Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Tea Party 'founder' slams Palin, Gingrich; says movement hijac

Rate this topic


CapitalistSwine

Recommended Posts

Good for him. He needs to distance his group from the GOP and get closer to the better Democrats. It is not going to be easy, when he has a brand that is pretty ill-defined.

In Michigan, some folks -- trying to cause confusion -- registered an actual political party called "The Tea Party". They were taken off the ballot, based on a technicality in their petitioning process. (From CBS: "The word "the" in "The Tea Party" title was not in 24-point bold face type on its petitions as required by law." )

Edited by softwareNerd
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The anti Wall Street demagogy in this guy's rhetoric seems far more dangerous to me than Gingrich's religion.
Didn't realize he was anti-business too. I assume he argues against so called "corporatism" rather than against big business as such?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is still demagogic to condemn a class of people as robbers, who need to be locked up. Even if they did profit from a flawed government program.

A rational argument for justice would be to name names and specific crimes committed by individuals. A rational argument for political change would be to identify flaws in government policies. Vague threats against segments of society are scary and reminiscent of tyrants through history, not political activism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea that all the big corporations that profited from the past few years bailouts and stimuluses were just victims is completely naive. Yes, those poor men who got all the money. Respectable banks like BB&T were openly hostile. What about the rest?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We can be nitpicky about it if we want, but the main point is Objectivists do not and should not support crooked businessmen. From time to time I see reactions along these lines, and I have to remind people that most of the time where there is this type of collusion it was not forced by the government, but is a 2 way street of corruption, and that there is only sometimes a conflict that arises and that is usually because sometimes the government has a different agenda than that business, but they usually have no problem hauling out as much money as they can during these events and then trying to use it to their benefit. The liberals make this same mistake but its the other way around. They demonize the corporations while ignoring the fact that the government is a main component of the corporations ability to take advantage of these situations, and they ignore that corporations and government often collude in manners that, at least at the time can be beneficial to both groups, not just the "evil corporations". So we cannot forget to place blame where it is properly due while defending the right of businesses to profit. That moral support does not go to those that were on the wrong side of the issue in Atlas Shrugged.

Further, I disagree that this man is more dangerous than Newt Gingrich, someone who I am well aware of due to the fact that my Dad likes him.

Edited by CapitalistSwine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We can be nitpicky about it if we want, but the main point is Objectivists do not and should not support crooked businessmen.

I don't support them, I'm just against them being locked up for belonging to a "crooked" class, or being "banksters" (I'm also against stupid puns, so that's two strikes). That's not nit-picky, it's a fundamental difference between rational arguments and demagogy, and a statement about what is and isn't acceptable language in political discourse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't support them, I'm just against them being locked up for belonging to a "crooked" class, or being "banksters" (I'm also against stupid puns, so that's two strikes). That's not nit-picky, it's a fundamental difference between rational arguments and demagogy, and a statement about what is and isn't acceptable language in political discourse.

I agree. My only point here is that not everyone is an Objectivist, and, as far as basic concerns of political strategy are concerned, some things may be justified or done that would be preferable to the alternative, for the wrong reasons. In this case, I would much prefer this incorrect demagogy and having them try to distance themselves from the Neocon tea party takeover than nothing said at all and letting it be completely hijacked.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't support the Tea Party in particular, or Gingrich.

I think the Tea Party is committed to distance from the Republicans as such.

The benefit of the Tea Party lies with its ability to open up American society to more competition: in financial culture, in academia, in politics, in economics, public schools etc. Our political/economic elite is dominated by people with closed paradigms - a la Berkeley/Harvard. So, as long as we break the notion that there's this 'consensus' about all these issues like global warming - but also economic intervention by the government, and multiculturalism, etc. - when there's no such consensus, and when the consensus ideas are often wrong and harmful - that will be good.

The Tea Party is therefore generally good, as long as it doesn't support any policies that are similarly totalitarian to the ones it replaces. By totalitarian, I mean "the answer".

I don't think there's any intellectual movement - ARI/ARC included - in this country that has enough knowledge to construct an ideal political solution for us. What we need now is an opening, a diversity of idea that can compete, so that that knowledge can emerge over time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My understanding is that whenever someone high up in the tea party movement brings up abortion or gay marriage in their executive sessions, they are slapped down HARD. The founders and most of the leadership wants the tea party to be *solely* about government spending, taxation and regulation. They recognize that those issues are divisive and would drive half or more of their membership away, so they refuse to touch 'em one way or the other.

