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Why the tea parties don't matter
The "Tea Party" movement is a symbolic failure.
The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.
The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.
So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.
If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.
But they're not.
Pussies.
The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.
The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.
So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.
If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.
But they're not.
Pussies.
Re: Landslides? Say what?
Funny how the "throw the bums out" tradition hit the Republicans unequally two cycles in a row. Even funnier considering the approval rating for Congress was crap when this happened last November.
Re: Landslides? Say what?
Yup, the GOP got hit by the "perfect storm" this last go 'round. Historically, mid-term elections never favor the party of the sitting President. This, especially in the midst of that President's _second_ term.
The Republicans in Congress had also gotten quite fat, dumb, and happy. They'd become just like the Democrats they used to gain so much political traction campaigning against. So, no surprise that the American public voted them out.
What's also no surprise is that the "most ethical Congress in history!" that Nancy and Harry promised has turned out to be anything but. The Democrats have only made things worse. That's why Congress' approval ratings were _below_ Bush's from '06 onward. That, my friend, takes work! Real, hard, work! And that work was the Democrat's singular achievement.
So, come '08 and it was time to change parties in the White House. The Democrats played it smart and simply kept pointing to Bush while soft pedaling the hoppy doppy "change" message coming from Obama. Smart move for them as they'd nothing else to go on. No accomplishments, no reforms, no honoring their campaign promises. Just blatant hypocrisy and willful inconsistency. Bog standard stuff for today's Democratic Party.
Madoc
Re: Landslides? Say what?
The Republicans in Congress had also gotten quite fat, dumb, and happy. They'd become just like the Democrats they used to gain so much political traction campaigning against. So, no surprise that the American public voted them out.
They believed their own "permanent majority" press. Unfortunately for them, nobody else did.
What's also no surprise is that the "most ethical Congress in history!" that Nancy and Harry promised has turned out to be anything but. The Democrats have only made things worse. That's why Congress' approval ratings were _below_ Bush's from '06 onward. That, my friend, takes work! Real, hard, work! And that work was the Democrat's singular achievement.
Baby steps. It's government. Molasses moves faster. "Earmark reform" falls short in some aspects, but it's not chopped liver. Easy access to earmark ("funding request," which is a meaningful name and not jargon) disclosures has made it possible for several non-partisan websites to build indexes to these disclosures (including the stealthily hidden ones). I expect, once they've got the clerical staff to do so, they will move on to building searchable databases of requests. Then, I'm sure, we'll get easily-assembled partisan catalogs of what's "pork" and what isn't.
I could wonder why Pelosi's office didn't do this last session, but I could also wonder why the Republican leadership didn't do it while they were in charge. I will choose to be happy that some transparency is being achieved.
I also wonder what's going to happen to the representatives who forgo earmarks (and there are a few). It's a great PR to fight against secret, carefully hidden and strongly symbolic "bridge to nowhere" spending, but when other districts are getting roads and sewers and districts that forgo earmarks are seeing aging infrastructure failures, there may be some surprised martyrs to principle.
You should be happy that the Congress isn't working smoothly with the administration to breeze through a progressive populist agenda (not that I honestly believe that we actually have a progressive populist majority in Congress, or an actual progressive populist President). It doesn't look like the internal party rebellion and gridlock of the early Clinton and Carter administrations, or the start of G.W. Bush's first completely Republican-controlled term, though. Some lessons may have been learned...