Republican Pepsi Challenge

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De Republikeinse partij wordt van binnenuit financieel uitgehold.
Door de schertsfiguren die ze op de voorgrond moest brengen ;

Groet / Cees

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html
January 17, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Great Tea Party Rip-Off
By FRANK RICH

Even given the low bar set by America’s bogus conversations about race,
the short-lived Harry Reid fracas was a most peculiar nonevent. For all
the hyperventilation in cable news land, this supposed racial brawl
didn’t seem to generate any controversy whatsoever in what is known as
the real world.

Eugene Robinson, the liberal black columnist at The Washington Post,
wrote that he was “neither shocked nor outraged” at Reid’s
less-than-articulate observation that Barack Obama benefited politically
from being “light-skinned” and for lacking a “Negro dialect unless he
wanted to have one.” Besides, Robinson said, Reid’s point was “surely
true.” The black conservative Ward Connerly agreed, writing in The Wall
Street Journal that he was “having a difficult time determining what it
was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive.”

President Obama immediately granted Reid absolution. A black columnist
at The Daily News in New York, Stanley Crouch, even stood up for the
archaic usage of “Negro.” George Will defended Reid from charges of
racism as vociferously as Democrats did. Al Sharpton may have accepted
Reid’s apology, but for once there’s no evidence that he ever cared
enough to ask for one. So who, actually, was the aggrieved party here?
What — or who — was really behind this manufactured race war with no
victims?

It would be easy to dismiss the entire event as a credulous news media’s
collaboration with a publisher’s hype for a new tell-all-gossip 2008
campaign book, “Game Change,” which breathlessly broke the Reid
“bombshell.” But this is a more interesting tale than that. The true
prime mover in this story was not a book publicist but Michael Steele,
the chairman of the Republican Party and by far the loudest and most
prominent Beltway figure demanding that Reid resign as Senate majority
leader as punishment for his “racism.”

Steele is widely regarded as a clown by observers of all political
persuasions, but he is clownish like a fox. His actions in this incident
offer some hilarious and instructive insights into what’s going on in
the Republican hierarchy right now as it tries to cope not just with our
first African-American president but with a restive base embracing
right-wing tea-party populism that loathes the establishment in both
parties. And though Steele is black, and perhaps the most enthusiastic
player of the race card in American politics today, race was a red
herring in his Reid vendetta. It threw most everyone off the scent of
his real motivation, which had nothing to do with black versus white but
everything to do with green, as in money.

A profligate spender, Steele had inaugurated his arrival as party
chairman by devoting nearly $20,000 to redecorate his office because he
found it “way too male” for his sensitive tastes. In the weeks just
before “Game Change” emerged, Steele was in more hot water. Over the
holidays, G.O.P. elders were shocked to learn that their front man had a
side career as a motivational public speaker at up to $20,000 a gig. The
party treasury, which contained $22.8 million upon Steele’s arrival at
the end of January 2009, was down to $8.7 million by late November, with
2010 campaign expenditures rapidly arriving. “He needs to raise money
for the party, not his wallet,” one Republican leader griped to Politico.

Then, just after New Year, Steele published an unexpected book of his
own, “Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.” He
hadn’t told his employers that the book was in the works, and, to add
further insult, he attacks unnamed party leaders in its pages for
forsaking conservative principles. Since it hit the stores, Steele has
pursued a book tour for fun and personal profit, all the while daring
his G.O.P. critics to bring it on. “If you don’t want me in the job,
fire me,” he taunted them. “But until then, shut up. Get with the
program, or get out of the way.”

Fire him? Steele knows better than anyone that his party can’t afford
what Clarence Thomas might call a “high-tech lynching” of the only
visible black guy it has in even a second-tier office. Steele has said
that white Republicans are “scared” of him. They are. He loves to play
head games with their racial paranoia and insecurities, whether he’s
publicly professing “slum love” for the Indian-American Louisiana
governor, Bobby Jindal, or starting a blog on the R.N.C. site titled
“What Up?,” or announcing that he would use “fried chicken and potato
salad” to recruit minority voters. As long as the G.O.P. remains largely
a whites-only country club, Steele has job security. But he had real
reason to fear some new restraints on the cash box; last year the party
was driven to write a rule requiring him to get approval for
expenditures over $100,000.

