The "tea party" movement: Page 4

... tantrums at public meetings, the tea parties are also working hard to degrade American discourse in other ways. They very rarely make anything approaching an argument, and when they do it's almost always illogical and invalid. One of the top types of arguments they try to present is what I'll call the "Jump, Smear, and Lie" technique ("JSL" for short). It's actually a complex move with some...

All week, the tea parties line has been abuzz about the release of a new Associated Press article that was supposed to be a fair look at their movement. And, it's here. Unlike other AP and mainstream media reports, it is generally fair to their side. But, because the tea partiers are what they are, they won't be able to see how it reveals yet again just how ineffective and generally worthless...

... family to back away from the tea parties. The "Kochtopus" - those people and organizations funded by or linked to the Koch family - has been the main driving force behind organizing and promoting the tea parties. Without the help of FreedomWorks (a successor to a Koch-funded organization), Americans for Prosperity, Reason Magazine, and the rest, the tea partiers would still be standing on street...

... the tantrums that those in the tea parties threw at last summer's public meetings have caused many Democrats to avoid open meetings this time around: Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts. Instead, they've conducted video chats and held meetings in "controlled settings"....

... Maine GOP has adopted a very tea parties-friendly platform; you can get a PDF with it here. I've only seen the tea partiers do two smart things in all the months I've been covering them; this is - in some ways - the third smart thing. In other ways, it's more of the same libertarian lunacy with a fillip of Randroid extreme insanity. First, some of the insanity/loony/libertarian: Espouse and...

... do. For even more, see my extensive tea parties coverage.

... them and those in the general tea parties movement look very bad. With millions of Americans unemployed (a good portion of them long-term), with U.S.'s manufacturing base eroding by the day, with China flooding the U.S. with cheap imports, with Wall Street appropriating billions from the U.S., and all our other problems, Pajamas Media wants you to cry over the taxes paid by the Executive...

... the delusional claim that the tea parties and recent polls indicate that libertarianism is finally becoming popular, that "[l]ibertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream". First, his definition of libertarianism doesn't comport with reality: A movement that said that people should do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't hurt anyone else couldn't compete during the culture wars that...

... detailed at the following link, the tea parties are a massive magnet for massive stupidity. They can't do anything right and the only reason they aren't little more than an embarrassing blip on U.S. political history is because their opponents are only marginally smarter than they are. Instead of trying to intellectually engage the partiers and show how they're wrong, those opponents have...

... long line of examples of the tea parties being useful idiots, in this case about global warming. It consists of a series of interviews conducted by Bob McCarty at a tea party protest in December. He, among other things, writes for Pajamas Media. This isn't one of their videos as far as I know, and this post isn't really about him or them specifically but is more just an example of how many...

... this incredibly stupid, but the tea parties types don't understand how incredibly stupid it all is much less have a plan to correct their problems. For instance, instead of finding a local doctor, they should have found a local lawyer and had him or her "cross-examine" Porter on specific points. And, they should have made sure that the "drunk at the end of the bar" types weren't shouting things...

... protesters than they have on the tea parties. It includes a video ( peekURL.com/vs23cy6 ) showing far-lefties and their loopy signs at anti-Bush protests. And, all this is linked by Powerline (powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025964.php) and by, of course, Glenn Reynolds (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/96788). And, all of this is basically a mistake: 1. The loopy signs about Bush from the peace...

Bruce Bartlett - former Reagan advisor and Treasury official during the George HW Bush administration - offers "The Misinformed Tea Party Movement/For an antitax group, they don't know much about taxes" (link):

... cheap, ineffective stunt from the tea parties is a recall effort against New Jersey senator Bob Menendez. A state appeals court has ruled that the recall effort can proceed, but it will probably go to a higher court (link).

... his supporters are doing to the tea parties what George W Bush and Dick Cheney did to some of those supporters. From a press release from the "Independence Hall Tea Party Association" (independencehalltpa.com, in full here): A least a few hundred Tea Partiers are expected to descend on the sidewalks surrounding Arcadia University, tomorrow, to voice their opposition to Obamacare after having...

... Gerald Seib says is true: the tea parties have almost completely ignored immigration, and some of their leaders strongly support massive or illegal immigration. For instance, their leaders such as Dick Armey from FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist, and groups linked to the Koch family are about as far from "close-the-borders" types as you can get. The "Tea Party Declaration of Independence"...

The latest tea parties genious on the block is Mike Stopa, who's running as a Republican for the third district in Massachusetts. He has a plan to stop illegal immigration (stopaforusrep.com/Illegal_immigrants/Illegal_immigrants.html) that's unworkable, most likely leading to the opposite of what he claims to want in the unlikely event that it could ever be enacted. If others proposed this plan I...

... bogus grassroots effort from the tea parties is the site iamtheteapartyleader.com (NOTE: see update 2 below before visiting it now) at which the Tea Party "Patriots" encourage their followers to upload videos of them saying "I am the Tea Party Leader". This is a take-off on the "I am Spartacus" line from that movie and a reference to a Democratic Party attempt to do opposition research on their...

Earlier this month I discussed the ineffective, immigration suggestions that had been submitted for the Contract from America. Now, those behind the effort have narrowed down the list of suggestions to 21 and want their visitors to choose their top ten. And, there's not a single choice about immigration: thecontractfromamerica.org/default.aspx Since immigration is a fundamental issue - more...