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Technorati'Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP'
Richard Viguerie, the legendary hard-right activist who spent much of the past decade arguing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were too liberal, now declares that the days of even the most minimal moderation are now over in the Republican Party.
"Tea Party Activists Are the New GOP," says Viguerie.
There is little reason to argue with the man whose direct-mail campaigning funded the rise of the Republican right in the late 1970s and who grumbled loudly when Newt Gingrich, Bush, Cheney and Republican leaders tried to soften the party's roughest edges.
Viguerie isn't grumbling now.
He's celebrating. And rightly so.
Moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, the party's nominee in Tuesday's special election for an open New York congressional seat, has suspended her campaign. And with that move, the new "new right" -- which Viguerie describes as "Tea Party activists, town hall protesters, and conservatives across the country" -- can claim a clear victory in its struggle to define the GOP as a far more extreme party than anything envisioned by Bush, Cheney or Gingrich.
Scozzafava, a state legislator, had the Republican ballot line and support from the party apparatus in Washington. But Tea Party and Town Hall activists -- and their mentors and funders such as former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and the powerful Club for Growth -- threw their support behind Doug Hoffman, a more right-wing contender running on the New York Conservative Party line.
Scozzafava took a beating for her support for gay rights and abortion rights, her alliances with organized labor and her sympathy for the plight of the unemployed.
The attacks were brutal and they dried up financial support for the GOP nominee's campaign -- even though she began as a presumed frontrunner in New York's historically Republican 23rd district, where the seat went vacant after President Obama nominated moderate Republican Congressman John McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army.
Reactionary Republicans, led by 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, threw their support to Hoffman.
With her poll numbers tanking, Scozzafava finally gave up with just three days to go before Tuesday's election.
Now that the GOP nominee is out of the running, Hoffman is well positioned to compete with Democratic newcomer Bill Owens in a race to fill a seat that has not elected a Democrat in more than a century.
Scozzafava said she would vote in Tuesday's special election for Democrat Owens, issuing a statement that read:
You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically.
It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same," Scozzafava added. "It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress.
No matter what its contours, the Hoffman-Owens result will be a footnote to the Scozzafava-Hoffman saga.
As GOP strategist Paul Erickson told The Washington Post with regard to the latter struggle: "This is entirely a battle over the definition and winning formula for Republican candidates going into the midterm elections of 2010 and beyond."
Erickson's point is well taken.
Republicans who have tried to move party back toward the political mainstream, after a three-year losing streak that has cost the GOP control of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and the White House, are frustrated -- and a little bit scared. As Gingrich, who backed the decision of local Republican leaders to nominate Scozzafava, explained: "I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices."
Republican strategist John Weaver, a veteran aide to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, echoed that theme.
"Because of what's happened, we're going to have some mischief-making, which is not positive for a party that needs to really focus on other fundamentals in order to make a comeback," explains Weaver.
But Gingrich, Weaver and other advocates for mainstreaming the GOP have been beaten. Badly.
And Viguerie and his crew get the bragging rights.
Calling the developments in the New York race "an earthquake in American politics," the right-wing strategist predicted that it would be "the first of many challenges to establishment Republicans that we will see for the 2010 elections and beyond."
Viguerie is right.
And it is not just the party of Lincoln or the old "Rockefeller Republicans" that is being broken.
Gingrich and those conservatives who argued for broadening the party's base have suffered a serious blow.
The GOP is now, as Richard Viguerie says, the party of "the Tea Parties and their candidates."
The question, of course, is whether a GOP defined by "the Tea Parties and their candidates" can compete not just in New York's 23rd district -- where the party has always won -- but across the great expanse of a country where the party has in recent years been losing.
If Viguerie and his compatriots are correct, it is not just the Republican Party but America that is about to take the most rightwing turn in its history.
If Viguerie and his compatriots are wrong, the Grand Old Party could be turning toward a permanent minority status that only the most enthusiastic Democrats dared imagine.
Gingrich, ever the wise analyst, is anticipating -- or perhaps the proper word is "dreading" -- the latter result.
Said the former speaker of the GOP: "This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we'll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama's re-election."
44 Comments so far
Show All"Said the former speaker of the GOP: "This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we'll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama's re-election."
A shitt-eating grin spreads across my old face every time the "Eye-of-Newt" starts sweating. So, old GOP Corpzilla himself is afraid of third party cooking pots popping up eh?
