Tea Parties And Liberal Angst
April 13, 2009 / 9:08 am • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierOn the same day I had a Twitter conversation with Jane Hamsher, who is absolutely convinced that a nefarious plot by shadowy right-leaning organizations backs the Tea Party movement, I received this email from the actual people doing the Houston organization:
Anyone having any meetings the next two days? Would like to stop by and maybe help coordinate. I don’t know everything, but can try to make it where I can.
Merchandise, We’re needing a status on the shirts, please tell Felicia if anyone knows.
Also, if any of you can donate, we’re really hurting for cash at this point.
Click here to Donate Or use Pay Pal to donate to the info@houstontps.org account.
-Josh
Okay, so this is a young conservative guy that I’ve met once at a local conservative meet-up. For the leftists out there….Do you understand what he’s saying? He’s saying to the other INDEPENDENT organizers over the parts and pieces of the Tea Party protest that he’d like to help and how’s it going. Pretty decentralized, I’d say.
Little Miss Attila noted the conversations and has this to say:
Unless the argument here is that every center-right organization or individual is somehow one large lump of protoplasm that cannot quite make up its mind about marijuana, gay marriage or what constitutes separation of church and state, but knows that it wants lower taxes. In that case, the reason that Tea Parties are so much better-attended than ANWF events is that . . . the right commands more robots than the Soros-funded left does! (This leads us to the conclusion that we threw the last Presidential election, in a further attempt to confuse the left.)
The fact is, the people at these events are mad as hell at Washington. Republican Senators, at least, seem to get this, as NONE but Jim DeMint is showing the intestinal fortitude to show up to one of these conspiratorial gatherings. They’re afraid they’ll be skewered. And if the response to my questions on Twitter as to what their involvement should be, they are partly right.
As an aside, though, I think Senators are making a political miscalculation by hiding in Washington or wherever and avoiding the gatherings. It would be good for them to wander among their constituents, handler-free, and just talk to them. This is the point of the protests: It seems like no one is listening to the average voter and it seems like a vote doesn’t matter anymore because politicians do what they damn well please. By not attending, the Congress people reinforce that notion.
Back to Leftist angst. I’m smelling more than a little jealousy, fear and loathing from my leftist brethren. Protests over the last eight years were nonsensical, anemic affairs with screaming meemees in pink T-shirts. Or they’re naked hot chicks for PETA. Or they’re naked bicyclers protesting war and Israel and the new world order. In short, the Leftists come across as unstable whack-jobs with no job and time to burn who had no purpose in life but their thinly veiled America-hate. Plus, they just don’t have many numbers.
Oh, the press likes to make these little mews of discontent seem like roars, but let’s be serious. Thinking people are embarrassed to see what passes for a protest these days. No one wants to hang with a bunch of smelly hippies still living the halcyon days of the early bell-bottomed 70s.
Plus, the Left’s protests ring hollow. For all the talk of supporting troops, actions like defacing recruiting stations or liberal Senators, including Barack Obama, making reference to our soldiers as killers, doesn’t sound so supportive. Not to mention the Truther movement believing 9/11 was an inside job.
In stark contrast, the Tea Party movement is being organized by regular old people. Thousands of citizens will come to these events. And people like me, are trying to figure out how to get to Washington, D.C. over July 4th because that’s the next step.
And the next step is laying out for our leaders what we want policy-wise.
And the next step after that is getting people elected who will embrace what made America great to begin with.
The Left hopes, hopes, hopes the Tea Party movement is a flash-in-the-pan, impotent action. Heck, some on the right do, too.
My sense is that they’re all very wrong.
People feel disenfranchised from the government generally. The Republican party once stood for small government, fiscal responsibility, and freedom. The Democrat party once stood for the common man, the worker. Both party members seem to stand for one thing: PERSONAL GAIN.
Being a politician, like Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the fetid lot, is very lucrative. These people, without irony, can vote themselves raises while unemployment heads toward 10%. These people, without shame, can make income tax “mistakes” and not be charged interest and penalties, while the common citizen would pay and probably be prosecuted criminally. These people, can cry out against regulations they passed and blame others for an economic collapse of their own making.
Anyone with a frontal lobe is sick of the lot of them.
