Prejudice

[geezer_also]

Thinking about the discussion the other day on how the tea party is: bad, evil, bigoted, ignorant, etc (choose your favorite adjective). Accepting, for the moment, the general consensus, that there is no ism without power (the idea that there can be no reverse discrimination, since there is no power on the other side). Accepting also that it is

Comments

[underlankers]

There is one major difference with the Tea Partiers and the Hope & Changers. People warned from the first that Obama was not the FDR-type that people mistook him for and some even listened to that and believe it. The Tea Party thinks it can do a lot more than it will ever be able to do and understands the Conrad Henlein definition of compromise.

Re: premature comment posted

[underlankers]

Sure it does, though IMHO this is one area where the USA resembles the large South American countries more than it does Canada. US politics IRL is extremely oligarchical and the USA's long tended to be a country where any millionaire can grow up to be President.

[geezer_also]

"some even listened to that and believe it"

Key word SOME....and I pretty much agree with you assessment.

[underlankers]

To me the biggest defect of the Tea Party in a democracy is that it's an ideological movement. Like the Mondale Democrats they simply don't function well in democracy, with its requirements of murky and often morally and politically ambiguous compromises. Unfortunately for the Tea Party its very absence of clear leadership means that it becomes too easy to claim all Tea Partiers are against an African-American in the White House. And unfortunately also the Tea Party's claims to be a secular movement against taxes are too often belied by the blatantly Christian Right nature of the bills it passes IRL.

Where the Democrats can be content just to let this nature of the Tea Party do serious harm to the Republicans and coast off anti-Republican sentiment, a lazier option but a politically safe one.

[underlankers]

Too, Bush II recycled most of the guys who went on to preside over an even more ignominious defeat in Vietnam than was necessary, Obama's Administration recycles the Clinton Administration that was rather Right-Wing in actual practice compared to what the Base nostalgizes it to have been. Neither party bothers seriously to bring people who are younger, fresher faces into Federal politics.