea Party groups in Michigan and Ohio after losing his job in auto parts sales. “Being unemployed and having some time, I realized I just couldn’t sit on the couch anymore,” he said. “I had the time to get involved.”

He began producing what he calls the flag of the Second American Revolution, and drove 700 miles to campaign for Mr. Brown under its banner. Flag sales, so far, are not making him much. But he sees a bigger cause.

“The founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,” he said. “They believed in it so much that they would sacrifice. That’s the kind of loyalty to this country that we stand for.”

He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”

He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.

“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.

Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks recognize that they are benefiting from the labor of many people who have been hit hard economically. But its chairman, the former House majority leader Dick Armey, argued that their ranks will remain strong — and connected — even as members find work.

“I see these folks as pretty much the National Guard,” Mr. Armey said. “They will go back to their day jobs, they will go back to their Little League and their bridge club. But they will have their activism at the ready, and they will stay in touch.”

Mr. Grimes, for his part, is thinking of getting a part-time job with the Census Bureau. But he is also planning, he said, to teach high school students about the Constitution and limits on government powers.

“I don’t think that the unemployment thing is going to change,” he said.

 

[QueEx]

Right-Wing Republicans Masquerade as Teabaggers

<font size="5"><center>
Right-Wing Republicans
Masquerade as Teabaggers</font size>

<font size="4">Polling data reveal that approximately three-quarters of Teabaggers
are Republicans or lean toward the GOP and 77 percent
of them voted for John McCain in 2008.</font size></center>

George E. Curry


Black Press USA
by George E. Curry
NNPA Columnist

Despite efforts to depict the so-called tea bag protesters as part of an independent political movement, new polling data reveal that approximately three-quarters of them are Republicans or lean toward the GOP and 77 percent of them voted for John McCain in 2008.

Those are the findings of a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

“The Tea Party movement is mostly made up of people who consider themselves Republicans,” Pete A. Brown, assistant director of the university’s Polling Institute, said in a statement. “They are less educated but more interested in politics than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack and are not in a traditional sense swing voters.”

While only 33 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, 72 percent of tea party members are impressed by McCain’s former running mate. Eighty-eight percent of those polled said if their congressional election were held today, they’d vote for the Republican candidate.

According to the poll, <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">88 percent of the tea baggers are White</span>.


<font size="3">Republican Credibility Problem</font size>

Because GOP leaders and tea bag protesters are joined at the hip, Republicans can’t credibly distance themselves from what New York Times columnist Frank Rich called a “tsunami of anger” and venom spewed by the right-wingers. It was during a recent tea party-led protest on Capitol Hill that African-American congressmen were called the n-word and one, Emanuel Cleaver II of Kansas City, Mo., was spat on by a protester.

GOP leaders issued perfunctory disclaimers intended to give the impression that they frown on such behavior. However, Republican National Chairman Michael Steele couldn’t bring himself to call the actions what they were – racist and homophobic.

The Washington Times quoted <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">Dale Robertson, founder of teaparty.org</span>, as saying <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">Democrats were “trying to label the tea party, but I’ve never seen any racial slurs.”</span>

Evidently, <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">Robertson</span> can’t read his own signs.

He was reportedly kicked out of a tea party event last year when he appeared carrying a sign that read: <font size="3"><SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">“Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer + ******.”</span></font size>

Clearly, he is proficient in neither reading nor spelling.​

But characters such as Robertson have been emboldened by the rhetoric and actions of GOP leaders whether inside or outside of Congress. As protesters gathered at the foot of the Capitol, some Republican members of Congress greeted them, holding a “Don’t tread on me” banner. One, Rep. Steve King, simulated slapping a photograph of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Inside, when disruptive protesters were ejected from Congress by Capitol police, some Republican members of Congress applauded the unruly visitors.

As Frank Rich pointed out, this is about more than health care reform.

“If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory,” Rich explained. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">“The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House -- topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman – would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.</span> It’s not happenstance that [Barney] Frank, [John] Lewis and [Emanuel] Cleaver – none of them major Democratic players in the health care push -- received a major share of last weekend’s abuse.

When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan ‘Take our country back!,’ these are the people they want to take the country back from.”

This anger has been stoked by the usual conservative radio talk show hosts.

After Republican efforts to derail health care reform failed, Rush Limbaugh said: ''They [Democrats] won because they held Congress and the presidency, and therein lies the lesson: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town…”


<font size="3">Limpbaugh, Beck Lies Believed</font size>

Repeated lies by Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have caused a majority of Republicans to accept unfounded lies about Obama as facts.

