This awesome post by Steve Benen is a good starting point for rebutting this piece of shit Wall Street Journal op-ed by James Taranto. Taranto tries to explain why, in his eyes, liberal elites find Americans (meaning Tea Partiers and know-nothing conservatives) revolting.
What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called “Building a Nation of Know-Nothings”–or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.
In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama’s notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion.
It’s hard to get more elite than Wall Street. The firms there don’t hire people with the educational background of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin. So, it’s a little rich for Taranto to lecture us about snobbery from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. But it’s been a part of the financial elites’ playbook forever to rail against the elitism of the left as they play on the prejudices, insecurities, and fears of the ‘proles.’ This isn’t a Marxist-lite argument. There’s no obvious reason why a Manhattan investment banker would share the social values of the Hill People of Appalachia or the religious fundamentalists of the Bible Belt. In truth, they don’t share their values. They just pretend to. And, in difficult financial times, it’s historically indisputable that financially insecure people flock to leaders who offer scapegoats and pat solutions. Unless you think demagoguery thrives during financial booms, there shouldn’t be any debate about this.
But the reason that liberals (and not just our elites) are revolted by the Tea Partiers is well explained by Steve Benen. When we try to take their arguments seriously, those arguments vanish into thin air. They have no logical consistency. Once you scratch the surface of their calls for liberty and freedom and following the Founding Fathers, it turns out that there is no ‘there’ there. Because their policy prescriptions (insofar as they are ever articulated) are either counter-factual or extraordinarily radical, it is impossible to engage Tea Partiers in intellectual debate or enter into any kind of negotiation with them.
When your idea of religious freedom is to ban mosques, how can we take you seriously? It’s not that the Tea Partiers’ concerns are illegitimate, it’s that their entire movement is a nebula of formless angst. What is it that is bringing people out to protest at this particular moment in time? The budget deficit? The budget deficit ballooned under the previous president and these Tea Partiers didn’t express any dismay.
It’s true that economic conditions have declined, and that probably explains part of the Tea Party phenomenon. But the main thing that changed is that a Democrat became president, and that president is black. That president has an unusual biography and a foreign-sounding name. The reason liberals are quick to throw around accusations of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia is because the heart of Republican resistance to Obama has been based in attacks on black institutions like ACORN, on court rulings related to gay marriage, on manufactured outrages like the deceit that PARK51 is being proposed for ground zero, and on Latino immigration. The rest of the Tea Party/conservative opposition lacks credibility because they didn’t oppose deficit spending or warrantless surveillance or Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind when those those policies were carried out by a Republican. Big government is therefore not the reason that Tea Partiers have taken to the streets.
As Benen notes, there are normally ideas behind mass movements, but the Tea Party doesn’t have ideas. What they have are outlets for channeling racial, economic, and cultural insecurity into traditional conservative tropes.
The anti-intellectualism of Tea Partiers (exemplified by the lazy Sarah Palin) is one of its core features, in part, because logic cannot co-exist in the same galaxy with their arguments. But just because someone is revolted by anti-intellectualism doesn’t make your a liberal. Or, maybe it does. The Republicans seem to have been replaced by the idiocracy.
They do have an idea, but their idea is intentionally obscured because they know they can’t get away with overt white supremacy. So they tie it all up in various persecution fantasies. And the substance of the idea is further vitiated because their sponsors don’t care so much about white supremacy, just predatory capitalism. Thus it naturally takes on the farcical mysticism of Glenn Beck. So basically they are just the dupes of the status-quo.
Thanks, that was a nice collection of observation and concepts: invoking the elitism of the left to defend a movement without an argument is sort of confusing to the “cognitive elite”. Like God (figuratively?) dropping Glenn Beck a sandbag in the head to make him see his role to lead America back to principles, values and God: first it’s confusing – then you see the light.
I’m surprised that you didn’t hit the key point that conservatism in this country is co-opted with racism; the two are joined at the hip. For instance, we’d probably have single payer health care if there wasn’t such a large resistance to integrating the hospitals.
Or Lee Atwater’s famous screed…
I’m obviously not saying conservatives are racist, but the force behind movement conservatism in America is a racist and bigoted movement. When yelling about busing and states rights weren’t getting enough votes, Reagan unlocked another key base: the religious right.
