Tea Party politics this week - is the GOP (finally) taking back their party?

What's interesting about this emerging shift is that this is where we first began investigating the Tea Party 5 years ago:  wanting to know where the GOP ends and the Tea Party begins.  For a long time, there was little difference, since the "devil" of the Tea Party (Barack Obama) was the target of GOP campaigning, too.

But now (theoretically) that we are moving to midterms and a new Presidential election cycle, the "devil" is no longer running, so the Tea Party is losing influence and the GOP seems to be taking back the party from them, perhaps realizing they have no identity once Obama is gone.

They will need something positive to be for because what they were against is no longer an issue.  (or they will need a new anti-thetical trope, but I doubt anything will ever match the fanatical opposition to Obama).

GOP mainstream politicians such as Jeb Bush began this shift years ago (see his 2013 keynote to CPAC).  In that speech, he never mentioned Barack Obama, but instead spoke of what the Republican party stands FOR, not what they stand against.  He noted "we have to stop being against everything."

In essence, the Tea Party needs a new anti-thesis and devil to survive rhetorically. So far the new antithesis seems to be "Benghazi" which is an anti-Hillary (+ Obama) trope.  But Hillary rhetorically turned that back on them in her book recently, accusing them of playing politics "on the backs of dead Americans", which I think significantly weakens for a future anti-thesis.

Not surprising, however, Tea Party leaders such as Sarah Palin and legislators like Ted Cruz are still fixated on Obama and "Obamacare" as a primary problem in the U.S. and still calling for repeal; others such as Rand Paul are slowly backing away from that position.  

Dave Weigel - Slate
The Tea Party vs. the Establishment, in Two Newspaper Front Pages

David Freelander - The Daily Beast
Conservative Senator Kicks Tea Party to the Curb

Stephanie Grace - The Advocate
The GOP keeping the Tea Party at bay.

Jonathan Martin - The New York Times
On Win Streak, Mainline G.O.P. Takes Tougher Stance Toward Tea Party

Jake Sherman - Politico
John Boehner’s friends plot tea party crackdown

Dan Balz - Washington Post
At Republican Leadership Conference, the struggle over the GOP’s future continues

Sean Sullivan - Washington Post
The tea party and GOP establishment are happily married in the Iowa Senate race

David Montgomery - The New York Times
Slowed Elsewhere, Tea Party Still Wields Considerable Sway in Texas Races

Forward Progressives — Sarah Palin Shows Her Stupidity Once Again: Obama Risking “Impeachment” Over Debt Ceiling

Forward Progressives — Sarah Palin Shows Her Stupidity Once Again: Obama Risking “Impeachment” Over Debt Ceiling:

I'm not sure I would write Palin off as merely stupid.  She is a True Believer and for her Tea Party audience her rhetoric does not have to be logical, it only has to be certain.  (See Hoffer).  This is a great (i.e. classic) example of fanatical rhetoric.  

Here's part of what I wrote about Sarah Palin's rhetoric in February 2010 (after we saw her speak at The Tea Party convention in Nashville):

Much ado about Sarah's rhetoric . . . and why it matters.

 “. . . With that said, however, I will acknowledge that based on the evidence from our ongoing research, I do think Palin and the Tea Parties are rhetorically dangerous because of the fanaticism they breed toward the US Government, and in particular, the irrational hatred and fear they exploit and nurture toward out current President, Barack Obama. She clearly stated in Nashville that her motives are to start a revolution . . . The problem with Sarah Palin is that she herself is a True Believer . . . I honestly think she has no clue what she is doing, and I honestly think she believes she is doing a really great thing for America. (You betcha!) . . . someone with very little solid education about human history recklessly running strategy and calling rhetorical plays without full consideration or even awareness of the potential consequences. And wish as we might, she is not going away - indeed, her voice is getting bigger, thanks to Fox News.”

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Tea Partiers Swear They Are Not Racist, But Their Actions Beg To Differ - Occupy Democrats

Occupydemocracy via Twitter:

Tea Partiers Swear They Are Not Racist, But Their Actions Beg To Differ - Occupy Democrats:

Salvatore Aversa writes in this analysis of the Value Voters Summit:

"It is not often I will say somebody is being racist, simply because they disagree with President Obama.  Despite that, there are times when arguments become latent with racism.  It is becoming more and more apparent that the Republican Modus Operandi is complaining because there is a black guy in the White House.  We see it when teabaggers carry signs of President Obama with a bone in his nose.  We see it when Republicans put criticisms on President Obama, that never seemed to be an issue before, like the raising of the debt ceiling, or even simply keeping the government operating.

