The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

[SpartanDem]

The Tea Party movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American patriots dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest British imperial power. But while New England was the center of resistance to the British empire, there are few New Englanders to be found in today's Tea Party movement. It should be called the Fort Sumter movement, after the Southern attack on the federal garrison in Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12-13, 1861, that began the Civil War. Today's Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way.

The mainstream media have completely missed the story, by portraying the Tea Party movement in ideological rather than regional terms. Whether by accident or design, the public faces of the Tea Party in the House are Midwesterners -- Minnesota's Michele Bachmann and Joe Walsh of Illinois. But while there may be Tea Party sympathizers throughout the country, in the House of Representatives the Tea Party faction that has used the debt ceiling issue to plunge the nation into crisis is overwhelmingly Southern in its origins

The four states with the most Tea Party representatives in Congress are all former members of the Confederate States of America. The states with the greatest number of members of the House Tea Party caucus are Texas (12), Florida (7), Louisiana (5) and Georgia (5). While California is in fifth place with four House Tea Party members, the sixth, seventh and eighth places on the list are taken by two former Southern slave states, South Carolina and Tennessee, and a border state, Missouri, each with three members of the congressional Tea Party caucus.

If states with significant white Southern diasporas were included, the Southern proportion of the House Tea Party caucus would be even bigger. Many of the other states with Tea Party representatives are border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. One is Maryland, a state with Confederate sympathies during the Civil War, which, because the Census Bureau defines it as "Northeastern," is responsible for the only Northeastern member of the Tea Party caucus, Roscoe Bartlett. The four Californian representatives come from the Orange County area or inland California, both regions whose political culture was shaped by Southern political culture, in the form of the "Okie" diaspora that settled there during the Depression.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party




This line pretty much sums it up The goal, the methods and the passion of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right.
The tea party should be called the White Planters Party if know anything of the history about the relationship between the rich, white planters and poor whites who often sided with them this is really the modern form.

[jpak]

1. K&R

yup

[Skip_In_Boulder]

2. The irony is that the original Boston Tea Party

was a revolt against corporate monopoly while the current Tea Party loves corporate monopoly.

[JHB]

4. It was destruction of property of a politically-connected corporation...

...and had real potential for a violent confrontation, though one didn't happen at the time. It did, however, prompt a military crackdown by the government the corporation was so well-connected to.


Bears absolutely no resemblance to any teabagger rally I know of. But then, their organizations are financed by politically-connected corporations. So they're the tories.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

6. Yep n/t

[TxVietVet]

3. When Prettyhair Perry talked of Texas seccesion, the teabaggin' kkkluckers were excited.

That's when you knew it was the good old Southern white boy faction of the conservanazi republikan party. It's just a new version of the Old South. "The Federal gov'nment cain't tell us what to do." Redneckin' bu$hit. Remember Demint was going "to break" Obama. Some of them are so racist that they will use their racism in their language to talk about Obama. It appeals to the main stream conservanazis I worked with in Wisconsin. Conservanazis like charlie sikes and mark belling in Milwaukee are always demonizing minorities. It's their biggest fear that keep the white conservanazis all wound up tight in Wisconsin.

[OHdem10]

5. Yep, the Media have never understood: "Save your

Confederate Money, Boys, the South's gonna rise again,"

Only it is happening faster than most imagined.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

7. Deleted

[TroglodyteScholar]

8. There may be overlap with age-old southern mindsets...

...but I'm sorry to tell you that the Tea Party has taken hold in plenty of other regions. I wish it weren't so.

[tanyev]

9. The Southern Strategy has risen again.

[HereSince1628]

10. I don't know that confederate sympathies have much to do with

it. I suspect it is more a twisted appeal to rebelliousness. Rebelliousness has always been abundant in the US and it is venerated as high among the qualities of the American yeoman. Rebels populate our halls of fame on the left and the right (think about our civil rights and pro-labor heroes). We've been well soaked and dyed in the wool of it by Hollywood and television. We can find this American quality wherever we look. If an author chooses to look in the south and locations of a so-called 'southern diaspora' that author will surely find it.

Aiming at good-ol boys with sympathies to the Dukes of Hazard fails to target the enemy. The real anti-federalist rebellion of the tea-party stems from the executive functioning of the movement--which is a handful of politically radical super-rich guys motivated by unhappiness about a federal government that pushes their corporate interests to spend money to perform like responsible institutions run by good citizens. They are the ones funding the think tanks producing the salvos of pro-corporate legislation, and stoking the campaigns and media with money and faux messages with rebellious appeal.

Using America's love of rebelliousness as a vehicle for their selfish purposes, they've succeeded in braiding their pro-corporate messaging with the populist ideas of the far right. They've captured the republican right with characteristically less intellectual politicians. I give as an example, the freshman senator Ron Johnson, WI, who isn't southern in any respect. But he is deeply deluded with and fully committed to the tea-party rebelliousness, while ironically proving to be another lazy-thinker who depends on the authoritarianism of church and think-tank masters for his message.

[checks-n-balances]

12. The South has its roots in Cheap Labor, and the tradition continues

Definitely a "religious" belief of the south that began with slavery. Is modern-day counterpart definitely has dominance over U.S. political power today, spread by the T Party.

[ladjf]

11. This is a very good and constructive OP. Congratulations. nt