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!!

“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...