FRANK RICH- (great read) The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party

[underpants]

But whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after. The ordinary Americans in this movement lack the numbers and financial clout to muscle their way into the back rooms of Republican power no matter how well their candidates perform.

Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. “We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” he said, referring to the South Carolina senator who is the Tea Party’s Capitol Hill patron saint. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.” It’s the players who wrote the checks for the G.O.P. surge, not those earnest folk in tri-corner hats, who plan to run the table in the next corporate takeover of Washington. Though Tom DeLay may now be on trial for corruption in Texas, the spirit of his K Street lives on in a Lott client list that includes Northrop Grumman and Goldman Sachs.

For sure, the Republican elites found the Tea Party invaluable on the way to this Election Day. And not merely, as Huckabee has it, because they wanted its foot soldiers. What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it needed both to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday.

They are expert at producing poll numbers to bear that out. By counting those with friends and family in the movement, Rasmussen has calculated that 29 percent of Americans are “tied to” the Tea Party. (If you factor in six degrees of Kevin Bacon, the number would surely double.) But cooler empirical data reveal the truth known by the G.O.P. establishment: An August CNN poll found that 2 percent of Americans consider themselves active members of the Tea Party.

That result was confirmed last weekend by The Washington Post, which published the fruits of its months-long effort to contact every Tea Party group in the country. To this end, it enlisted the help of Tea Party Patriots, the only Tea Party umbrella group that actually can claim to be a spontaneous, bottom-up, grass roots organization rather than a front for the same old fat cats of the Republican right, from the Koch brothers to Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Tea Party Patriots has claimed anywhere from 2,300 to nearly 3,000 local affiliates, but even with its assistance, The Post could verify a total of only 647 Tea Party groups nationwide. Most had fewer than 50 members. The median amount of money each group had raised in 2010 was $800, nowhere near the entry fee for the country club.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/opinion/31rich.html?ref=opinion

[madmax]

1. Pawns nt

[Frustratedlady]

2. Another "But will you love me in the morning" screw job from the GOP

Unfortunately, so many of the Baggers won't catch on and will come back for more in 2012.

[dgibby]

3. When (and/or if) the true believers wake up

and realize they've been duped by the GOP, the blowback will be really ugly. This is the republican version of Pandora's Box.

[Mr. Mustard]

4. Tea Baggers Will Not Change

The republicons will drive a wedge issue into their hearts and the teabaggers will eagerly accept it as proof that the (evil) Democrats have tricked and beat the GOP again.

There won't be an awareness of the irony that if the GOP were tricked again by the Dems, then the GOP is weak and easily beaten, even with larger numbers.

No matter the outcome, the republicons will spin a tale to anger the teabaggers who will not care that it probably contradicts everything the GOP said 5 minutes before.

One of the fatal flaws I see from our side is that we make decisions and assumptions based on rational thinking. There is no rational thinking on the teabaggers side, as well as the white supremeists and bigots. That is the point.

They will not quit. There will always be the haters, the militias, the ignorant, the uneducated and racial purists who are economically disenfranchised easily swayed by hate speech.

Don't discount the power of wedge issues. I continuously hear that the GOP is in trouble long-term, because the younger generation is more tolerant. I agree our kids will be more accepting to Gays and immigrants, but that is not how it will work.

The wedge issues will pump up the motivated, the extremists who will out vote the casual person in mid-terms. It is happening now, as you know, especially if Citizen's United is not changed, the corporate money will confuse even the sane casual voter.


The teabaggers will not change. You make the honest mistake of assuming once they see reality they will come to a logical conclusion, as you or I would.

The whole point is they are not logical, not as long as someone can claim the invisible magic man above the clouds wants them to hate somebody.

[truth2power]

6. You get it! All those here who think they can appeal to the better natures

of teabaggers and other extremists are doing so at their peril. The people you have described operate from the primitive brain. Fight, flight, survival. There's no logic involved.

And since their puppeteers have control of the media and are going to be beating the drum of hate and fear for the foreseeable future, we'd be better off to expend our efforts elsewhere.

In my view, a good rule of thumb when dealing with teabaggers is to respond the way you would with a very young child: Be concrete. Don't give them too many choices. Set limits. :evilgrin:

[Merlot]

5. 2 percent of Americans consider themselves active members of the Tea Party.

Yet they get a disproportionately large amount of news coverage, air time, and media attention.

[NYMdaveNYI]

7. "It’s the players who wrote the checks [...] who plan to run the table” nt

[Irritable Liberal]

8. I think there is a certain level of clueless and ignorant

naivete among the Teabaggers. That combined with the reality that they weild little power and have no authority will piss them off. Whether that will amount to anything is another story but I would love nothing more than an internecine war with Repubicans eating each other for a change.

[grasswire]

9. so I guess we could start calling Teabaggers "beards" for the GOP

Right?

[underpants]

10. As funny as that is I can't believe I haven't heard that before

yes they are beards

:rofl:

spot on grasswire