On Jan. 9 The Washington Post ran a front-page article headlined
“Frustrations With Steele Leaving G.O.P. in a Bind,” reporting, among
other embarrassments, that the party had spent $90 million during
Steele’s brief reign while raising just $84 million. Enter “Game
Change,” right in the nick of time for Steele to pull off his own
cunning game change. On Jan. 10 he stormed “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet
the Press” to demand Reid’s head. There has been hardly a mention of
Steele’s sins since. He can laugh all the way to the bank.

His behavior is not anomalous. Steele is representative of a fascinating
but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who
are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in
for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if
not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his
own. As many suspected at the time, her 2008 campaign wardrobe, like the
doomed campaign itself, was just a preview of coming attractions: she
would surely dump the bother of serving as Alaska’s besieged governor
for a lucrative star turn on Fox News. Last week she made it official.

Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement.
“I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how
Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes
will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently
signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled
next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking
invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the
traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference
doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene
reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000.

The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging $560
a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel. Among the
convention’s eight listed sponsors is Tea Party Emporium, which gives as
its contact address 444 Madison Avenue in New York, also home to the
high-fashion brand Burberry. This emporium’s Web site offers a bejeweled
tea bag at $89.99 for those furious at “a government hell bent on the
largest redistribution of wealth in history.” This is almost as
shameless as Glenn Beck, whose own tea party profiteering has included
hawking gold coins merchandised by a sponsor of his radio show.

Last week a prominent right-wing blogger, Erick Erickson of
RedState.com, finally figured out that the Tea Party Convention “smells
scammy,” likening it to one of those Nigerian e-mails promising untold
millions. Such rumbling about the movement’s being co-opted by hucksters
may explain why Palin used her first paid appearance at Fox last Tuesday
to tell Bill O’Reilly that she would recycle her own tea party profits
in political contributions. But Erickson had it right: the tea party
movement is being exploited — and not just by marketers, lobbyists,
political consultants and corporate interests but by the Republican
Party, as exemplified by Palin and Steele, its most prominent leaders.

Tea partiers hate the G.O.P. establishment and its Wall Street allies,
starting with the Bushies who created TARP, almost as much as they do
Obama and his Wall Street pals. When Steele and Palin pay lip service to
the movement, they are happy to glom on to its anti-tax, anti-Obama,
anti-government, anti-big-bank vitriol. But they don’t call for any
actual action against the bailed-out perpetrators of the financial
crisis. They’d never ask for investments to put ordinary Americans back
to work. They have no policies to forestall foreclosures or protect
health insurance for the tea partiers who’ve been shafted by hard times.
Their only economic principle beside tax cuts is vilification of the
stimulus that did save countless jobs for firefighters, police officers
and teachers at the state and local level.

The Democrats’ efforts to counter the deprivation and bitterness spawned
by the Great Recession are indeed timid and imperfect. The right has a
point when it says that the Senate health care votes of Ben Nelson of
Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana were bought with pork. But at
least their constituents can share the pigout. Hustlers like Steele and
Palin take the money and run. All their followers get in exchange is a
lousy tea party T-shirt. Or a ghost-written self-promotional book. Or a
tepid racial sideshow far beneath the incendiary standards of the party
whose history from Strom to “macaca” has driven away nearly every black
American except Steele for the past 40 years.

6. Parker Oakland, MI January 17th, 2010 8:34 am
In the last decade, the GOP has resorted to superficial marketing
tactics to push their cause. They've trotted out celebrity endorsers
such as The Plainspoken Guy (G.W. Bush), The Woman (S. Palin) and The
Black Guy (M. Steele). The GOP has become nothing more consequential
than "The Pepsi Challenge."
  Recommend  Recommended by 698 Readers

18. JRL Texas January 17th, 2010 8:41 am
The Republican deserve Steele, just like they deserve Palin -- two
people full of ego, but no qualifications, picked for the worst of
reasons: pandering. That they're now loose canons firing back on those
who callously selected them proves there's justice in the world.
  Recommend  Recommended by 562 Readers

123. Mina Gobler Albany, CA January 17th, 2010 11:49 am
Here's what I think has been missing in the discussions about Palin and
Steele: The Republicans chose Palin because Hillary Clinton, a woman,
was a potential presidential candidate for the Democrats. And one
woman's as good as another, no? It didn't matter that Clinton was a
better educated, more experienced woman than Palin. We'll match your
woman against our woman.