They’re two sides of the same coin.
wasn’t*
ugh, we need an edit or delete button.
Which is why “conservative” is 180-degrees wrong when describing the current no-nothing putsch. They are not looking to conserve anything. They are out for destruction. How can that be called conservative?
I’d say the current flock of conservatives could more accurately be described as reactionaries.
“Cognitive elite” is asinine enough to warrant a whole book. The only meaning I can derive from the term is that people who think should just shut up and leave politics to the non-cognitive deciders. Or maybe they should get lobotomies so they could be just like Palin or Beck or James Taranto.
But of course it really isn’t about smart, which has no definition. By all traditional standards, Palin, for example, is not intelligent, but what makes her such a curse on America is her woeful, laughable, voluntary ignorance about almost everything she presumes to preach about. Same with Beck and the rest of the Wingnut Stars.
“Elite” has meaning only within the context of a class system. The “ruling elite” means those with power and wealth, not those who think. In conflating “cognitive” with elite, Taranto reveals his deep contempt for the “proles”. In his universe, the working class by definition has no one who can think. And those who buy the arguments of the money-elite funded demagogues like himself and his fellow ruling-class folksies prove that at least some of them can’t.
Here’s what I think is the key fact behind all of this. In the past 40 years, the wealth of the country has tripled, but median family income has only gone up something like 20%. We are looking at a situation that should, by rights, lead to a left-leaning revolution. The only way that the wealthy interests in this country can counter this is by ginning up their own counter-revolution, on the right, to harness the discontent for their own uses. And, since this involves convincing people to go against their own economic interests, it has to be based on appeal to emotion–racism, patriotism, fear, or some idealized but nebulous vision of “freedom”. The intellectual incoherence, and the uses of racism, in the tea party movement is not surprising.
I recommend Jane Mayer’s recent piece in the New Yorker, about the Koch family funding of the tea party movement. It is quite illuminating.
You are right…the Tea Party should focus on putting forth a structured, coherent platform supported by clearly articulated reasoning.
Start with this…
Premise: Government is inherently coercive, and, by extension, an inefficient user of capital. Thus, to maximize freedom and prosperity, government should be limited to the size required to maintain a civil society.
Policy Recommendation: Constitutional amendment that limits Federal Spending as a given percentage of GDP, where the limit can only be exceeded one year at a time with a 2/3’s approval in both Houses of Congress.
Now, you may disagree with the above premise and policy recommendation, but the claim that the Tea Party has no legitimate ideas is disingenuous.
Sorry Progressives…most Tea Partiers are not racist, sexist homophobes…they are just advocates of American exceptionalism and are concerned about the future of our country.
The first idea out of your mouth is a constitutional amendment. How about trying to run the government without amending the Constitution? Your idea is insane, by the way. So insane, in fact, that I won’t bother even addressing it.
We cannot rely on politicians to exercise fiscal restraint, as they will inherently tend to use the public treasury to perpetuate their own power…hence the significant increase in federal spending during the “conservative” Bush administration..de Toqueville saw this coming 180 years ago.
Thank God the founders drafted the Bill of Rights, as opposed to relying politicians to do the right thing and run the government properly.
This nation will likely never have stable, sensible and sustainable fiscal policy without the aforementioned amendment
This country had sane fiscal policy for most of its history, including under Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget and started paying down Reagan’s debt.
Look, when I saw that teabaggers offer pat answers, you’re a perfect example.
We’ve tried growing the economy by slashing marginal tax rates on the rich twice now under two different two-term Republican presidents. It doesn’t work. It’s ideology. If you want to deal with human nature, accept that Republicans will cut taxes (which is easy) but they won’t cut spending (which is hard). They also won’t pass your amendment, so that’s not a serious answer. Proposing the impossible is just a recipe for disappointing, if not betraying, your supporters.
But the reason your solution is insane is not because it will never happen. It’s insane because it is precisely when the GDP drops that the government must stimulate the economy. You deficit spend when the economy is struggling (like now) and you pay down debt when the economy is flush (like during Clinton’s second term). That’s so basic that it shouldn’t require saying.
But you and the teabaggers want to cripple the ability of the president and Congress to do anything during an economic downturn. The president can’t tell the Fed what to do, so your amendment would basically castrate the federal government’s ability to do anything when people need jobs except cut spending. And cutting spending when people are out of work is insane.
