Anyone else feel that the Tea Party is a dangerous distraction?

[Ardent15]

It seems that a lot of us (myself included) feel compelled to constantly defend President Obama from the Teabaggers's ridiculous racist, completely moronic assertions about Obama.

Yet really, there is still plenty to be wary and to be critical of Obama, and I fear that by giving the spotlight to the Teabaggers, it makes Obama critics in general look like a bunch of racist shitbag idiots, when in reality, there are plenty of intelligent, rational people who are critical of Obama's policies.

Plus, the Owners and the Elite in this nation are still waging their war on the lower classes. I think they want us to fight each other, part of their "Divide and Conquer" strategy.

[RandomThoughts]

1. On the SAT test there is a section about analogies.

Here is a sample question.


Tea baggers are to Democrats As Fox News is to CNN.


That statement does not make either group liberal or conservative. It only makes a comparison, and people make comparisons.




In other words, an extreme unbelievable element in the media circus allows for other areas with the same slant but not as extreme to seem central.

[RKP5637]

2. +1, n/t

[sharesunited]

3. Don't worry.

If someone is criticizing the President for not being a tougher and more uncompromising liberal, I will NOT mistake them for a Teabagger.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. There are clear distinctions

between people making rational and INFORMED objections to President Obama's decisions/policies- like many of us here- and people whom belong to and/or aligned ideologically with the so-called Tea Party movement and basically believe crazy and totally off-the-wall things about President Obama (and the Democratic Party in general). However much we might disagree with some of President Obama's decisions/policies, I'm sure that everybody can agree that he is much more rational, smart, etc. than the teabaggers- which doesn't make him immune to criticism by any means but I'd rather have a flawed (in some ways but not in most) Democratic President than somebody like Palin, Gingrich, or somebody other teabagger (or teabagger panderer) in the Oval Office (or a whole bunch of them running Congress for that matter).

I'm not sure though that there is a *plot* afoot using the teabaggers to help silence dissent against President Obama from us. :shrug:

[DonCoquixote]

5. actually yes, but

I see a different angle, one that lets so called "moderate" GOP look reasonable, saying "look, we don;t like those teabag guys." You see Joe Scab and Elizabeth Hasselbeck do it all the time. Of course, this lets them put in the meme that the GOP actually does not stand for the Teabaggers, when those of us with a memory realize they have usually embraced them, especially when W. was president.

Of course, there is another side to this, because when these "moderates" get to separate themselves from the teabaggers, the liberals do not have that luxury, as they always have to play defense against the ludicorous actions of the teabaggers. In short, think of the teabaggers as suicide bombers or kamikaze, they know that as long as they can keep the enemy in frantic defense mode, they will not be able to shift into actually gaining control of newly won power. If the dems are kept on defense, they also know that Obama will not go on offense, because, sad to say, not only does he have the media against him, but also that there are many on the left that will also join in the attack. Note guys and gals, this does NOT mean we should not criticize and put pressure on Obama, but we have to admit, there are some that will glady join ranks with the teabaggers in the hopes that they can somehow "harness" their energy as Ted Rall put it.

Case in point, Jane Hamser had every right to condemn Obama for giving up too much, indeed, had every right to work with a GOP to drive the point home, but if she is naive enough to think helping someone like Grover Norquist, was not a bad choice, she is way too naive to get the respect she has. Grover Norquist is an unelected power broker that does not need to risk anything, so he could have easily gotten the better hand. Yet, there are some who simply say "we won, why hasn't anything changed yet" when the answer is, "only the EXTERNAL stuff changed. The set may be 21st century, but the play is still a Greek tragedy. Sadly, that is where our enemies have us beat: we think theater is beneath us, whether it is poltical hardball, or telling Joe Sixpack why the GOP are not really his friends. That is why (and ardent, this is a comment about people in general, not your op), That is why we still are left asking ourselves -->IF<--- something is a ploy, rather than setting up a counter move. Obama may try to play chess, and there are times he has done slick moves (like Sotomayor), BUT, you can't play chess when your enemies are playing hardball.