Obama, a Democrat, a man of color, became president and the Republicans
decided they'd select of man of color. And one is as good as the other,
no? Steele's selection, like Palin's offended me and insulted my
intelligence through the callous calculations of the Republicans. Well,
I think the Republicans rue their choices. And I laugh every time I hear
about Steele's antics and Palin's outrageous statements. The Republicans
are getting their just desserts!
  Recommend  Recommended by 548 Readers

76. Jumper South Carolina January 17th, 2010 11:21 am
"But they don't call for any actual action ... They have no policies ..."

The Obama administration, almost from the day it was elected, has been
astonishingly ineffective in making clear to the public that the GOP
rhetoric is a sham. His public relations seems to be limited to the WH
press secretary. There should be a dozen or more prominent Democrats
hammering the Republicans for doing nothing and reminding the public
that the Republicans are the ones who created this mess.

The second Obama problem has been his astonishing failure to swiftly
apply middle-class justice to those who caused the financial meltdown.
If I caused millions to lose trillions, I'd be going to jail.

The third Obama problem has been his astonishing failure to deliver the
heath care the public wanted - single payer similar to what Canadian and
European countries have. Had he gone down to defeat defending that, the
Republicans and others, would truly be blamed, Instead, he claims that
if health care is defeated, the Republicans will be blamed. Really? I
still support President Obama but President Obama's administrators let
the bill become so bloated that it's going to look like the Republicans
saved the country from that 2,000 page monster unshackled by price controls.

Consequently, most of us in the middle class, living life with zero hope
of receiving a million dollar bonus, could care less about Steeles'
deception and Palin and Beck's opportunism. We don't even have access to
opportunism.

As much as I enjoy reading Mr. Rich's well-researched articles, this one
is little more than deflection from the outrage about to be expressed on
Tuesday in Massachusetts. Hundreds of us who comment in these columns
have been warning about this outrage for at least seven months.
Washington behaves as though all that is necessary to stay in power is
for the people to have a little more jingle in their jeans and come
November the peasants will vote them back in.

As President Obama stumps in Massachusetts, I hope he realizes he'd
better stand up for middle class justice, and the return of
Glass-Steagall. Heaven only knows what he's going to do with health
care, which has become a Republican Trojan horse.
  Recommend  Recommended by 506 Readers

20. Cdr. John Newlin Vista, Calif. January 17th, 2010 8:42 am
I think this true story about a young black Naval Flight Officer, who
I'll call Fred to protect his privacy, puts the use of the word Negro in
the proper perspective.

Fred was undergoing Radar Intercept Officer training at the Naval Air
Station Glynco, Georgia in the mid 1960's. He was invited by some of his
aviation pals to go with them down to the local drive-in for a burger,
fries, and a shake. The car the were in was a convertible. They pulled
into the drive-in, parked in a slot, and waited for a service. The car
hop, young girl, arrived at the side of the car, looked at Fred and
said, "Sorry, we don't serve Negroes here.

Fred favored the girl with broad grin as he replied, "Dear, I don't want
a Negro. I want a cheeseburger." The group was not served but Fred's
response became legend among Naval Aviators and Flight Officers.

By the way, I ran into Fred several years later at the Alameda,
California Naval Air Station. He had gone to flight training, earned his
gold wings, and had gotten married. But because he was a Negro, Fred
could not find housing on Alameda island and had to live in neighboring
Oakland. Such is the way it was back in the days when the more common
"N" word ended in an "r."
  Recommend  Recommended by 501 Readers

38. Dave North Strabane, PA January 17th, 2010 10:33 am
Thanks for exposing the race-baiting GOP's attempt to smear Harry Reid.
I could have almost kissed George Will when on "This Week" he responded
to Liz Cheney's demand for Harry Reid's head by exclaiming that he
couldn't see a scintilla of racism in Reid's observation. As a white
liberal who taught civil rights history for 35 years, I had reached the
same conclusion about Reid's now famous utterance. Cheney, Steele, Kyl,
and other false friends of African Americans want us to believe that
those nasty white liberals are privately calling blacks "Negroes," that
awful term for African Americans used by those who led the civil rights
movement from the dawn of the 20th century through the 1960s, from
W.E.B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King, Jr.
  Recommend  Recommended by 493 Readers

10. bill44 Pittsfield, Ma. January 17th, 2010 8:36 am
Great column that is sure to raise some hackles. Palin and Steele are
shameless, but what is shameful is the TeaPartiers themselves getting
fooledtime and time again by people who do nothing for their causes.
  Recommend  Recommended by 437 Readers

