The Tea Party

Could someone please explain to a Brit what the Tea Party is? What it stands for, who heads it, if it's allied with any faction or another party, or any other info thought to be relevant ...

 

Tea Party = Contrived Grassroots Movement (Money was/is behind it.)

 

Sure!

Here it is, in my opinion.

The Tea Party started off as the taxed enough already party but whose mantra was usurped by social conservatives who care only about advancing their repressive religious based morality onto others in an effort to dictate to them their cult/mythological beliefs.

 

A right wing group that believes in limited government and is opposed to crony capitalism. Those are its only two planks.

- - - Updated - - -

^^Has no evidence of this. Thinks that anything less then 50% control of the economy by government is severe austerity. Buys nothing from government. ^^

 

Clearly I prefaced my post as my opinion. Your accusation is fictional nonsense that in no way accurately represents my thought on the matter.

 

Another name for Tea Party is conservative Republican. But it makes Dems feel better to think of them as a separate entity.

 

That would be believable except for the fact that the Koch-heads are the main source of funding for the Tea Party, and many aspects of Tea Party activism would directly benefit the Kochs.

 

Yes we believe the domestic energy industry should be allowed to do its job. Fracking has done more to reduce emissions then Obama fun bucks for alternative and expensive energy no one is willing to pay for voluntarily.

You are just mad about the Koch brothers because they are pro gay marriage.

 

Okay the first thing to understand is that the Tea Party is not a monolithic group. It is composed in the Main of what in Britain you would think of as the guy down the street who operates the fish and chips shoppe. They are lorry drivers, independent cab drivers, independent barbershop owners, doctors, or any other type of smal businessman you care to mention accept probably lawyers who are too dependant on government for their living. There are at least four different Tea Party Groups that I know including the one funded by the Koch brothers who compared to George Soros relatively angelic. They have all coalesced around the the same set of ideas lower taxes, fewer and more sensible regulations and smaller government at least at the federal level. They may have disagreements about the social issues but given the current economic situationthey ahve currently been willing to place those on the back burner simply because the current economic situation is dire enough that it trumps almost every other concern in the short term.

 

I was born in Wales, and am a bit of a history buff. As such, I have seen this sort of thinking before

There is, on FOX News, a new show called "The Five". They are Tea Party spokespersons, and openly criticize and ridicule anyone who opposes their "philosophy". As a Brit, you may remember "the Five" as the Cambridge Five who were spies for the Russians before, during and following World War II. They did it because they were deluded creatures who thought they were on the correct side of history. Western Democracies and Republics were in the grip of the so called "Great" Depression, and Communism seemed to be the answer.

Today, we are in economic stress again. People are afraid and looking for answers. The Tea Party, just like the Cambridge Five and others, that they have those answers. And like the Cambridge Five, they will go to any lengths to force the rest of us to comply with those answers.

Fear motivates us to take action. Paranoia motivates us to take extreme action, regardless of any consequences. This has been part of the human condition throughout history. They compete to find ever increasing "conspiracies". Anyone who dares disagree is a "traitor".

The Tea party is, sadly, the normal human reaction to fear. So was communism. So was fascism. I only hope they don't do as much damage as those institutions did.

Cymru an Byth

Dragon

 

My opposition to fracking relies solely on the basis that I believe we should seek to move off fossil fuels and to renewable fuels. We know already that fossil fuels are a finite resource, so why bother investing more money in it when we already know there are more sustainable resources. Petroleum exploration dollars are not worth the investment, since they will not be repaid with as much money as sustainable-resource investment.

Did you really just say that?

You did NOT just say that.

Holy crap, you just said that.

Are you secretly Patrick Star?

I ask only because the stupidity of that statement made my computer lock up for a minute. It defies any semblance of logic, my computer couldn't make sense of it.

Why would I be against the Kochs for their support of gay marriage when I, myself, am pro-gay marriage? Sure, most of the Tea Party is against gay marriage, but that's because the Kochs haven't spent any money on that issue because that''d show that they have common ground with the Dems, something they don't want to do, because it'd alienate their faithful sheep.

 

Let companies that have to recoup that cost make that decision. Alternative energy isn't ready and can't scale to enough power and it is intermittent. Meanwhile, natural gas is ready to go and clean. There is no reason to fight it now other then to throw bones to the environmental fringe.

They do spend money on that issue though. That is why the left hates them. They represent a part of the tea party they want silenced because it doesn't fit the racist homophobe Neanderthal image they try to paint. The rest of the left follows cue like trained monkeys and hates them for the jobs they provide and the energy they produce that normal people use and can afford. Easy to get the economic left to bark like wild mad dogs about the evils of power companies as they sit in heated apartments typing furiously on iPads and sipping lattes all made possible by that energy they hate so much as they fight for less clean natural gas energy that we have massive reserves of in favor of imported energy that isn't as clean. Couldn't make it up. It is that crazy leftist.

 

Fracking is hardly "clean". It pollutes the area around the plants. I support using natural gas, the problem is, in order to be viable, natural gas has to be pressurized. When pressurization is needed, it is inherently more dangerous than other options.