I thought Keynes was discredited. Anyway, in a true national emergency, I’m confident that you could obtain the two-thirds vote needed to override the constitutional restriction on spending.
I am well aware that this proposed amendment will not be adopted, but by putting forth these types of ideas, we can frame the debate and have an honest discussion about the merits of the underlying philosophy behind the Tea Party. After all, Progressives have been talking about universal health care for decades–even though it has not yet become reality, you have successfully impacted the debate.
Here’s the thing, LfR. The Republicans did this before in 1994. A bunch lawnmower salesmen with no political experience ran for and won office on a platform of wholly unrealistic issues, like getting Congress to adopt term limits and eliminating half the departments in Washington. They came in and Newt Gingrich tamed them. They wound up becoming exactly like the a-holes they replaced, only less honest and totally inept.
Progressives sometimes display the same disconnection from reality and you’ll often hear me say that. I’m not interested in proposals that move the conversation but go nowhere for decades at a time.
I want my government to do something about 10% unemployment and massive structural deficits and immigration and climate change. Do you want to help my government address those things, or do you want a bunch of obstinate ideologues to come to Washington and grind the place to a halt?
I want people in federal office who believe that the federal government has work to do and are eager to go about accomplishing that work. I have no time for constitutional amendments that will never be enacted.
Just out of curiosity, what is the basis of your claim that Keynes is discredited?
New research on how FDR actually prolonged the Depression, combined with the utter and complete failure of Obama’s “stimulus”
Wait…I did some research…GDP and total federal revenue went up after the 2003 tax cuts (so much for the notion that the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit)…only the recession in 2008 reduced revenue and increased the deficit. The tax cuts did work!
Clinton’s surplus was caused by an economic boom in the late 90’s. History shows the dominant factor in reducing budget deficits is economic growth.
Government…just get out of the way and let the greedy, evil business people get us out of this mess!
The proposed amendment is irrelevant and useless, but I don’t see what’s wrong with the idea of proposing amendments as such. I think we need either a Constitutional Convention or some amendments if this country is going to make it through a radically different technological, resource, and demographic environment. The old ways of doing elections and politics, for example, clearly don’t work. Not that I have any faith that Americans will ever wake up enough to do what has to be done. I guess in that respect, at least, I’m more in tune with the teabaggers than with you.
My constitutional amendment: States with less than 1 million citizens get one senator, not two. States with more than 10 million citizens get three senators, not two.
I completely agree. Scandinavia is what I would describe as a “civil society.” So let’s get the government doing what they’re doing; size is irrelevant, it’s context of what it does. Your arguments are tired and old.
So Wall Street is an efficient user of capital? That’s a good one!!
Oh, please. You sound like an old-time Marxist with the undigested party cliches. How does it follow from government being inherently coercive that it is an “inefficient user of capital”? Is the military an “inefficient user of capital”, for instance? How is it that Social Security pays out far more of its income as intended than private funds?
“government should be limited to the size required to maintain a civil society” is equally meaningless, just another way of saying “I should be the one to decide what’s required to maintain a civil society.” The issues are precisely about what constitutes a good society. Your “idea” is simply a content-free tautology. It changes nothing: you and your heroes want to make sure the undeserving rich keep everything they’ve scammed. I want to make sure everyone in our civil society enjoys the four freedoms defined by FDR and others. Your “policy recommendation” contributes absolutely nothing to that debate, and is dishonest about its intentions to boot.
I can’t speak for Wall Street–I don’t work there.
I own a small business with razor-thin margins–if I squander resources, I am toast. More than 50 percent of the GDP in this country is created by small and medium sized businesses.
How does coercion lead to inefficiency? What? If the government squanders resources, it doesn’t go out of business…it just raises taxes or prints more money. How else do you think the government gets away with paying its employees more than two times what private sector employees earn?
Respectfully, your claim about the “undeserving rich keep everything they’ve scammed” is instructive regarding your true motive, which is to punish success.
I respect Progressives when they are motivated by a sincere desire to help the less fortunate, but disdain them when they are motivated by a desire for revenge against evil rich people.