 This has never been more apparent than with Joe Wurzelbacher, who recently published on his website an article by an unattributed author.  In it, the article states that wanting a “white Republican President” does not “make you racist, it just makes you American.”

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More of this, please!

As I said earlier this week, what needs to happen rhetorically is for the GOP to start casting the Tea Party as the bad guys and the GOP and traditional Conservatives as the good guys.  As President Obama said October 1st, the Tea Party is "one faction of one party in one house".   The political right needs to run with that . . . and that appears to be finally beginning.   

Here is Scott Galupo from The American Conservative today:

Why are Republicans inflicting real, immediate, and tangible harm on the economy in order to accomplish the impossible (delay or defund Obamacare) address an abstract future threat (debt) or merely to save face? Why isn’t the majority of the House majority isolating its rightmost faction and ending this pointlessly asinine pissing match?

Contra the conventional wisdom, I maintain that no one in leadership will lose his job. The very nature of Tea Party opposition, whether it issues from the likes ofBazooka Ted and His Gang in the Senate or the unappeasable Jacobins in the House, is to throw weight without consequence. They evince no interest in actually wielding power from the inside, which would require restraint, conciliation, and moderation. They are hysterics on the brink of utter demoralization. The danger they pose to democratic norms, institutional comity, and political functionality is precisely why they can’t be bargained with; they must be marginalized.

 It’s time, Republicans: it’s time to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom. (emphasis mine)

Word.  More of this, please!!

"Insane, Catastrophic, Chaos"

From the Washington Post:

President Obama addressed the nation Tuesday regarding the government shutdown, telling Congress to take a vote on a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown.  Video and transcript are available here.

Specific comments about the Tea Party from President Obama's press conference today:

Now the last time that the tea party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, two years ago, markets plunged, business and consumer confidence plunged, America's credit rating was downgraded for the first time, and a decision to actually go through with it, to actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be -- and I'm quoting here -- "insane, catastrophic, chaos" -- these are some of the more polite words.… 

And I've continued to believe that Citizens United contributed to some of the problems we're having in Washington right now. You know, you have some ideological extremist who has a big bankroll, and they can entirely skew our politics.
And there are a whole bunch of members of Congress right now who privately will tell you, I know our positions are unreasonable, but we're scared that if we don't go along with the tea party agenda, or the -- some particularly extremist agenda, that we'll be challenged from the right. And the threats are very explicit. And so they toe the line. And that's part of why we've seen a breakdown of just normal routine business done here in Washington on behalf of the American people.And all of you know it. I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know because it's very explicit. You report on it. A big chunk of the Republican Party right now is -- are in gerrymandered districts where there's no competition and those folks are much more worried about a tea party challenger than they are about a general election where they've got to complete against a Democrat or go after independent votes. And in that environment, it's a lot harder for them to compromise. All right?

Transcript of President's remarks is available via the Washington Post.

“The Tea Party is better understood as a reactionary conservative force.”

“The Tea Party is better understood as a reactionary conservative force.”

University of Washington political scientist Christopher Parker, a co-author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America:

"In our survey research, a list experiment also revealed how Tea Party conservatives think differently than other conservatives.  We randomly divided survey respondents into two groups and asked them how many of a list of statements — but not which statements — they agreed with.  The only thing that differed across the two groups was whether the list of statements included the proposition that “Obama is destroying the country.” The results showed a striking divergence: 71 percent of Tea-Party conservatives agreed with this statement but six percent of non-Tea Party conservatives did."  (Emphasis mine)

"We also explored the roots of identification with the Tea Party.  We found that, even after controlling a host of factors — including ideology and attitudes toward African-Americans — Tea Party identifiers were more common among those believing that Obama actively promotes socialism.  This again suggests motives more akin to reactionary conservatism."

