You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Home Front: Politix
Why Not A Leftard Tea Party?
2011-10-03
Why hasnÂ’t there been a Tea Party on the left?
The left wants to go back to 1774?
And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship?
Not while he's President, I expect.

That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nationÂ’s political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of ObamaÂ’s term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the impression that the president is far more liberal than he says he is, and turned the nationÂ’s agenda away from progressive reform.
Whoa, EJ! Are you on a different wavelength, dude? The Right Wing has already taken over?

A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the Tea Party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesnÂ’t stand a chance unless there is a fair fight between the right and the left.
There's no such thing. The lefties don't comprehend the dictionary definition of fair.

ItÂ’s not surprising that ObamaÂ’s election unleashed a conservative backlash. Ironically, disillusionment with George W. BushÂ’s presidency had pushed Republican politics right, not left.
All you Rantburgers believe that, right?
Given the publicÂ’s negative verdict on Bush as defined by the media and Washington Post, conservatives shrewdly argued that his failures were caused by his lack of fealty to conservative doctrine. He was cast as a big spender (even if a large chunk of the largess went to Iraq). He was called too liberal on immigration and a big-government guy for bailing out the banks, using federal power to reform the schools and championing a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
The lefties hated No Child Left Behind, as I recall, and never mentioned the medicare benefit, because they wished they'd thought of it.

Conservative funders realized that pumping up the Tea Party movement was the most efficient way to build opposition to ObamaÂ’s initiatives. And the media became infatuated with the Sarah Palin and the Tea Party in the summer of 2009, covering its disruptions of congressional town halls with an enthusiasm not visible this summer when many Republicans faced tough questions from their more progressive constituents.
When they were not swooning over Obama's deft handling of marshmallow questions.

ObamaÂ’s victory, in the meantime, partly demobilized the left. With Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, stepped-up organizing didnÂ’t seem quite so urgent.
Of course not! Obama said it all - "We won". Who needs to organize? Let's have a spending party! Let's expand government faster than the speed of light! Let us not let a crisis go to waste! E. J. - ya make me tired... Two more fantasies, then I've got real work to do.

The administration was complicit in this, viewing the leftÂ’s primary role as supporting whatever the president believed needed to be done. Dissent was discouraged as counterproductive.
Everybody was on the Hopey-Changey express, in their own minds.

This was not entirely foolish. Facing ferocious resistance from the right, Obama needed all the friends he could get.
And wound up with none. Well, maybe the muslims.
He feared that left-wing criticism would meld in the public mind with right-wing criticism and weaken him overall. But the absence of a strong, organized left made it easier for conservatives to label Obama as a left-winger. His health-care reform is remarkably conservative — yes, it did build on the ideas implemented in Massachusetts that Mitt Romney once bragged about.
I liked the "pass it before you read it" part.
It was nothing close except by the skin of my teeth to the single-payer plan the left always preferred. His stimulus proposal was too small, not too large. His new Wall Street regulations were a long way from a complete overhaul of American capitalism. Yet Republicans swept the 2010 elections because they painted Obama and the Democrats as being far to the left of their actual achievements.
Lap it up, Donks. Conclusion:

The idea is not to pretend that Obama is as progressive as his core supporters want him to be, but to rally support for him nonetheless as the man standing between the country and the terrorist right wing. A real left could usefully instruct Americans as to just how moderate the president they elected in 2008 is — and how far to the right conservatives have strayed.
If they had any facts and could speak without sputtering and drooling, perhaps.
Posted by:Bobby

#2  I am always amused that the Left, who continually call for 'Grass Roots' movements, cannot comprehend that the 'Tea Party' IS A GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENT. Just not their Grass Roots movement
Posted by: Bigfoot Jeter8554   2011-10-03 21:00  

#1  Progressive regressives cannot a Tea Party be.
They are called by other names already. We will hear from them this month(October surprise). Then with increasing volume nearer election time. They have a way about them. One easy way to spot them is the unusual large mouth. They dress funny. Then they tend to move about in herds as well. They do create a nuisance for the sanitation department.I guess that's a good thing, job security I suppose.
Posted by: Dale   2011-10-03 20:47  

00:00