First of all, you’re just parroting a lie that’s been disproven over and over — I’m not going to bother looking it up for you: government employees in fact make around 20% less than private-sector workers for comparable jobs. Look it up someplace more honest than Beck and Palin. Even a moment’s thought would tell you your little tin gods are full of it. Who makes more — the soldiers in Afghanistan or the Blackwater private entrepreneurs?
And please — the whining about the sad rich victims is ridiculous. The whole point of the argument is how the national wealth is distributed. Some of us think morons like Blankfein and Blankenship, for example, who only make everything worse, have no business making hundreds of millions because do the corporate suck so well. Anyway, I hope you don’t lose your faith when they, or somebody like them, put you out of business. It would be interesting to watch.
And develop a line of business with fatter margins. My business with the razor-thin margins is my hobby business, and my real business with fat margins pays the bills.
What’s your small business? We’ll offer ideas.
Thanks for the advice. I’m in the fitness industry–5 to 15 percent margins. It pays the bills.
How can a business owner be a Progressive????
To listen to this blog, that’s as rare as a non-racist, non-homophobic conservative with an IQ over 80!
Absolutely.
Because then they would lose.
Disappear.
Go away.
Why?
Because they are waging an emotionally-based political war.
Very successfully, so far, I might add.
If they began to lecture, to talk cold, hard sense…they’d lose their audience.
Actually, I think that the only real chance they will not take the presdidency in 2012 is if the same establishment that set McCain up to lose decides that the DemRats are still better for business than he RatpPubs.
Which is exactly what I think is going to happen.
Massively anti-Republican leaning mass media. Heavier and heavier the more they get traction.
Watch.
AG
Republican Governors (well…some of them) actually govern like grown-ups…I like our chances when the nation hears Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie debate Obama, then actually compare how they governed.
We will win as long as Palin doesn’t run (she would really screw it up if she won the nomination)
Every single issue the Teabagger Traitors raise should have and could have been raised with Bush, but was not.
So, we can just be very clear that the “issues” are simply a cloak for the kind of no-nothing shit that the KKK, the John Birch Society, the German-American Bund, and every right-wing wack group since 1788 has raised is the real issue for the Teabagger Traitors.
And there is more to it than that. The Teabagger Traitors are funded and fully vested creatures of the Koch fascist brothers and other right-wing wacks.
The real Teabagger Traitor issues are that Democrats are in control.
It is strange. Beck had his rally and said that America has been lost for decades, including the Bush years. He called all the attendees sinners and losers, not directly but between the lines.
The Republican strategy is to protect the rich, by saying to the poor Republicans they are being treated by Democrats.
How many of the top 2% percent income tax payers were at the rally or serving in the Military in Iraq or Afghanistan?..not many
mistreated by the Democrats
The reason liberals are quick to throw around accusations of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia is because the heart of Republican resistance to Obama has been based in attacks on black institutions like ACORN, on court rulings related to gay marriage, on manufactured outrages like the deceit that PARK51 is being proposed for ground zero, and on Latino immigration.
This is only half right. We are quick to throw those accusations out there because they have been true since at least 1968. And if you don’t believe it, or want more information, the easiest thing to do is to read Digby.
Bet on it.
AG
But you are more than half wrong here.
Yup.
There it is.
Now is this contempt…and you have shown nothing but contempt for these people yourself in the last week or so…is it at least partially justified?
Yup. They are trying to live in the past; they are most of them racist at heart (unconsciously racist if my relatives by marriage in white rural Maine are any indication whatsoever), and truth be told, most of them are not particularly bright.
Not particularly dumb, either.
As I have been saying over and over here this week, they are average folks.
Who outnumber above and below average folks by the definition and common usage of the word “average” in this sense.
But that makes no difference to the contemptees.
Who vote, Booman.
Especially when they’re pissed off.
Watch out.
The center-left is presently painting itself into a corner from which it will not return anytime soon.
Watch.
AG
If Obama really wanted to do something substantive about this shit…and the Clintons, too…they would immediately abandon their opulent lifestyles and go native.
Kinda like Jerry Brown when he was governor of CA.
Every time Ms. Obama is photographed wearing thousands of dollars of designer clothes, every much-ballyhooed vacation, every multi-million dollar wedding is another nail in the Dem coffin today.
Bet on it.
But NOOOOOooooo!!!
Do they know something that we don’t?