Once again, we see the identification against a devil (Obama) as the primary basis of Tea Party membership and movement.  Parker calls them "reactionary".  We call them fanatical.  I'm going to tentatively suggest that being fanatical and being reactionary are not exactly the same.  In a fanactical group there is a specific rhetorical devil.  This is not necessarily the case in a reactionary movement.  Fanatical movements are motivated by fear - not necessarily so a reactionary m0vement.  This is a tentative conclusion - I'm still thinking about it...

USA Today - "The Tea Party shutdown"

From the October 2nd USA Today editorial clarifying that the government shutdown is not the result of both parties in Congress behaving badly; rather the shutdown is entirely attributable to the Tea Party "fringe".  The editorial board notes:

This shutdown, the first in 17 years, isn't the result of two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain by the usual means: winning elections. 

Call it the Tea Party shutdown. The group will wear the badge proudly.

Pressed by this uncompromising fringe, Republicans leaders in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters in return for keeping government running. Most absurdly, they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment.

No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should. (Emphasis mine).

More fanatical (as opposed to useful or practical) Tea Party opposition to the symbolic Obama devil - in this case "Obamacare".  And USA Today also points out that this is coming from the "disaffected base" of the party - which is a primary component of a fanatical movement (the disaffected audience) according to Eric Hoffer.

A reporter for MSNBC (find name) similarly noted last week that those in opposition are "True Believers" who really do believe Obamacare is dangerous - it is not merely a political strategy to oppose the Democrats.  

Which is even scarier - because as Hoffer so clearly outlines, fanatical movements cannot be persuaded by reason and logic because they are not concerned about the rational basis of a policy position. There can be no compromise for them because they are on a "holy quest" that is more important than any practical policy concern.  True Believers will sacrifice anything for their Holy Cause and for the Tea Party this is opposing "the devil" Obama and all of his works (e.g. Obamacare).

 So in this case, what gets sacrificed to the "holy cause" that Hoffer explains is the American budget and the entire functioning of the government.  Nevermind how much this hurts workers and citizens who are furloughed or denied access to federal landmarks because of the shutdown.  The Tea Party doesn't care:  we are just collateral damage in their holy quest to oppose their devil (i.e. Obama).

My 2 cents:

If Speaker Boehner is waiting for this disaffected base to come around and support a straight vote on the budget, it will never happen.  He'll have to take a stand and split the party into two distinguishable components:  The GOP (who cares about America and Americans) and The Tea Party (who care about nothing but their fanatical quest to oppose President Obama).  Perhaps faced with the choice of being part of the un-American Tea Party or part of an American GOP, there could be a shift for some into the "American" brotherhood.

Symbolically, rhetorically, that is the only solution to the fanatical Tea Party problem in the GOP and Congress.

Don't hold your breath.  Everytime Boehner has had a chance to jettison the Tea Party and elevate the GOP he has balked.  I can't help but wonder - what are they holding over his head that he is so paralyzed by their influence?  Is remaining Speaker of the House so important that he will collude and empower the fringe in order to assure his position - thus refusing to become part of the solution (the American GOP) and joining the problem (the anti-American Tea party).  Is he really that weak?

How does he not get that Americans love a hero more than they love House Speakers?  Directing his party to do a straight up and down vote on the budget and the debt ceiling for the good of America makes him a hero.  Not doing so just makes him a Tea Party tool.

The Shutdown Party: Our view - (USA Today Editorial)

USA Today editorial position - October 1st, 2013

The Shutdown Party: Our view:

As the government shutdown loomed, many Americans did what comes naturally in matters regarding Washington: They ignored it.Now that the shutdown has happened, many people are inclined toward a second default position: Blame everyone.

Both positions fit the dismally low view that Americans have of government in general, and Congress in particular.

In this case, however, the "they're all bums" reaction is off-base. This shutdown, the first in 17 years, isn't the result of two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain by the usual means: winning elections.

Call it the Tea Party shutdown. The group will wear the badge proudly. 

Pressed by this uncompromising fringe, Republicans leaders in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters in return for keeping government running. Most absurdly, they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment. 

No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should.

 (emphasis mine)

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Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News Over Syria Coverage: 'Who Cares HOW We Avoided A War...' (VIDEO)

Jon Stewart - the man who brought us "Baracknophobia"  - blasts Fox this week for their fanatical opposition to President Obama ("the devil").  They do this not with well reasoned argument on policy but rather with fear that serves to increase and feed their "brotherhood".