According to a recent Harris poll, most Republicans (67 percent) believe the president is a socialist, wants to take away the right to own guns (61 percent), is a Muslim (57 percent), wants to turn over the sovereignty of the U.S. to a one-world government (51 percent) and has done many things unconstitutional (51 percent).

Sizable minorities also believe Obama was not born in the United States and therefore ineligible to be president (45 percent), is a racist (42 percent) and is doing many of the things Hitler did (38 percent).

Even when Obama is doing what other presidents have done, he gets criticized by Republicans.
For example, after Obama made 15 recess appointments – placing officials in federal positions while the Senate, which normally approves such nominations, was in recess – Republicans such as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the move would further chill relations between Obama and the GOP.

Neither the senior senator from South Carolina nor his fellow Republicans acknowledge that George W. Bush made the same number of recess appointments at this stage of his presidency. By the time Bush left office, he had made 171 recess appointments, according to the Congressional Research Service.

But this isn’t about telling the truth. It’s about trying to regain political power, even if that means being hypocritical, trading in blatant lies and pretending this is a modern-day tea party revolt.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.


http://www.blackpressusa.com/Op-Ed/speaker.asp?SID=16&NewsID=21419

 

[QueEx]

Obama's 'tea party' complex

<font size="6"><center>
Obama's 'tea party' complex</font size><font size="4">

President Obama tweaked tea party tax day protesters
for failing to see their tax burden has fallen under
his presidency. Okay, he's got a point. But
why kick a political hornet's nest?</font size></center>

earing a tea bag hat and hefting an anti-taxation sign, Judith Levy and her husband Warren joined
in protest during an anti-tax rally on the Capitol steps in Olympia, Wash. April 15. Dean J. Koepfler/
News Tribune/AP


Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson
Staff writer
April 17, 2010
Atlanta


First there were the "bitter-clingers," then Scott Brown's truck. Now President Obama has taken on tea party protesters, saying he's "amused" by their failure to see that the average American's tax burden has lessened under his stewardship.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you, that's what you'd think" the President said.

The comment – which brought him rousing applause at a fundraising speech in Miami Thursday night – is, on its face, accurate. A New York Times/CBS News poll says only two percent of tea party protesters realize that their taxes have likely gone down this year (compared to 22 percent of the general population who understand that). Given college tax credits, making work pay, college loan relief, and home buyer credits, 90 percent of Americans got a tax break this year. The average tax refund is 10 percent larger than last year.

"The rise of the Tea Party at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand," William Gale of the Brookings Institution told Political Hotsheet.

For Democrats, many of whom believe tea party protests embody a racist undercurrent aimed at the country's first black president, Obama's tactic isn't meant to divide, but simply add much-needed perspective to a polarized and often hyperbolic national debate that President Bill Clinton last week worried could have "real consequences."

But to distill the tea party message down to simply an argument over this year's 1040 form, critics say, isn't only a failure to understand the tea party's DNA, but also factually questionable given recent analyses showing that the tax burden on Americans is likely to rise in coming years.

What's more, tea party protesters aren't just worried about taxes, but the rising federal debt and creeping entitlement programs they say threaten individual liberty as defined by the Constitution.

"Obama mocks tea party protests … while feverishly working fast and furious to do everything they are forthrightly protesting, which is a government driving the nation into greater deficit spending and unsustainable taxation. That is funny, Mr. President," writes Tara Lynn Thompson at Right Pundits.

So why did Obama do it?

To be sure, sometimes presidents can be politically tone-deaf. While he never openly addressed derision against him from anti-war protesters and voices from the left, President Bush's "political capital" remark after his 2004 reelection struck the wrong tone with many Americans.

Moreover, as with the "bitter-clinger" quote, the tea party reference was made at a fund-raiser, where heavy-hitting donors expect some political red meat from the main speaker.

The President could also simply be feeling comfortable that Democrats, with a major legislative victory now under their belt, have a lock on the electorate and that more conservative voices can be largely dismissed at this point. On Saturday, Obama also said that Republicans "won't be very successful" if they run on a '"repeal healthcare" platform.

Whatever was behind Obama's quip, one thing's for sure. Tea party supporters, who, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, now make up 24 percent of American voters, aren't laughing.

"He's amused. That is just unbelievable. You know, at first, tea partyers, they were angry, they were, you know, kind of fringe, they've become main street – mainstream and main street – for smaller taxes," Fox News analyst Eric Bolling said on Friday. "He'd better take them a little bit more seriously than being mildly amused by the tea parties."


[ur]http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0417/Obama-s-tea-party-complex[/url]

 

[Blu Diablo]

Re: Obama's 'tea party' complex

Whatever the reasons behind their complaints, anything the president says is simply going to be fuel for their agenda.