Is the fix already in?
They’re not dumb enough to believe anything other than what I just said, right?
Right!!!???
Let us pray.
AG
“abandon opulent lifestyles and go native”.
Does this mean anything or is this just a bunch of crap randomly strung together?
Are you serious?
Know thine enemy.
Check into Drudge Report or The NY Post once in a while.
Every time Obama takes a day off it’ s headlined negatively headlined in the right-wing media. Earlier today, some snarkish Drudge headline about how Bloomberg and Obama discussed the economy. Over a game of golf. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)
At the Drudgery moment? (5;50 PM EDT, 8/20/10)
Chelsea Clinton’s multimillion dollar wedding was a slap in the face to the working class.
So have been Obama’s “vacations”…thinly disguised photo ops, really… in the Gulf area and Cape Cod. hell, he can’t even go out to restaurant without the tab being publicized in the Tea Press.
Wake the fuck up.
People who voted for Obama are being turned off by this, let alone opponents who simply didn’t vote. They will be out by the millions in November, and they are going to cripple his presidency unless he pulls some kind of rabbit out of his hat.
The rabbit better not be dressed in a sequined tux nor the hat too formal, either.
Bet on it.
Where the fuck are you peoples’ heads at?
Modern American politics is an image war.
Win by the image, die by the image.
Obama’s image was brilliantly and carefully crafted over 4+ years, and it won w/the help of a compliant media. The media is not so compliant anymore. Even the roll-over-and-play-to-die-for Daily Yuppie Beast (Which recently featured a food article called “Eco-Chic Safari.” I kid you not.) is starting to post the occasional anti-Obama article.
What world are you living in, dataguy? Makin’ some money with a tech job, are you? Good on ya if you are. But pull your head up out of the digital sand and look around once in a while, podna.
There is something going on here, and it ain’t digital.
It is physical; it is on the ground, and it is madder than hell.
You don’t remember the 1060’s do you. That was an awful, violent time full of upheaval. That’s not what’s going on now.
If you don’t watch cable tv or listen to talk radio, things are not as dire as proported to be.
Obama earned his money. Clinton made the millions after he left office and i think he was paid off for damaging the country while he was president.
Please don’t equate Obama with Clinton.
The First Lady has to wear good clothing. It is part of that job. She is seen around the world and her appearance is important.
The president would look like a fool if he acted as if he were a poor man.
He represents us and we need to look decent.
You sound like the sad sacks, Marx and Engels. Read about how they lived.
All you have to remember is Carter and how he was savaged for being such a hick, so unfashionable, such a failure as a cultural icon. The Kennedys, OTOH, flaunted their elitism like crazy and were loved for it.
Arthur’s full of it on this one. Obama would get the same treatment no matter what kind of style he adopted. Unlike you, I wish the style shit would just go away, but it is what it is, and Carter is the poster child for thinking it can be ignored.
You’re right.
I don’t remember the 1060s
But i remember the 1960s.
I’m a white musician and and i lived in Roxbury in the 1960s. Working at a black club the night of the Boston MLK Jr. riots, I slept in the club that night so’s I wouldn’t get killed going home.
I lived in the East Village in the 1960s, too. Wrote for Rat newspaper…political stuff…and dealt with what you call that “awful, violent time full of upheaval” full on, day by day. I played a lot of latin music during that period, in the South Bronx particularly. That “awful” time was just another time, utried. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. I was there, right smack in the middle of it. Where the fuck were you?
I don’t give a shit where or how the Clintons and Obamas earned their money. If money is their thing, great. Someone has to carry that onerous burden. And if they were not pols, I wouldn’t give a shit whether they spent millions on their poodles. Someone has to carry that onerous burden as well.
But in times of economic chaos, smart pols back on offa the food trough. Nixon and his “wife’s oood Republican cloth coat” line is a erfec exaple. He was on the make, too. But he realized that politics is all an act, and he acted normal when he was in trouble.
It worked, too.
I sound like Marx and Engels?
You sound like Larry King.
Hmmmm…
Is dat you, Larry?
Throw me another set of softball statements.
Please.
Whadda buncha maroons. (Bugs Bunny, 1948)
Yup.
Booman…maybe you need some sort of audition system in order to weed out the really dumb subscribers.
Ya think?