So what is a citizen to do? We vote for candidates we think will follow principles and then they sell out. The Tea Party protests are a way to let the government know that it has got to stop.
Maddy Pamilia, a 17 year old citizen journalist reported from the Pasadena protest:
Basil said that we had a “tyrannical congressional majority.” He added that this tea party would “make Samuel Adams proud” and “we have something he didn’t have.”
John Ziegler started out laughing that it took a lot to get him to miss the Masters, but this tea party was a good cause. He got the crowd to cheer when he called Arnold Schwarzenegger Benedict Arnold Schwarzenegger and said he should be punished. He ended with, “Never stop fighting for truth and never stop fighting for America.”
Teresa Hernandez said the government right now is like “crazies running the insane asluym” and the government is “spending money like drunken sailors.”
Again, I say to the Left, what do you object to? This is what I heard about why it was important to elect Barack Obama–that he’d bring responsibility back. Really? Is that what’s happening, because the multiple trillion dollar deficits don’t seem responsible.
If the Left had any principles whatsoever, they’d be joining these protests and making their voices heard. Really, this sentiment isn’t Democrat or Republican. It’s about freedom. It’s about the individual. It’s American.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews















9 Responses to “Tea Parties And Liberal Angst”
April 13 2009 / 9:58 am
Reply
“It’s about the individual” is very much against modern Liberal thinking. Liberals are all about groups. “Who cares if a person gets hurt as long as it’s for the good of the group,” seems to be the party line for liberals.
April 13 2009 / 1:06 pm
Reply
I suspect that many (not all, of course) of the these tea-party protesters voted for Obama and largely supported the notion of “change” from the Bush era. But one of the fundamental “changes” they were hoping for was an end to the fiscal irresponsibility of the past 8 years. The continuance of massive budget deficits and the continued ballooning of the national debt has really soured these voters on the Obama administration, which was supposed to change all of that.
Unfortunately, I don’t recollect hearing any specific emphasis in Obama’s campaign speeches on debt or deficit reduction (other than his promise to review the budget “line-by-line”). That lack, coupled with his voting for the first “bank bailout,” caused me not to vote for him. Of course, I couldn’t vote for McCain either for the same reasons.
Maybe the third party in the next national election will be the “Tea Party”!
April 13 2009 / 4:07 pm
Reply
Well, you ask a question of the Left and I will answer.
No angst here. Carry on.
Because the tea bagging protests have no discernable policy objective they will be even less effective than the protests against the Iraq War.
At least with those protests, you knew what we wanted: no war in Iraq. What do the teabaggers want in terms of concrete policies? Nobody’s been able to tell. You lost an election and you’re angry about it. I feel for you.
If it keeps people from holing up in an RV and going out in a blaze of gunfire, then it will be time well spent. Please enjoy. Let us know how it goes.
April 15 2009 / 6:20 am
Reply
It’s too bad the neo-conservatives didn’t pick a better name for their protests. Tea-bagging? LOL
April 15 2009 / 6:01 pm
Reply
you wrote ‘At least with those protests, you knew what we wanted: no war in Iraq. What do the teabaggers want in terms of concrete policies? Nobody’s been able to tell. You lost an election and you’re angry about it. I feel for you.’
first of all they do have a plan, quit the outrageous spending, whcih is totally unnecesary. the TARP money was enough. the other spendiong listed as stimulus was just pork, or pushing ahead a few necesary items ahead of the. budget, and then spending the money again. many of us voted for and some agaisnt Obama, but he surprised us in how irresponsible he has been. It is not about losing the election, and I am not republican, but an independent (not like the pseudo independents in the senate). McCain admisdded he did not have a plan, Obama said he did , apparantly it was to drwoned us it debt and ciontinue to blame it on everyone else. For example, Bush’s budget defiocits were starting to come down in last two years of republican controled congress, but not by enough, then two years with democrats in chargee they started up again, and now they are out of sight. It seems to be that we are all losers in the last election. As much as I hated Reagan, he was right in that he sparked and economic surge that lasted since. his only fault was letting spending go up too high by democratic congress. His tax income sky rocketed. and Bush actually increased tax on wealthy, unlike what liberals broadcast, so i am not impressed by liberals and thier record either.