8. Michael Pasadena, CA January 17th, 2010 8:35 am
Steele and Palin, working the GOP in the fine American tradition of
hustling. Couldn't happen to a better bunch.
  Recommend  Recommended by 402 Readers

85. Robert Levine Malvern, PA January 17th, 2010 11:32 am
For sure since Reagan's election, and perhaps since the Goldwater
candidacy in 1964, the Republicans have based their electoral strategy
on the white backlash against the civil rights movement. Reagan even
kicked off his first national campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not
far from the place where three civil rights workers, a Southern black
and two Jews from the North, were murdered, thus signaling as clearly as
possible to his new Southern white voters that he was on their side. For
the Republican party leaders to be grandstanding by demanding that a
Democratic leader in the Congress apologize for using the word "negro"
is beyond hypocrisy. They are displaying a toxic mixture of rank
dishonesty, callousness, and pomposity; not to mention unbelievable
stupidity, if they believe anyone will take them seriously. The
Republicans surely deserve Palin. She is everything they hope to be, and
if nominated in 2012, she will lead them over the cliff.
  Recommend  Recommended by 376 Readers

37. Neal Central Ohio January 17th, 2010 10:33 am
And yet there are "progressives" who are willing to install Steele,
Palin and their ilk as a way of venting their pique that Obama has not
moved far enough left fast enough.

The news channels are most interested in creating pseudo-events to hype
their ratings, the republicans are interested in anything that will give
them the limelight. The democrats in congress are, well, in congress.
Nuff said?

What would I give for some of the sense of unity, hope, and purpose that
permeated our affairs just one year ago. The corporations and the news
channels seem to be winning as the people are driven into fear
mongering, division, frustration, and impatience. The ideals of
bipartisanship, cooperation, and teamwork seem to have already become
passe. To our great detriment.
  Recommend  Recommended by 285 Readers

14. Mary Texas January 17th, 2010 8:39 am
"The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging
$560 a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel." Wow.
Just to hear a lot of complaining with no ideas as to how to make things
better. Why not skip this and give the money to the Salvation Army, Red
Cross or other worthy organization. Instead of tea bags it sounds like
money bags.
  Recommend  Recommended by 268 Readers

386. Ellen Ohio January 17th, 2010 3:31 pm
Where was the fervor of the Tea Party movement when President Obama's
predecessor took a budget surplus and transformed it into a massive
deficit? Where were they when he spent a trillion dollars on a war in
Iraq with no plan to pay for it?
  Recommend  Recommended by 252 Readers

2. Larry Eisenberg New York City January 17th, 2010 8:27 am
Palin & Steele, each a smarty,
Cash-mong'ring off the Tea Party,
And the patter they natter
As these scammers wax fatter
Build bankrolls that are hale and hearty!
  Recommend  Recommended by 250 Readers

48. marilyn san mateo January 17th, 2010 10:36 am
I wish someone could explain what it is about "the stimulus" that makes
the tea clowns so crazy. They're tearing up the Republican party in
Florida because one candidate, as Governor of the state, was in favor of
Federal money to help suffering people in his state. Is it just selfish
greed and their morbid fear that someone, somewhere might "get something
for nothing", paid for by one-tenth of a penny of "my tax money?" I just
don't understand this obsessive focus. Is it because they listen to
Limbaugh and applaud his disgusting disdain for the tragedy in Haiti?
Are they just so self-involved they cannot even grasp the concept of
common good? Are they bent on proving Adam Smith wrong; people are not
motivated by self interest. Are they so dim they cannot see they are
tools of the plutocrats.
  Recommend  Recommended by 227 Readers

233. Carole A. Dunn Ocean Springs, Miss. January 17th, 2010 2:23 pm
The Harry Reid comment certainly was a tempest in a teapot. The most he
was guilty of was his use of arcane language. Some people tried to put
it in the same light as Trent Lott's comment about Strom Thurmond, but
even down here in South Mississippi, that didn't wash.