I get that Fox opposes the Syria peace plan because its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless, irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus like existence, BUT... sorry, I blacked out for a second I was saying something?  (emphasis mine)

This is epic.  Watch:

Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News Over Syria Coverage: 'Who Cares HOW We Avoided A War...' (VIDEO):

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Glenn Beck Bringing Anti-Immigrant Conspiracy Theories To Tea Party Rally | Blog | Media Matters for America

Of course he is.

Glenn Beck Bringing Anti-Immigrant Conspiracy Theories To Tea Party Rally | Blog | Media Matters for America:

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Occupy Democrats on 2010 Tea Party promises and new abortion laws

Posted by Occupy Democrats on their Facebook Page:

(1) Timeline Photos:

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The Tea Party & The Inevitable Return Of The Stupid Party | The Daily Banter

The Tea Party & The Inevitable Return Of The Stupid Party | The Daily Banter:

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Welcome to the Rhetoric Goat!

Welcome!

Eric Covington and I started this blog in the Spring of 2010 as we prepared to see Sarah Palin speak at the first Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tn.  Thanks to the generosity of then MTSU Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, Mark Byrnes, we had been able to purchase two tickets to the dinner and her keynote speech at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.  We started this blog as a place to talk about our ideas and refer others who might be interested in what we were studying, too.

This all grew out of a class project that developed in my COMM 4650 (Rhetorical theory, history, and criticism) class in the Spring of 2009.  On April 15th, the first ever "Tea Party" rallies were held around the country, and I was fascinated - pretty soon everyone was.  What on earth were they protesting?  Why?  What was their goal?

What immediately caught our attention were the anti-Obama signs that dominated these events.  Was the Tea Party FOR something or were they just AGAINST newly elected President Obama?

I assigned the class to read Eric Hoffer's work on "the True Believer" and his theory of Mass Movements.  We had some great discussions looking at the Tea Party as well as the "Hope" campaign of Obama.  Did they fit the criteria Hoffer described?  How so?  Why or why not?  And who cares, anyway?

We had also already discussed in class the Republican party's challenge to re-brand themselves following their defeat in the 2008 Presidential election.  How would they use rhetoric to constitute a new identity?  What would they include, what would they change, who would be the voices of leadership?

So naturally, these discussions led us to consider if the Tea Party was going to be  the new face of the Republican party.  Little did we know in the Spring of 2009 how our curiosity about these topics would become political reality in the U.S. throughout the summer at the HealthCare Town Hall meetings and then throughout the next year as the Congress debated Health Care Reform.  And then, in the Fall of 2010, the Tea Party made its formal debut in American politics by capturing a number of Congressional seats.

So the initial insight that prompted me to involve my students in the study of this (then completely) new movement turned out to be amazingly prophetic.  And long before the 2010 mid-term election, we had some insights and predictions gained through rhetorical criticism papers completed for the rhetoric class.  Eric's paper - an analysis of Tea Party ideographs - won the top undergraduate paper award at TCA in 2009.  He continued his research with me during an Independent Study in the Fall of 2009 and the formal paper he finished and submitted was accepted for presentation at the annual Theodore Clevenger Undergraduate Honors conference at the annual SSCA regional convention.

My own work was focused on the application of Hoffer's ideas to the Tea Party movement.  First this required me to turn Hoffer's thoughts about audiences and rhetorical strategies into a theory of fanatical rhetoric.  Then I had to determine how or if it fit the Tea Party movement (and later the OccupyWallStreet movement).  This research and rhetorical theory development is what I am working on now and my papers working through this development have been competitively selected for three major regional conferences (SSCA and CSCA).

I was also interviewed for the NCA online journal, Communication Currents, in the Spring of 2011 about my theories and my perspective on the Tea Party and their "violence-flavored rhetoric" (which was my term for it).  You can watch that interview here:

So throughout the years since we started it in 2010, this blog has become a "dumping ground" of sorts for things we/I found in research and internet journies that related to the study and the development of the fanatical rhetorical theory.  We also share it with others who are interested in studying the Tea Party movement as a "library" of sources.  It is certainly not complete nor does it even have any organization at this time; but the blog gets a significant amount of traffic every month, so somebody must find it useful.