[Frances]

6. I was born just before Pearl Harbor (12/7/41)

and I remember news reels about Brown Shirts. The tea baggers remind me of the Brown Shirts, who paved the way for the Nazi takeover through violent intimidation.

In our case, Fox news is aiding and abetting the tea baggers.

It's possible that the tea baggers will take control of our gov't. I'm sure some Dems will be decide it's just not worth it to be in the crosshairs of mentally disturbed people egged on by Fox and Bachman and Palin and will retire. Others won't run who might have done so otherwise.

And Repubs will definitely gain seats in Congress--and these REpubs will do the bidding of the tea baggers.

[truedelphi]

7. The Tea Baggers are a set up. To distract, just as you suggest.

I am getting close to being sixty years old and never in my life have I known the M$M to mention any crowds or mobs of people before, except to tear them down.

I remember the press in Chicago constantly attacking the Black Panthers, so that when the leaders of that party were massacred, the local media said that the police had no choice.

Years later, it was found out that the police stormed the apartment and fired off over two hundred rounds, with the Black Panthers getting off only one shot.

Millions of people have appeared on the streets to show their fierce opposition to the various wars that we have had. Rarely does this give the protesters even five minutes of recognition on the nightly news.

But let 1,500 Tea Baggers show up somewhere, and the media spends the whole day following them and discussing what they said, and letting their various speakers have the podium. In our living rooms, on our TV's.

So yes, this is all part of the Kabuki Theater, and it is necesary because since Obama turned out to be under CorpoRATe Control, more and more people are realizing that our Two Party Circus (Ooops, meant System) needs to be revamped so that we have real representation.

The Powers that Be do not want to be revamped, so the Tea Bagger strategy will continue to be employed and to be used against all of us.

[Ysabel]

8. oh fucking hell yeah...

[Hannah Bell]

9. yes. but the media also presents these people as a credible grassroots interest group.

there's a recruitment element too.

[laughingliberal]

10. Absolutely! And it keeps pushing us to the right

The very real concerns about policy with the administration get lost in the shuffle of trying to beat back the idiotic crap from the teabaggers. It serves a very real purpose of making 'centrist' and center right policies look moderate and aids and abets the further push to the right by both parties.

[midnight]

11. Yes....

[saltpoint]

12. The Baggers can only thrive if they get attention. More or less the media are

only too pleased to give them the platform and exposure.

It doesn't seem to me that the Bagger "movement" is that large. It's real loud but not real large at all. Some of the GOP big names are trying to umbrella the disparate factions of the party in hopes of staying together for 2010 and 2012. But the mindless anger of the Baggers' public demonstration puts some strain on that effort. Our best scenario is that the Baggers split in significant enough numbers to cripple the Republican Party but not in significant enough numbers to actually become an established political entity.

The Republican Party deserves all the factional in-fighting it gets.

[gleaner]

13. I agree ....

It is the same thing that Bush did. When he wanted to draw attention from the specifics of his actions and discredit his critics he raised the terror alert or found some other way to distract attention from what he was really doing until he was finished.

I have said this too. They did make a useful noise for Obama when he was dismantling any real health care reform, didn't they? And what I knew would happen with that bill is happening. It did not do that much to begin with and it was written in a way that allowed the insurance companies to find loopholes that they could litigate for years to come without putting any of the provisions in force.

The same thing happened in California with the auto insurance industry. A ballot proposition, (103) was passed regulating them strictly and setting up a state bureau to deal with any type of insurance being sold in California. It regulated rates, who could be refused insurance, who was liable if there was an accident and allowed the insurance companies to be held responsible financially for acts of bad faith against their insureds. It also provided for rebates for people who had paid their insurance premiums in good faith and had been gouged for years and surcharged for filing claims that were caused by things that were completely out of their control. Weather damage, vandalism, theft, fire and so on. It was tightly written because it was a ballot initiative, but the insurance companies still held it up for years in court. They lost and we got our rebates but it took a long time even though it was legal and binding not full of friendly loopholes like Obamacare. There was no supervising agency set up to watchdog the health insurance companies by the administration either. They thought it was too "expensive."