Far worse, are the people taking advantage of the tea baggers, who may
be misguided, and blaming some of the wrong people for their problems,
but seem to be a reasonably sincere bunch who have genuine gripes. Many
of us on the left have the same gripes; they're just directed at
different people and different ideologies. For one thing, this country
has absolutely nothing to fear from creeping socialism, but everything
to worry about from galloping corporatism. Even the most naive should
realize that the mostly downtrodden-looking people we see on TV at tea
parties can't afford a convention that costs $569 just for the price of
a ticket. Add on the price of a room for the weekend at Opryland, and
all the other expenses, and you haven't put together an event that will
be attended by the unemployed and disenfranchised. Sarah Palin ought to
be ashamed of herself. She's an opportunistic little hussy who would
skin her mother and sell the hides if she thought she could make a buck
and get some publicity. Talk about the dumbing down of America. No one
but people more opportunistic than Klondike Barbie would pay $120,000 to
someone who has absolutely nothing to say. She's not even that cute.

All in all, I think I'm the most angry at Obama and the Congressional
Democrats, who bow and scrape to the conservatives of both parties, and
seem to prefer corporate interests to the interests of the country at
large. If they keep it up, they will handing the country back to the
morons and misfits who are the most responsible for putting the country
in the condition it's in.
  Recommend  Recommended by 212 Readers

3. Phil in the mountains of Kyushu Japan January 17th, 2010 8:29 am
Your column today is even funnier for Haiti in its background.

Yes, you’re right as to American politicians of all stripes enjoying
what you refer to as one pigout after another. They’re shrewd – and
getting as rich as the Wall Street frauds and profiteers they protect.

But meanwhile – and all know this -- Anderson Cooper is angry, and CNN’s
doctor Gupta, and other doctors from Europe – all frustrated that, while
they prioritize aid in the medical and other ways necessary for a Haiti
that desperately needs it, all they see from the U.S. is military
personnel, toting many guns, but with no food packages or medical supplies.

Same old, same old in Iraq: Plenty of U.S. armed force, but when Baghdad
fell, zero U.S. ability to deal with the massive civilian needs.

Of course American politicians can behave at home as you note – some
things never change for a country that has no policy for the rest of the
world except for its corporations to coerce themselves on all
traditional cultures. No strategies for peace in the world. No
productivity capacity at home to offer the world, either – except maybe
Hollywood’s. And, while as highest priority it only props up the ongoing
frauds atop Wall Street, can anyone be “shocked, shocked” that, when a
small country needs help, the U.S. has only soldiers with guns to send?
(And lots of politicians to pose for photo ops.)

Remember: the U.S. is led by a man who in same week accepting Nobel
Prize for Peace had as only practical step more expansion of war.

Pigouts? God Bless America!
  Recommend  Recommended by 185 Readers

11. rlk chappaqua, ny January 17th, 2010 8:37 am
Yes there are many that would seek to profit from the Tea Party movement
and there are people like Steele who will always con their way through life.

But that doesn't mitigate the fact that there is huge disappointment in
Obama.

We didn't expect him to get in bed with Wall Street and bring Summers
and Geithner us.

And we didn't expect him to give all his political capital to the union
bosses who really care very little about their members.

And we didn’t expect him to push for a healthcare bill that even members
of congress will not participate in.

And we didn't expect him to send our best young Americans to become
fodder in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.

You can laugh and chide and sneer all you want but the electorate is
angry. And they are far less angry with the likes of Steele than they
are at Reid, Frank, Dodd, Pelosi and Obama.

Just watch the next elections.
  Recommend  Recommended by 177 Readers

172. wbs Cincinnati, OH January 17th, 2010 1:54 pm
To pretend that the tea partiers hate the GOP establishment is
ridiculous. The tea partiers ARE the GOP establishment. They are the
religious right dressed up in hats with tea bags hanging from them. All
over the country you can see that their goal is to remove only Democrats
from office (many of whom took the oath of office for the first time
only one year ago). They want to re-install GOPers who had been in
office for 14 or 15 years (think Chabot, Gingrich, Santorum). Their goal
may be a more sanitized version of the GOP. But not too sanitized. It
was reported this week that many of those who have floundered morally,
will have a breeze getting re-elected (think Vitter, Ensign).
  Recommend  Recommended by 154 Readers

206. racerkoi Woodland, WA January 17th, 2010 1:58 pm
Reid was just another shiny object that Steele pulled from the folds in
his Republican Wizard robe.

Whenever the informed voter starts looking too closely at what the
Republican Party is (or isn't) doing they just pull out another shiny
object and the MSM goes "O-O-O-O-O another shiny object for us to focus
upon." That makes the shallow end of the gene pool go "Look, this must
be important since everybody's talking about it."

