The Great Tea Party Rip-Off Frank Rich

[elleng]

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.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html?ref=opinion

[Demeter]

1. Masterful Essay

and unfortunate turn of events. If we want opposition to sharpen up the Democratic Party, we are going to have to provide it from within, and from the grassroots.

Can you say "viable new 3rd party?"

[Cartoonist]

3. read my lips

Can you say "viable new 3rd party?"
-
I can say it, but so what? I can also say "Peace on Earth" and "Good Will to Man". France has lots of 3rd parties that lean left, that's why the sole right party now rules. Knock off this dreamy-eyed Naderism that only leads to facism.

[Bette Noir]

7. Fringe parties pull the mainstream parties in their directions.

When the Peace and Freedom party was visible, both the Democrats and the Republicans were much more liberal than they are today. There was no attitude of "where else will they go?", the contempt that the Democratic establishment regards us with today.

[crispini]

5. Unfortunate? The Republican party is eating its own young, and you call it unfortunate?

I, personally, am filled with glee at the prospect of those unprincipled schmucks getting what they deserve.

[underpants]

2. Steele is widely regarded as a clown by observers of all political persuasions.......

I was just about to post this article

great read as always

[crispini]

4. This is an EXCELLENT read.

I highly recommend it. A few more snips:

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.

What we knew all along, heh!

[Bette Noir]

6. The man can write.