This is not to say that a Tea Party endorsed candidate won't try to "do something" about abortion or gay marriage if elected and they have the opportunity, but if so they are going beyond what the Tea Party stands for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there really a tea party organization that has some amount of control over the key "platform" and is able to keep the other parts somewhat in line? I did some searching and found a few sites, and the core values or vision etc. were different across sites.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Denninger and everyone who thinks like him has it exactly backwards. The power play runs in the other direction. The TEA Party has been about co-opting the Republican Party and waging war on the Bush-Rove-Nixon axis of political pragmatism. Palin makes sense as a TEA partier, Gingrich is a non-entity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I applaud the Tea Party movement as a step in the right direction, but fear their principles are compromised enough, relative to the purity of Objectivism's political standard, that they may end up being yet another distraction from the root principle: individual life and the freedom necessary to live it successfully.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

The Tea Party movement is a non-partisan movement, focused on issues of economic freedom and limited government, and a movement that will be as vigilant with a Republican-controlled Congress as we were with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
We recognize the importance of values but believe strongly that those values should be taught by families and our houses of worship and not legislated from Washington, D.C.

Good to see them do this, particularly to see them do so in a preemptive way.

It would be cool to see them become one step more explicit in tying those two thoughts together: "The Tea Party movement ... focused on issues of limited government... we want to limit government control in our economic lives and also in our social lives. We live one life, and want to limit the government's control of that one life."

I guess that this is probably not just about the Tea-party telling Congress what to do, but also -- and more importantly -- about one part of the Tea-party trying to set a particular agenda. I wish these guys well. If the Tea-Party is to thrive, it has to make its independence from the GOP more real.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That letter has since been rebuffed by another letter, which is highlighted in this news article. The letter was written by "leaders of mainstream Tea Party groups," and they definitely want the new congress to use their position to legislate for the religious right:

"We, the undersigned, are leaders of mainstream Tea Party groups. We are the people that helped get conservatives elected on November 2. ... While we do not speak for this movement as a whole, we are a large cross section of this movement and we want to tell you what this movement wants. ... We, the members of the mainstream Tea Party movement have a lot of expectations for you in this Congress. We realize the limitations you face. But we also realize the tools you have at your disposal. America is a conservative country. We expect conservative leadership from our country."

While it's true that there are a lot of 'tea partiers' that want real liberty in the social realm, the populist movement will be directed based on what the pop-leaders (Sarah Palin) says; and we all know which direction she wants to take the country when it comes to this issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While it's true that there are a lot of 'tea partiers' that want real liberty in the social realm, the populist movement will be directed based on what the pop-leaders (Sarah Palin) says; and we all know which direction she wants to take the country when it comes to this issue.

No, we don't. Tell us what direction Sarah Palin wants to take the country.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, we don't. Tell us what direction Sarah Palin wants to take the country.

A socially conservative sector of America that can survive (in the public sphere) only resorting to scary reactionism. Sarah Palin probably doesn't know what direction she wants to take your country, but the means, the people and the passion for "it" is there.

I would like to know more about the Tea Party. What is it?

A) If not a simple proxy of the GOP to gain leverage after the Dems snatched the biggest cornerstone of American Politics: the placing of the Obama in the executive, then what are they?

B ) The gestation of a third party, one that could win? How scary is that? A third position destroying the fragile balance of demockery. The elephant in the room would cease to be ignored and excreta would hit the fan.

C) An undefined movement? The last cry before America finds her new place in the new homogeneous globalied World?

D) Something more benevolent but necessarily populist like the Moral Majority back in the 80s?

Please clarify this phenomenon for this poor foreigner.

Edited by volco
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to know more about the Tea Party. What is it?

It is a meta-party. It is an organized interest group for pushing the entire political spectrum rightward by encouraging one of the parties to be more ideologically dedicated to freedom, lower taxes and less government. It is a necessary counterpoint to the Democratic Socialists of America who have engineered the takeover of the Democratic Party on behalf of socialism without themselves running high profile candidates.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is a meta-party. It is an organized interest group for pushing the entire political spectrum rightward by encouraging one of the parties to be more ideologically dedicated to freedom, lower taxes and less government.

So, I can take off my mind the possibility of it being a proto-party. Then it is in a relationship with the GOP in which the Tea Party can be its proxy, or as you say, the other way around.

Do you believe they can have enough popular support by explicitly excluding social issues traditionally and unfortunately (but I'm sure intentionally) married with lower taxes and less government?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, I can take off my mind the possibility of it being a proto-party. Then it is in a relationship with the GOP in which the Tea Party can be its proxy, or as you say, the other way around.

If the Tea Party ever runs candidates it will fail its purpose. Bill Clinton was elected president twice because of Ross Perot's third party candidacy. The Libertarian party strengthens socialist philosophy because they ghettoize and isolate themselves into a third party that can be safely ignored as impotent.

Do you believe they can have enough popular support by explicitly excluding social issues traditionally and unfortunately (but I'm sure intentionally) married with lower taxes and less government?

Different parts of the country are different, "enough" will vary from state to state so will actual support levels. It would take a professional politico to sort that out and I am not one. What we already see is different versions of the Tea Party in different states.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...