The Booboisie creates a fire from the ashes of the Bush Administration, proving once again the timeless dictum of H.L. Mencken: ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter.'
Posted on Oct 24, 2010
By Stanley Kutler
We are witnessing, we are told, a groundswell of anger from a spontaneous, grass-roots movement against the president, Congress, Democrats, socialists (are commies extinct?), the debt, higher taxes, the “takeover” of the health system, and on and on. But the tea party appears to be as bothered by the policies of Franklin Roosevelt as those of Barack Obama.
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The media repeatedly invoke grass roots and other code words to describe the tea party. Tell a lie often enough and it is believed. Our media wizards must realize that with the revelations of high-powered funding and the involvement of Republican operatives, the characterization of the tea party as a spontaneous, ground-up movement does not fit; nagging facts nevertheless must bow to pursuing the “colorful.”
Why take note of a bald candidate—the elected leader of Delaware’s most populous county, one of only 30 counties in the nation with a AAA bond rating—when he is opposed by an attractive woman who bragged that she did not go to Yale, who has gained media stardom with off-the-wall notions on masturbation, gay adoptions and the teaching of evolution, and who was forced by her own past remarks to deny that she was ever a witch? Making the inevitable cheap shot, Christine O’Donnell has criticized the Supreme Court for all of society’s ills since 1954, but when challenged she could not cite a case that fit her objections. She is the poster child for our talk-radio (and TV) culture.
Political strategists with big-money allies have conducted a campaign on the incredible plank of anger, and they have recruited candidates to reflect that anger. The anger is choreographed, directed from above and largely aimed at Obama.
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[John] Raese’s family probably groaned under the burden of having to raise wages in its mines. He is a crude advocate for generations of right-wing grumblings about the transformation of the American nation in the 1930s and 1940s. That undercurrent of alienation now has re-emerged as the well-financed, well-directed tea party, challenging the very legitimacy of so much which has sustained us. Abolish minimum wages, repeal government-run health care programs and privatize Social Security? Of course. The rants are portrayed in the tea partyers’ favorite banner: “Take Back Our County.” However we characterize the current movement, it is clear that truth is the first casualty and the constitutional order is the first prisoner of their war.
Phi Beta Iota: Tea Party members are without a doubt well-intentioned, but most appear oblivious to the fact that their “circus” is a fully-funded sideshow for the extremists that funded Obama [$300 million still unaccounted for] to gain “four more years” on top of the eight they enjoyed under Bush Junior. While there are two moderately well financed “Independent” movements ginning up, one based in Silicon Valley the other in the tri-state area around DC, neither of these is doing their homework on the substance of governance in the context of a balanced budget. Right now 2012 is shaping up to be smart money against dumb money, still campaigning on slogans instead of substance. This is because BOTH the Democratic and the Republican campaign types know nothing of substance–they exploit moods, and bring nothing original to the architecture of democratic design. The Democratic pre-quel to the Tea Party, ACORN, has been discredited and gutted. One wonder's how long it will take to discredit the Tea Party as a front, and mobilize Independents who retain their ability to think, study, and engage in deliberative dialog.