AG
Nancy Reagan bought new WH china.
Nixon got the guards new uniforms.
Reagan was still popular. Nixon resigned.
None of this crap is important. It’s just something to criticize. If Michelle was dowdy, they criticize that. If she is fashionable, that is criticized. Whatever the president or first lady do, it is criticized.
Last I checked, Chelsea Clinton was a private citizen, and I have no idea why anything she does is relevant.
You have no idea why anything that Chelsea Clinton does…or to be more precise, is done to her (You don’t think that she financed that wedding, do you?)…is “relevant?”
Deep.
If the Obamas were criticized for not spending enough money on themselves during a financial crisis, do you really think that such criticisms would lose them many votes?
Please.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
She must patronize and flaunt the US designers. She is the most important symbol of US fashion in the world, and she needs to look good. Fortunately, she is a good looking woman, in reasonably good shape, and with good taste. What’s not to like?
they all are full of shit
Run for president, bro. That’s a platform hat will garner some real attention in today’s America.
I like it!
AG
I have contempt for racists, Arthur. I have contempt for people who hate other people and want to screw them over. I didn’t dispute the contempt; I explained that it isn’t based in snobbery, but it in a recognition that their arguments aren’t real. They are a mask.
Their arguments are real, Booman.
To them.
Sure they’re being used, and sure they don’t know it. But they are scared shitless, these Tea Party people. The world is changing around them and they are being left behind. Way behind. They were told that if they worked hard they could have a piece of America. Of the American Dream. They were…in the old American true lie…”Free, white and over twenty-one.” They’re still white and way over twenty-one, most of them, but they aren’t feeling very free. They’re feeling trapped. And they do not know what to do about it.
Of course, the American Dream was just that…a dream predicated on the suffering of people of color all over the world, a dream that said “We’ll get ours by hook or by crook, and fuck y’all who aren’t in the same position.”
And that dream ended when the third world found that it could win wars of attrition against the big fellas. First in Vietnam, then in Afghanistan with the Russians, and now everywhere damned else on the planet.
So it goes.
You say:
I say that these Tea Baggers are people who have been “screwed over.” Screwed over so badly that they do not yet realize who did the screwing or which orfices really got plugged.
Dont demonize them, Booman. Most of ’em ain’t so bad.
Educate them instead.
You say it won’t work?
Back to the corporate hypnomedia.
Demon number one.
Job number one, long term. If indeed we have a “long term” left to us.
Bet on it.
Deprogramming these people will be impossible as long as the media is yammering in their sleeping ears about Muslim Presidents and slavering barbarians at the gate.
Bet on that as well.
Job One.
Unless of course you have got a better idea about how to handle the faux media. Of all political persuasions, from Fox to MSNBC.
I’m fresh out of ideas, myself.
The media.
Like the old sexist joke.
Are we stuck wid ’em?
Lord!!!
I hope not.
Later…
AG
why do you think I keep beating up fellow progressive bloggers?
We were supposed to be the idea. And we’re mostly spending our time tearing down the one thing between us and neo-fascism.
We ought to be tearing down the media, Booman.
That is the keystone that is holding up this house of cards.
Take it down and…
The truth will out.
It always does, eventually.
Bet on it.
AG
It could be fascinating to watch Harry Reid debate Sharon Angle, what tact will the old boxer take?
First line in Taranto’s column:
That’s a claim that the Park51 project people are deliberately exploiting 9/11. The support for that claim is:
The AP report (a “Fact Check”), reads in full:
Taranto’s characterization that the Park51 project is “exploiting 9/11” is an expression colored with negative implications. Taranto is a propagandist.
I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts on this, but I take it as a bit of good news that Glenn Beck and his allies were not able to come up with a political agenda for last Saturday’s rally.
There’s probably a fascinating inside story behind the evolution of that rally from one in which a 100 year plan for America would be revealed to one in which the main message seemed to be “turn to God”.
Among other things, I suspect it means that Beck’s political allies (Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, members of Congress, etc.) decided some weeks or months ago that they didn’t want to be on the same platform as Beck. It also means that the tea partiers—at least right now—have no common agenda they can agree on in a large, public setting.
They still might win a lot of congressional seats in 10 weeks, but it betrays a political weakness in their movement that threatens their long term effectiveness.