Tea Party Fail

by: Willinois

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 16:36:11 PM CST


(a topic i'll be watching over the next six months... - promoted by bored now)

I hate to write the obvious but the conservative talk-radio crowd has a habit of sticking to their talking points in the face of reality.  And the corporate press has a habit of adopting their narratives.

In the US Senate primary, Patrick Hughes was the darling of conservatives and the reactionary tea-bagger crowd.  He ran against Mark Kirk, who became a talk-radio target after voting for Obama's climate change bill.  Limbaugh and Beck commanded their forces to flood Kirk's office with angry calls after the cap-and-trade vote.  

Their poutrage didn't amount to much in the Republican primary.  Hughes' campaign never gained momentum and Kirk won resoundingly with 57% of the vote against five challengers.

teapartyfail

Willinois :: Tea Party Fail

Running for Governor, Adam Andrzejewski actively sought support from tea party groups and was mentioned by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.  On Limbaugh's show he was referred to as the "Scott Brown of Illinois."  He finished fifth behind three establishment moderates and an incumbent legislator.  Poor Rush.  Illinois Republicans don't seem to care who he supports.

It's easy for a small group to make a scene if they're loud and disruptive.  That doesn't equal a majority of voters, even in the GOP primary.  It's time for the press to stop giving this storm in a teacup more coverage than it deserves.

Cross-posted from thereisaway

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Tea Party Fail | 20 comments
I Dunno ... (3.00 / 1)
... this Brady character wears his BIble on his sleeve, is virulently anti-GLBT, and wants to teach creationism in public schools. Seems to me the Teabaggers would be more than happy with him.
you may be confusing tea baggers... (3.00 / 1)
and social conservatives.  tea baggers are populists, while social conservatives are not...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting
[ Parent ]
You Say Tomato, I Say To-MAH-Toe (4.00 / 1)
No matter what, Republicans need the Teabaggers, and Brady has several parts of his platform and voting record that fit quite neatly with their philosophy. And it does seem Brady has the kind of archconservative record that IL has traditionally rejected - which would be a HUGE break for Quinn.

We'll see once the election is actually certified and if Brady actually wins. But I'm not counting the Teabaggers out quite yet.

[ Parent ]
i'm not questioning your conclusion... (3.00 / 1)
i don't know if they will be happy with brady or not.  i'm merely pointing out that tea baggers and social conservatives are not the same universe.

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting
[ Parent ]
I confess to a lack of clarity (0.00 / 0)
In my mind, I group together all those Republicans who firmly reject the party's moderate establishment. The people who gave us Alan Keyes in 2004 and those who voted Green in 2006. I sort of tend to assume that their common opposition to the establishment will paper over other differences.

At the same time, willinois was referring specifically to a lack of influence by Limbaugh and Beck in Illinois. That may mean that, as you have pointed out, Illinois is different. But the difference may only matter for internal disputes within the far right.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

[ Parent ]
if you asked a tea bagger... (4.00 / 1)
what motivated them, they would probably reply: "i believe in the constitution."  a social conservative would say that they believed in god.  you might not see a difference there, but they do.  the social conservative will freely tell you that god's laws can't be trumped by man's laws (or constitutions).

social conservatives applaud scott roeder's defense of justifiable homicide, tea baggers would be repulsed by it.  social conservatives can be motivated by their validators (like randall terry, who said "The blood of these babies slain by Tiller is crying for vengeance") who they believed extracted the proper commitments from the endorsed politicians.  tea baggers won't be following validators, even if they respect those validators (like sarah palin)...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting

[ Parent ]
There are differences (4.00 / 1)
Bored now makes good points about the differences.

Hughes and Andrzejewski made the most direct appeals to the tea-bagger voters and organization. They spoke at tea party rallies and addressed those voters specificaly.  That sets them apart from Brady, who appealed more to the christian conservative crowd.  If anything it suggests that there's still power in the christian right.

No doubt Brady is conservative and both movements are corporate-backed, faux-populist attempts to convince people to vote against their own economic interests.  There's overlap, but they focus on different issues.

Brady is the candidate I was hoping wouldn't win.  He makes a very appealing presentation.  He doesn't come off as having the same incoherent, generalized anger disorder that's common among tea-baggers.  

[ Parent ]
What I was trying to ask (0.00 / 0)
was whether those philosophical differences have any significant effect on their proponents' electoral behavior come November of even-numbered years. To cite an exmple right here, Jeff Wegerson and I clearly have philosophical differences (I like to describe myself as a left-libertarian), but those differences have little effect in November. Or, more often than not, in February.

So let me ask the question another way: Were all those Republicans who voted Green in 2006 social conservatives? Or people we would now call tea partiers? Both?

Because the real question for those of us here is whether all the people who refused to support Topinka will similarly refuse to support Kirk.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

[ Parent ]
the rise of the tea baggers is due... (4.00 / 1)
to some key factors:

* economic instability that no one is really addressing
* a complete disconnect between their lives and where they see the political parties going, and
* what they perceive as a "sharp turn" from "the middle" towards one ideological direction

we don't need to bicker about whether their perceptions are true.  what is relevant is that they are widely shared (including from democrats and other we'd consider on the left).  here's one email to me that sums up where some tea baggers are coming from:

Sorry Alan - As long as the Democratic Party keeps moving so far left, I want no part of it. If it were just one or two issues that would be one thing; but I feel the party that I grew up with has completely lost its way.  I was so disenchanted with Chicago politics that I move to Colorado to get as far away from the ridiculous taxes, payoffs, favors, and cheerleading for false leaders.

this came from one of the obama volunteers in 2008.

what the tea baggers seem to be looking for is "one of us."  social conservatives are not one of them (for the most part).  the two are not a natural coalition, in part because the tea baggers arose because of the takeover of the republican party by social conservatives.  that doesn't mean that they can't or won't work together.

perhaps a better analogy for getting the point across is to think of tea baggers like ivi-ipo'ers and social conservatives as the regular democrats here in illinois.  it's not that they never work together, it's just not a natural alliance since the existence of one is a reaction to the power of the other...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting

[ Parent ]
who has done polling and focus groups (0.00 / 0)
with Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement?

bored, I found your analogy useful.