If you search the archives you will find the actual blog posts I wrote along the way describing and explaining what we were seeing rhetorically in the Tea Party.  Most of those posts were in early 2010, but there have been a number of them since then, commenting on signficant developments as the Tea Party gained power.

What tickles us is how right we were.  Our insights may seem like "common sense" now, but they surely weren't in 2009-2010 when this study began.  It's a useful reminder for us about following that "hunch" when it strikes.  I thought this was going to be a huge rhetorical development in American politics, and it was.  It still is.

It's not over.  So stay tuned . . .

Feel free to leave us comments!

p.s. if you want to know the story behind the name, you can find it at the very beginning of the blog - February, 2010.

It's Fear Over Our Country's Future That's Driving the Tea Party Movement | Fox News

It's Fear Over Our Country's Future That's Driving the Tea Party Movement | Fox News:

Note:  fear is what drives fanatics, too.  Is it a rational fear?


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Who is Saul Alinsky, and why is Newt Gingrich so obsessed with him? - CSMonitor.com

From the CS Monitor: "Newt Gingrich keeps likening President Obama to radical community organizer Saul Alinsky. But Gingrich seems to have adopted Alinsky's tactics himself, as has the tea party. Mainstream Republicans aren't happy."

“The Tea Party comes from the same sense of outrage that the elites, as Gingrich calls them, are running the country,” Dick Simpson, a University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former Chicago alderman, told Bloomberg News. “The Tea Party has understood how to mobilize their anger and turn it to political results, which is the underlying motif of Alinsky.”

Alinsky, Simpson says, was “a master community organizer who attempted to organize people without power, people that today we’d call the 99 percent, by using the strength of numbers to overcome clout and wealth.”

FreedomWorks, the tea party group headed by former Republican House Leader Dick Armey, gives copies of “Rules for Radicals” to its leaders. “His tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective,” FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon told the Wall Street Journal. Tea Partyers aggressively confronting lawmakers at town hall meetings is straight from Alinsky’s playbook.

Who is Saul Alinsky, and why is Newt Gingrich so obsessed with him? - CSMonitor.com

"The Poignantly Frustrated" . . .

Over and over I keep coming back to this quote by Eric Hoffer about Mass (fanatical) Movements:

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.” (p. 41)

Although I am still neither a supporter or opponent of OWS, I am still also puzzled by their lack of practicality and their refusal to engage the democratic process as a mechanism of change. In this sense they are significantly different from the Tea Party who doggedly and successfully used existing democratic processes to effect changes they desired by electing candidates who would represent their values and working to defeat candidates who do not. OWS, however, identifies and prides itself on standing outside of the democratic process. In this sense, OWS more fundamentally fits Hoffer's profile of the True Believer and "the poignantly frustrated."

It also earns them the label of "radical" by non-supporters and presents a significant credibility challenge for attracting "mainstream" supporters.

Hmmm....

OWS and Tea Party Demographics - Race and Gender Demographics

Having been completely distracted from the work I was doing earlier this evening by the dramatic raid of the OccupyWallStreet (OWS) encampment in Zuccotti Park by the NYPD, I was once again struck by the overwhelming whiteness of the images coming from the movement - which is so much like my first perceptions of the Tea Party movement. So I started digging around a little for demographics of the OWS movement...

Interestingly enough, the official OWS homepage summarizes one demographic study (below), highlighting political, occupational and educational stats, but the summary leaves out two key demographics: race and sex.

What is interesting - and worthy of further research and understanding - is that demographic polls of both OWS and Tea Party membership indicate that they are both predominantly White movements with very few Blacks/African-Americans involved in either movement.

Likewise, there are more males than females in these movements, although much more disproportionally male to female for OWS.

This demographic study of OWS by Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Ph.D.
(School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, Ph.D. Programs in Sociology and Urban Education,
City University of New York) indicates that "the 99%" is a little over 80% white. Only 1.3% of the movement identifies as Black or African-American.

The 2010 NYT/CBS poll of Tea Party members indicates a nearly identical result: 89% White and 1% Black/African-American.

What's up with THAT?