Like Perot and Nader who I faithfully voted for: not that they'll ever likely win; just that it removes the smug two-party air of conceit from the "Republicrats" grubby drool-crusted faces. If you can't get even: SPOILER!
VOTE THIRD PARTY. OR WRITE IN "NONE OF THE ABOVE".
Don't play their game anymore.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I will vote for what I believe in, win or lose. We live in a democracy and if a majority of Americans want basically one party ("moderates" whatever that means) then so be it. Just have one party, or one with a supermajority. All will be fine then, or...they will just make it fine!
Voting third party I can agree with but "none of the above" I dunno. The latter feels too much like not voting but that's just my feeling.
Pay attention to the NY-23 congressional race today. The Republican candidate has dropped out. It's now between a pretty conservative Democrat and an even more conservative third party candidate of the state's Conservative Party. If the third party candidate Doug Hoffman wins, expect the right-wingers to supports third party candidates all over through 2012 at least.
I believe you're right. Certain candidates from the "Constitution Party" or "Tax Payers Party" might find unexpected support. People need to really READ the platforms of some of these smaller splinter parties.... Not everything is in a name. I suggest people go to "politics1.com" to read the full party platforms of these groups.
I say pay more attention to the NJ and VA races where there are more votes. In VA, if the GOP is 15 or more points ahead and/or in NJ the GOP are 5 or more points ahead, then this could spell a very bad omen for the Democratic Party next year and in 2012. I'm sitting this election in VA out.
The elite establishment hosts quite a variety of mosses, fungus and molds, and The Nation is a pretty but toxic member of that community. It was toxic enough for Nichols to put that pathetic acronym for the world's most monstrous fascist organization into the title of this article. But to repeat the acronym in sentence after sentence, and giving the monstrosity so much undue attention, amounts to an intellectual crime on the reader. I had to stop reading after two paragraphs. That organization deserves to be destroyed.
The "left" needs to get up and out of bed with the Obama administration and the pathetic Democratic Party and start something as well.
Because as it stands now, the spineless and pathetic Democrats just as the Repukes are just fine with letting America to continue to go down the tubes and at a very rapid pace mind you all.
So, although the teabaggers and the GOP are indeed awful, I do not see giving the Obama administration free passes in the area of social/economic policy and certainly not in the realm of his defense budget and the continuing wars.
The "left" needs to get up and out of bed with the Obama administration and the pathetic Democratic Party and start something as well.
Wake Up Liberals!
Please be quiet. It's the "left"'s turn to ride the gravy train now.
Again?
What gravy train?
You have got to be kidding me!
Tea Parties. That's so gay.
Ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
Tomorrow will be interesting, but I do not see Tea Baggers as being a unifying force for America. Tea Baggers are too diverse and too polarized in their opinions to be meaningful. What brought them together was their disgust of the Democrats, and quite frankly, I should be attending their rallies as well.
If you listen to the Tea Bagger's messages, they span almost the entire politico/economic spectrum.
That does not mean that Progressive's should let their guard to falter.
Who said a 3 party system wouldn't work?
A Democratic party with 51%, with the soft-fascist GOP and the hard-fascist Conservative party splitting the remaining 49%...
Too bad the Dems will likely screw this up too by caving for BOTH
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
"If Viguerie and his compatriots are wrong, the Grand Old Party could be turning toward a permanent minority status..."
"Well, first of all, there are no permanent majorities in American politics. They last for about 20 or 30 or 40 or, in the case of the Roosevelt coalition, 50 or 60 years and then they disappear."
Karl Rove, November 7th 2004, in response to Tim Russert's question: "You have said that you--your ultimate goal is a permanent Republican majority. What does that mean?"
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6430019/
Now why isn't there any talk about tomorrow's elections in NJ and VA? Is it possible that this author knows that people in VA and NJ don't care about abortion or gay rights but about their pocketbooks? Not that electing Republicans is recommended but the Democrats failed to govern like populists and are about to pay the price tomorrow.
Sad but true.
When a conservative calls the Democrats the "elite", I can no longer argue with them. I know how all my right-wing media indoctrinated family members down there are going to vote.
I think we are not going to see any progress until the ideas of the populist-libertarian-abolish-all-government-regulation types are given a full try. Yes, I know, we already are almost in the fourth decade of the grand experiment in getting "government off the backs of free enterprise", and the results are pretty obvious to me, but apparently they are not obvious to younger people. We need to go "all the way" before they will be convinced.