This is Palin's America...
  Recommend  Recommended by 139 Readers

1. barb s. miami January 17th, 2010 8:27 am
Frank, you have part of this artcle very right, and part very wrong. As
for the Harry Reid racial comments, you are right that for most
Americans it wasn't a big deal. It was driven just by loud voices. But,
what you miss is that is also true for most racial blow-ups in our
culture. Most of us didn't want Imus's or Trent Lott's heads, when they
made their unfortunate comments; but the loud voices from certain
quarters made the cowardly in our media take notice, as usually happens.
Most of us are worried about much more important things than
ultra-sensitivities squealed by the politically corret crowd, from
either side.
  Recommend  Recommended by 134 Readers

5. marie burns fort myers, fl January 17th, 2010 8:30 am
Actually, one of the biggest offenders in the charade to label Harry
Reid a racist was the New York Times. In two different stories (and
despite a complaint from me!), the Times ran a photo of President Obama
& Speaker Reid looking out a window. Reid, who was standing close to the
window, looked unnaturally white in the glaring light coming in from the
windows. Obama, who was standing back in the shadows, looked really,
really dark-complexioned.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the Times made its editorial
point with that photo, no matter what the accompanying copy said.

The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
  Recommend  Recommended by 114 Readers

22. G. Heyde Des Moines, WA January 17th, 2010 10:27 am
For those of us who were dumbfounded by Bush's reelection--nothing short
of a Palin nomination can diminish the farce that is the GOP. Glen Beck
and soul sister Sarah can now high-five each other and ratchet up the
Obama invectives for the next three years...and only people who would
pay $543 a plate to see the greatest political travesty in the past 115
years will notice. Steele is a token clown and thank God he's heading up
the party. If the 2010 elections don't turn the tide, he'll be out...and
then we can watch Limbaugh wallow in the mud until 2012. Meanwhile,
Obama tackles the mess his predecessor left behind, and when it's all
said and done, he will have accomplished nothing short of a miracle. But
as any good teabagger knows, a prophet is not without honor--save in his
own land.
  Recommend  Recommended by 106 Readers

15. Lisa Brown Maine January 17th, 2010 8:39 am
You wrote that the tea party people are "anti-tax, anti-Obama,
anti-government, anti-big-bank " who "hate the G.O.P. establishment and
its Wall Street allies, starting with the Bushies who created TARP,
almost as much as they do Obama and his Wall Street pals."

If what you just wrote is true, if that is honestly what the tea party
people are, then I just found a new political home. Thank you.
  Recommend  Recommended by 88 Readers

9. thedrake3 Aurora IL January 17th, 2010 8:36 am
Is Reid a racist? No. I sincerely don't think he is.

BUT, pity the Republican who claims a Black man exhibits no "Negro"
traits (speech patterns, skin tone, whatever). Such faint praise would
be enough to incite a public lynching of the Republican.

In truth, the outrage isn't against what Reid said so much as that such
an inarticulate statement would be red meat for the race baiting
industry, whose principle share holders are the base of the Democrat
party. A Republican would be thrown to the sharks. A Democrat lives to
pick another pocket.
  Recommend  Recommended by 87 Readers

4. David Jones Colorado January 17th, 2010 8:30 am
I imagine most of the tea paty people are smart enough to know when they
are being lied to or misled -- which, by the way, would make them
smarter than mainstream Denocrats or Republicans.

Certainly, forces have tried to hi-jack their movement. there are even
ridiculous Democrats who have tried to co=opt part of their platform,
The problem is , for the mainstream parties, when you have a populist
movement being fueld by rational and righteous anger, the movement can't
be controlled. I am very sympathetic to the tea party people. But, I
would break allegiance in a hurry if they became part of the mainstream
of either party. I have donated to Ron Paul and other non-mainstream
Republicans, but I would never send a dime to the RNC -- not, without a
lot of name changes, anyway. As far as I am concerned there is no
difference between Bush, then, and Obama, now. Except, of course,
Obama's fondness for and attachment to the Wall Street bankers is greater.

As long as the tea-partiers are striving for less government and more
personal freedoms, they will have a lot of support from many
demographics. They must also continue to push for real free markets, not
the Obama/bankers style of crony capitalism.

The little things that are so often written about in places like the NYT
can be left to the narrow-mided party Democrats and their mainstream
Republican cohorts. The rest of us aren't asking for change. We are
demanding change .
  Recommend  Recommended by 84 Readers

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