And all of this was covered by the administrations sudden concern over the rising tide of right wing violence which had been there all along and which they had tolerated if not encouraged in some ways by failing to respond to it at all in the beginning. Then of course when they did respond the noise is now covering up things like the widening of the wars, the desecration of the environment and probably other things that we have not found out about yet. If we criticize we are pounded and called liars, no matter how much Obama's policies are making us suffer. It has been entirely cynical and predictable.

[B Calm]

14. The Owners and the Elite in this nation are leading the Teabaggers!

When the CEO of Massey Coal Mine (Don Blankenship) is an outspoken TEABAGGER. I would say: Not only are they still waging their war on the lower classes, but they are also pretending to be on their side by playing outraged teabaggers in their spare time!

[Junkdrawer]

15. From last September: "The Bat Shit Crazy Right From Central Casting…"

At the beginning of August the Senate, the Administration, and Blue Dogs in the House had a problem. On the one hand, they resolved the differences between competing corporate interests and had a pretty clear idea exactly what “Health Care Reform” would look like. On the other hand, public opinion polls show something like 70% approval for a Single Payer solution and they knew that not even a viable Public Option was likely to be included in the final legislation. Add to that the all-too-necessary Individual Mandate and it was clear some heavy lifting was going to be necessary to sell all this to the general public as a “reasonable compromise”.

And then, from out of nowhere, the BSCRFCC (Bat Shit Crazy Right from Central Casting) appeared. Suddenly individual mandates and a weak Public Option wasn’t the extreme Right of the debate. No, saving Grandma from Obamacare was now the extreme Right of the debate. Preventing a creep to Socialist Fascism (huh?) was now the extreme Right of the debate.

When the BSCRFCC first appeared, there were several reporters (including Rachael Maddow) that did a great job exposing their links to corporate PR firms. But almost all of these reporters assumed that the aim of this Astroturf effort was to kill reform just like they did in 1993. I disagree: all the members of the corporate compromise NEED reform.

* Insurance Companies need individual mandates to offset the rising costs of Baby Boomers who are old enough to need increasing health care, but too young for Medicare.

* Medical providers need to address the increasing numbers of uninsured to whom they are legally obligated to provide emergency care.

* Big Pharma needs to make their wares affordable to the increasing number of uninsured and underinsured who are forgoing their medications because of cost.

But what all the above DO NOT want is a widely available Public Option that would provide competition, pay Medicare-like reimbursement rates and negotiate for lower group prices.

The other phony part of this melodrama is the Republican refusal to support any kind of health care reform. I think that Republicans know that their open support for pro-corporate reform would be the kiss of death in terms of public acceptance of the bill. Watch: If the Progressive Caucus follows through on their threat to vote against reform that doesn’t include a viable Public Option, just enough Republican votes will appear to push it over the top.

One last thought: It appears that the BSCRFCC was a rousing success. Indeed it seems that much more time has been devoted in the Corporate Media addressing their “concerns” than have been spent explaining the actual details of Public Option proposals. And that means that the BSCRFCC will be with us for some time to come, obscuring the debate on issue after issue.

Joy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6561291

Nope, you're not the only one...

[tanyev]

16. Maybe, but the Baggers don't see themselves that way.

If the GOP leaders think they can still toss them under the bus whenever it's expedient, I think it will get ugly. For the GOP. :evilgrin:

[Bluenorthwest]

17. I think they are Republicans

They are Republican protesters. The media needs two sides to tell a story, the GOP is not really there right now, and it behooves the GOP to push the Baggers as a substitute. Call them what they are, Republicans. They have no Party structure, they are part of the Republican Party. They vote for Republicans, and only for Republicans. If it votes like a Republican, and is lead by Republicans, it is in fact, a Republican.
Calling them anything else serves them, the Republicans.