Meanwhile, infrastructure for ethanol and other biofuels have been growing since 2000. Between 2007 and 2012, American production and consumption of ethanol doubled. The only reason the numbers haven't increased at the pace they were is due to the recession.

http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Tea_Party_Civil_Rights.htm

It's against the Tea Party's own interests to let it get out that there are Tea Partiers that support same-sex marriage. They need cohesiveness, and so it is the Tea Party themselves that silence the pro-gay marriage camp within their own party. Cohesiveness is what is needed above all in politics if a party is to survive. Whenever a political party has ideological fissures, the party will weaken. We've seen it with the Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republican Party, the Whig Party, the Republican Party in 1912, the Democratic Party in 1968 and the 2010 midterms. It will happen again with the Republican Party in 2014 or 2016.

Their power base of voters are Southern Christians, they have some House members from northern states, but for the most part their power base is the Bible Belt. They are fighting the GOP, not the Democrats. The GOP mainstream is the biggest threat to the Tea Party because the Tea Party movement is closer to true economic conservatism. In 2010, the reason the Democrats lost seats was not due to the Tea Party, it was due to the Democratic Party's own increased reliance on ideology.

 

Indeed.

Follow the money folks, follow the money. (In this case, it's like looking up at fireworks.)

 

Ethanol is terrible for engines you know, especially boats an issue for me. Still, there is only so much rainforest we can burn down for ethanol production. It isn't 100% clean either. There is no logical reason to fight natural gas now considering the alternatives which are ready today. More money is being pumped into biofuels then ever and they still aren't ready. Can you just let it run for now and we can move to solar and algae cakes when it is ready? Even you must admit it isn't ready yet and by the time it is fusion will probably displace it.

It is easier to keep cohesion if the party is narrowly focused I agree. The 2010 midterm loss was because f obamacare. And mid term slump.

 

Of course ethanol isn't 100% clean, any time you burn something you will end up producing emissions and greenhouse gases. Of course the renewable-fuels industry is still growing, the true potential has not yet been discovered, and corporations are more interested in profits from production, not the expenses of research.

Know why ethanol is bad for boat motors? The engine manufacturers haven't accommodated ethanol since there hasn't been much demand for ethanol in boat motors.

The United States doesn't have rainforests in the areas where the most ethanol is produced. Plus, I believe they've started looking at swtichgrass. I believe that one plant, which grows wild throughout the prairies of the United States, has been demonstrated to have a significantly higher ethanol potential than corn, and isn't as taxing on the soil as corn.

It wasn't totally because of Obamacare, though it did play a part. However, you cannot deny that the two parties have been consolidating into totally ideologically-centered parties and are moving away from the geographically-centered partisanship of the past. Blue Dogs, conservative-leaning Democrats, were squeezed from both sides.

 

You're going to get allot of responses to this thread, and only a very small number of them are going to be from people who actually are members of the TEA party and routinely, but not Always, vote for their candidates.

In this case, if it sounds too horrible to be true, it probably is...

-

 

that's not entirely accurate, there was a tea party "movement" before the 2008 election... of course after Obama took office it was overtaken to become less of a third party perspective and more of a moral majority rally

 

In this response, you claim that the TEA party has been taken over by the scary "Moral Majority".

Well, have you ever actually attended a TEA party rally?

Have you participated in one of their campaigns?

Have you ever read the actual TEA party platform and position statements... even if just from the perspective of the local group?

I have, and I've never seen ANYTHING of the "Moral Majority".

I've never seen anything the slightest bit racist either, though accusations of TEA Party racism are on half the liberals lips.

If you hear a claim about the TEA Party, and its too horrible to be true... it is NOT True, nor is it from anyone who knows anything real about the TEA Party.

-

 

That isn't accurate. There are several conservative Republicans who oppose the Tea Party and it's values. Rick Santorum and George Bush to name two. They consider themselves conservatives, but of the big government type who consider social issues more important than fiscal issues.

 

Well to basically explain it, it's a libertarian that went off the deep end.

 

No, the relationship between Libertarians and TEA Patriots is that Libertarians are generally so passive, and dedicated to non-interference, that they are unable to organize into a political movement with enough "moxy" to make real change.

A TEA Patriot has much philosophical common ground with Libertarians, but they are far more assertive, confident and active.

TEA Patriots have already done more to change American politics, than Libertarians have done in the last 100 years.

This is WHY the Liberals fear them so much.

 

Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you on that one. PF pretty much proves that the libertarians I know at least, are actually very aggressive about their beliefs.

Yeah, PF is a good place to prove you wrong on that.

Namely, nothing. Congress was at historic levels of unproductivity thanks to the GOP Tea Partiers.

Because they threaten the natural order of things and also manage to drive the moderate GOP base into their shinnanagens as well?

 

Tea Party is from Taxed Enough Already. It is a backlash from the fairly large group of people who perceive their role has become that of "cash cows." Pay more taxes and get less for it. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Peter rightly gets worked up.

The Tea Party has a written manifesto of: "Less federal spending, less taxation, and less government in general." The Tea Party itself has no social agenda. Any claims to the contrary are outright lies.

There is an ongoing lie that the Koch brothers own the Tea Party. This comes as a deflection over the power of George Soros, Warren Buffett, Jeff Immelt, and a number of media moguls for the Democrat aged. To foaming-at-the-mouth Democrat partisans somehow Soros/Buffett/Immelt/Hollywood money is good and Koch money is bad. Hypocrisy.

In a democratic republic, politics is a matter of forming coalitions. The social conservatives have been a part of the Republican coalition since 1980. The gay marriage people are already on the Democrat plantation, so their opponents go where there is opposition.

 

Hmmmm, I must have hit pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that!