Has this country ever had a bigger group of useful idiots than the teabaggers?

[sufrommich]

I say no. Can anybody name a group more hell bent on destroying themselves to save the wealthy in this country? If so, who?

[cutlassmama]

1. no

[3waygeek]

2. Useful?

not sure if that's the right word for them. I sure as hell don't have any use for them.

[sufrommich]

4. Their corporate sponsors sure find them useful. nt

[Le Taz Hot]

3. I KNOW we have historians on this board.

I'd love to hear what they have to say.

[sufrommich]

5. Me too. nt

[Tesha]

6. The Religious Right.

Bigger and even better funded than the Tea Baggers
(although they share many members).

And FAR, FAR more successful for much longer. This
country's government is firmly under their control
or we wouldn't be arguing about contraception, abortion,
women's rights in general, gays, or evils Muslims.

Tesha

[JanMichael]

7. Correct; the Moral Majority of the '80's...

That movement was huge...and behind Reagan's "success."

[JoePhilly]

9. The Tea Baggers are largely a reminent of the Religious right.

Sure, its got some libertarian-like folks, but it is also the religious right. All the same old social issue positions.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. Plus they've always gotten a certain amount of deference

because of the fact that their activism is based on their *religious* beliefs. Teabaggers are slightly easier to dismiss b/c of their lack of an institutionally sanctioned belief system (unless you consider the constitution to be their "religion") and that their beliefs are more on the "fringe". Of course, neither of those two aspects really mattered much to the corporate media that hyped them in 2009 and all of last year leading up to the midterm elections but I don't think that the teabaggers are going to have quite the "shelf life" the religious right has had.

[PA Democrat]

8. Racists who voted Republican after

the Civil Rights Act was passed.

[Tesha]

14. We're using several different descriptions to describe the same basic cohort of folks.

And all these descriptions are equally true.

Tesha

[forty6]

10. Not quite as bad, but......in the 1800's to about-1860

"The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery.
The movement originated in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It spread to other states as the Native American Party and became a national party in 1845. In 1855 it renamed itself the American Party.<1> The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing."


Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (1938()

[RegieRocker]

12. Prohibitionists

[TheKentuckian]

13. Corporate taint licking "centrists" are a much larger and more dangerous group.

Certainly, they have been a more effective force for those that pull the TeaPubliKlan strings for a much longer time than this bunch of astro turfed fuckwits.

[Rage for Order]

15. Nader voters

[Tesha]

16. Well done. Nice way to bring disunity to the thread. (NT)

[Rage for Order]

17. How'd the 8 years of George W. Bush work out for you?

Nader siphoned voters and installed Bush.

[Tesha]

18. *I* didn't vote for Nader. Ever.

But you just keep driving away our potential
voters and see how *THAT* works for you!

Tesha