While Dr. Cordero-Guzman asserts that the movement is a fair representation of the U.S. Population, (His title is: "Main Stream Support for a Mainstream Movement:
The 99% Movement Comes From and Looks Like the 99%"), the actual percentage of Blacks/African-Americans in the US is around 12%, according to the most recent Census data.

Likewise, the OWS movement is nearly 2/3 male(67%male/30%female/.8%transgender and 1.1%other). The Tea Party demographics reported also predominantly male, but by a much slimmer margin (59% male/41% female). Actual US population by sex according to Census data is about 50/50 male/female.

Ok, so maybe he is comparing the 99% to a 99% figure worked out by subtracting the demographics of the 1%, but he doesn't indicate that, and that still doesn't account for the numbers. Once again he states as his conclusion: "To conclude, our data suggest that the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%."

And in any case, my question remains: why are the two largest political movements since the election of Barack Obama predominantly white? Why aren't Blacks/African-Americans involved in either of these movements in any significant way?

And why are the OWS protestors predominantly male?

To be fair, one major difference in these movements is political affiliation/voting characteristics. The Tea Party poll identified (approximately) over 60% Republican/Conservative and about 20-25% independent/vote for both equally/moderate while OWS identifies nearly 70% politically independent and only 2% Republican. Democrat/Liberal identification is approximately 4-5% for the Tea Party and approximately 27% for OWS.


What would be critically interesting is a NYT/CBS poll of the OWS members using the exact same questions - many of which specifically address perceptions of the Presidency of Barack Obama and the issues of "socialism".

Yeah...I think I called that one.

I previously commented on the inadvisability of a Dem alliance with OWS.

"As radicalism creeps in, credibility retreats from OWS" by Michael Gerson highlights some of the problems that have given me pause all along.

At what point does a protest movement become an excuse for camping? At what point is utopianism discredited by the seedy, dangerous, derelict fun fair it creates? At what point do the excesses of a movement become so prevalent that they can reasonably be called its essence? At what point do Democratic politicians need to repudiate a form of idealism that makes use of Molotov cocktails?

The emergence of Occupy Wall Street raised Democratic hopes for the emergence of a leftist equivalent to the Tea Party movement. The comparison is now laughable. Set aside, for a moment, the reports of sexual assault in Zuccotti Park and the penchant for public urination. Tea Party activists may hate politicians, but they venerate American political institutions. Veneration does not always involve understanding. But the Tea Party’s goal is democratic influence.

Tea Party Devil and Holy Cause redux: "I hope he fails!"

Once again, I assert that the "devil" of the fanatical Tea Party movement is Barack Obama - and Limbaugh's 2009 rallying cry of "I hope he fails!" is their primary identity, their fanatical "Holy Cause" and their one true political goal. There is nothing about this movement rhetoric that is rooted in reality and reaching toward a better future for all Americans. This is once again, as always, about demonizing and obstructing the "un-American" "tyrannical" "socialist" "dictatorial" President of the United States, Barack Obama.

(The democratically elected, majority-winning POTUS, mind you - but, hey, let's not let that annoying fact get in our fanatical way).

Their "Baracknophobia" and fanatical Holy Cause to defeat Obama the devil doesn't get any clearer than this:

"Tea Party Nation urges businesses to stop hiring in order to hurt Obama"

Right Wing Watch writes:

"Tea Party Nation sent to their members today a message from activist Melissa Brookstone urging businesspeople to “not hire a single person” to protest the Obama administration’s supposed “war against business and my country.” Brookstone writes that business owners should stop hiring new employees in order to stand up to “this new dictator,” the “global Progressive socialist movement,” Hollywood, the media and Occupy Wall Street."

Brookstone writes:

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

…

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

And there you have it . . . bat-shit-crazy redux. The Tea Party fanaticism is back and more hyperbolic and vitriolic than ever. Now our democratically elected President - in cahoots with OccupyWallStreet - has created a war within America - "I...resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped."

This will surely be interpreted as a call to the Holy Cause (and most likely violence) for the nuttiest wingnuts - mark my words.

This.is.not.good.

Is the Tea Party Over?

Article from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/is-the-tea-party-over.html

UPDATE (10-19-11): Obviously not! http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tea-party-nation-urges-businesses-stop-hiring-order-hurt-obama