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Learn To Speak Tea Bag

<object width="450" height="370"><param name="movie" value="http://www.liveleak.com/e/d71_1273241761"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.liveleak.com/e/d71_1273241761" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always" width="450" height="370"></embed></object>

It's easy and requires little brains.

 

[MASTERBAKER]

tea party fly flag in nyc


Sarah Palin & Rand Paul would be proud! Tea Party members fly flag in New York City

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...treak_of_conservatives_in_.html#ixzz0qq5Gzglb



BY Douglas Feiden
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Originally Published:
Updated: Monday, June 14th 2010, 8:14 AM



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...treak_of_conservatives_in_.html#ixzz0qq5F0eyI

Related NewsArticles
Meet New York's Tea Party: Surprise! Convicted con bashes the fedsMuch of America sees New York City as the epicenter of bleeding heart liberaldom, a tolerant, immigrant-friendly, tax-and-spend kind of place.

What America doesn't know is that one in five New Yorkers supports the Tea Party - the right-leaning, close-the-borders, anti-government movement of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

Here in this city of labor rights, gay pride and lefty havens, Tea Partyers lead double lives as foot soldiers in a quiet war to reverse the direction of America.

A statewide Marist Poll of 686 New Yorkers commissioned last month by the Daily News highlighted the phenomenon: One in four registered voters statewide considers himself a Tea Party supporter. That translates to 21% in the city, and 25% in Long Island and Westchester County - enough to make politicians tremble.

"Want to know how big a deal they are?" asked former Staten Island Borough President and longtime GOP powerhouse Guy Molinari, 81. "If I were running today, I would be kissing their butts."

That's just what pols are doing. At a recent Tea Party-sponsored candidate's forum on Staten Island, they sounded like colonial revolutionaries decrying King George III.

"Get the troops out of Korea - and send them to the border of Mexico!" roared ex-CIA officer Gary Berntsen, the GOP hope to topple U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer.

"Citizens and patriots!" shouted former Rep. Rick Lazio, the Republican Party's nominee for governor. "We have a government that overtaxes, overspends, overreaches and overregulates - and we want them out of our lives!"

The News spoke to 65 city Tea Partyers, a ragtag group of conservatives, libertarians and constitutionalists across the boroughs - in GOP-friendly Bay Ridge, middle-of-the-road Forest Hills and lefty Chelsea.

One of the local movement's leaders is radio talk show host David Webb, a charismatic, African-American GOPer who co-founded the Manhattan party.

"You can't run for dogcatcher in New York these days without contacting the Tea Party," he said.

The movement's handiwork - Tax Day rallies, anti-mosque protests, town hall meetings - is hard to miss. Partisans plan freedom runs, street fairs and candidate forums in all five boroughs.

Unlike their rural counterparts, city Tea Partyers don't get worked up over gun laws, hold little love for Palinism and Beckism and were as likely to be pro-choice as anti-abortion.

NYC Tea Partyers heartily embrace free-market fiscal conservatism and take an unforgiving stance on immigration, big government and steep taxes.

They back Arizona's anti-immigration law and denounce south-of-the-border "intruders" - yet their favorite haunt appears to be Tio Pepe, a Mexican restaurant in the Village.

"Immigration should be more exclusive and selective, open borders should be closed and laws must be enforced," said Aleksander Danilov, 23, a sales executive who emigrated - legally - from Azerbaijan.

Added Michael Cericola, 57, an MTA bus driver, "Illegals get everything free - schools, health care, hospitals - while taxpayers pay for everything."

Adele Connors, 49, of Flatbush, a clerk for a federal agency, has a unique view about her employer: "You want to solve half the nation's problems? Fire half the government."

It's a common theme. Frustrated with taxes the feds extract and the rules they impose, Dr. Adley Raboy, 52, a Staten Island urologist and Little League coach, demands, "When is enough enough for this government?

"They're taking the food from my family and my patients to pay for health care and the bailouts."

That kind of inflammatory language is often heard at Tea Party events, like the May 24 gathering of 100 volunteers at Tio Pepe, where activists buzzed about halting a planned mosque near Ground Zero.

"The odds say that place is going to be a house of evil where plans to kill Americans will be hatched," said Andy Sullivan, 44, a union hardhat who did interior work on the new Goldman Sachs tower on West St.

Frank Santarpia, 48, a real estate investor and co-organizer of the Staten Island Tea Party, says his grass-roots group charges no dues, keeps no headquarters and maintains no membership rolls.

"We're the silent majority," he said.

dfeiden@nydailynews.com



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...treak_of_conservatives_in_.html#ixzz0qq4nvtsx

 

[thoughtone]

Re: tea party fly flag in nyc

Just remember that Limbaugh broadcasts from NYC and he wouldn't win a dog catchers race their!