It is a bit frustrating to have a dialog with rank-and-file conservatives. It's pretty clear they are angry and they blame Obama and the Democrats.

But what they say they are mad about isn't what they are really mad about.

It seems like both focus groups and polling are in order. Has anybody done it? What do we know from it?

[ Parent ]
There Was The Daily Kos Poll That O'Reilly Has Been Yapping About (0.00 / 0)
http://www.dailykos.com/statep...

I don't think this is specific to 'teabaggers', but they are part of the Republican mix and there should be some data to extract.

There will also be the ancillary freak show of the teabaggers' convention this weekend. As Terrell Owens once said, "Getcha popcorn ready!"

[ Parent ]
the republican party is... (0.00 / 0)
cnn just completed a simplistic poll asking about fav/unfav opinions about the tea party movement.

of course it is frustrating to have a dialog with conservatives.  there are multiple reasons for this, but the most important is that conservative training (like the leadership institute), conservative media (fox, rush) and conservative message enforcement (grover norquist) all reinforce the conservative frame.  government is bad.  government must be reduced.  there is nothing you can say to turn them around on this.

moreover, you getting frustrated only enhances their cause.  it proves to them that there is no answer for government being bad, and it intimidates you from pursuing a course that assume government is good.  this is win-win for conservatives.

and it has generated the greatest con in history.  at a time of one of the major market failures since the country was founded (and proof that self-regulation does not work), conservatives have distracted enough americans to that market failure, blaming our woes on the government!  now that's quite an accomplishment.

i'll repeat the same thing that i've been saying since 2003: conservatives are not only more numerous in this country, they are better trained, better equipped and better connected to succeed.  finally, they have a system of discipline that allows them to dominate the debate save in extraordinary circumstances.

you want focus groups and polls, i assume, to counter their arguments with facts, to negate their prime motivation.  and what i'm saying is that won't work.  they aren't interested in hard facts and sound conclusions, they are driven by visceral understandings (the government bailed out the banks, but not the middle class) which feed their pre-existing beliefs.  more information on their beliefs and motivations won't help you...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting

[ Parent ]
Wait, I'm the head of the 'lefty teabaggers'? (3.00 / 1)
Wow.

:-)

[ Parent ]
better than being the tail... (4.00 / 1)
i would think...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting
[ Parent ]
Speaking specifically to Illinois (0.00 / 0)
It looks to me like both tea partiers and social conservatives are angry with the state's Republican establishment (as well as Democrats, of course). "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

This doesn't apply nationally, since in many areas social conservatives are the Republican establishment.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted

[ Parent ]
these are two different groups... (0.00 / 0)
that we have yet to see working together.  both groups believe that they have "the way" forward and that other conservatives/republicans should follow them.  it's like having two different messiahs.  sure, they are both taking on the roman empire, but do they work together?

while i buy rich miller's contention that illinois is different, and my own observation is that illinois politicians seem to think the illinois is everything (what happens outside of illinois doesn't matter), there is no way i believe that what is happening at the national level wrt the tea baggers does not effect what is happening in illinois.  i'm not sure that illinois' tea party adherents understand that social conservatives don't run the party (especially since they just nominated one of their own).  to an outsider (and tea baggers epitomize outsiders), the party structures in this state are pretty opaque...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting

[ Parent ]
And to repeat my previous question (0.00 / 0)
Who were the Republicans who voted for Whitney in 2006? Because these are the people, under any name, who Kirk hss to get behind him if he is going to win.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted
[ Parent ]
i'm simply not knowledgable enough to answer this question... (0.00 / 0)
i don't know enough about it.  i assume the thought that there were republicans who voted for whitney is based upon exit polls that showed that republicans where some whitney voters' second choice (if whitney wasn't on the ballot, they would have voted republican).  if that's the case, i'm not sure i would define those whitney voters as republican voters.

for a state like illinois, where party registration basically doesn't exist, i define republican (and democratic) voters as those voters who vote in republican (or democratic) primaries.  i'd have to see more information to know that there were any republican (or democratic) voters the way i define it who voted for whitney.

to me, this senate race is full of contradictions, and the one that succeeds will be the one who navigates those contradictions better.  kirk has to make the race about alexi, that alexi is a risky choice -- but it is alexi who has run and won statewide.  alexi has to make this a race about who will go to the senate and support our president -- but he'll have to deal with the apparent fact that the white house didn't want him.  etc ad infinitum.

i apologize for not being informed enough to answer the question you really wanted answered...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting

[ Parent ]
2006 (0.00 / 0)
In the weeks leading up to the 2006 general election there were a number of media reports about conservative Republicans planning to vote Green as a protest against the party's moderate establishment. (I presume they definied "conservative" as someone who had voted for one of Topinka's primary opponents.) And sure enough, come election day I closed a precinct in DuPage County. It was glaringly obvious that the number of votes by which Topinka trailed the other Republican nominees almost precisely equaled the number of votes Whitney got.

Bill Thomasson

Permission to reprint explicitly granted
[ Parent ]
i would consider those to be social conservatives... (0.00 / 0)
brady's base.  it remains to be seen whether they will support mark kirk...

"We have a lot of kids on the ground acting like adults and we have a lot of adults in this room acting like kids," President Obama told his advisors about all the infighting
[ Parent ]
Tea Party Fail | 20 comments
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