Then, once we reach tee fully predictable Salvadoran/Colombian/Bolivian levels of economic savagery, we can then smash the whole order and build a new just society.
I'll be long dead, though.
I don't plan on voting tomorrow. I don't support Republicans but I don't see anything in Deeds that motivates me to go out and vote given his lackluster campaign and taking the major issues off the table. Some have suggested that I try a write in. I don't know if that's possible on electronic ballots since that's what I'd be voting under. I'm probably going to sit tomorrow out.
Speaking of "getting government off ...", I think it's all foolhardy talk of those who screech about government being on their back and then enjoying that when no one's looking. The hypocrisy is unbearable.
Have you considered a "blank" ballot? It does say a lot, that a person would take the time to go and cast a "none of the above" vote. There is a sign on the road that I drive to work that reads.... "If you CAN vote and don't, you don't count! Right?"....
At least by casting a blank ballot, when someone asks IF you voted, you can at say "yes".
I dunno. I could do the blank ballot but then I still don't see the point of going. I don't know if they count anyway. Nice idea though. I can't believe that there is not a single third party running for governor, not even libertarians ! This year's elections look dull but that's VA. Maybe NJ looks sort of lively?
What the piece left unwritten was what Richard Viguerie had to say about every direct mail operator is intimately familiar with: the demographic make up of whom they are directing their message to. In a way, Viguerie represents the means of communicating that is 20th Century, whereas we are now firmly in the 21st. Direct mail, like newspapers, is a mass media medium that skews older, white, and rural. Said audience is not only graying (which is advertising poison unless you're selling stuff like adult diapers), but their economic leverage is also diminishing (ironically due their deluded support of corporatism via voting against their interests with the GOP).
This is not to write that progressives should merely stand aside and watch them implode. Any political entity that used to be powerful is always dangerous to everything and everyone around them during their death throes. It is better to be ready to fight off any wild jabs from their quarter, and if possible, speed their demise.
As a last note: progressives should also be aware of this lesson from history. When Mussolini carried his 1922 March on Rome, his Fascists were a minority party that had the gumption to carry out an extreme political action, while his opponents did not resist it to their eternal regret. Should Viguerie's minions ever try something like that (the "Tea Party's" & the "9/12 March" were dress rehearsals) for real: it will be time for progressives to put up or shut up.
The Tea Party movement has to be marginalized at all costs. Because a tax revolt is the one thing a majority of fed up Americans can really get behind, regardless of party affliliation. Especially in a dollar crisis scenario coupled with high energy and food costs. So marginalize them at all costs.
It's weird how the Tea Party clowns are all about a tax revolt. They don't care that their government spends trillions of dollars on Big Bank Bailouts and defense contractors and wars. The real revolt should be a SPENDING revolt.
Actually, they do care about the big bank bailouts, that's really what turned them against Bush, although I doubt they realize just how nefarious it was, and undoubtedly support the economy system of free market fundamentalism which led to the disaster.
But yes, none of them give a crap about the huge increase in defense spending. While their children fail in schools, while our citizens die in ERs because they couldn't afford a primary care doctor a year previously, and while our bridges collapse, they support every effort to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only way to marginalize the Tea Party movement is to dis-couple it from its' media outlet, Fox Noise Channel.
In some ways, it's good that the Republicans are now going to be an openly fascist party. On the other hand, their extremism will drive many people to support Democrats, no matter how bad the Dems become.
Probably, the final outcome (a fascist America vs. a slightly less extreme corporate oligarchy)will be decided by the rulers. If they think the public needs more suppressing, the new GOP will win. I will be watching tomorrow's news from New York. If the Dems can't win this one, it's a very bad sign.
Because the Right, in it's reactionary extreme, doesn't even put on the pretense of moderation,and it provides cover for the Democrats presently occupying the status quo of the moderate Republican. This is how the Democrats perennially get away with "not as bad as".
It has reached a surreal full circle where I live. The Democrats are corrupt, well funded Blue Dogs attacking ex-social worker Republican candidates for raising taxes. Ironically, the Republicans represent the older residents on fixed incomes and people at risk of losing their homes. The Democrats support development and oppose open space initiatives. They are basically gentrifying DLC Yuppies intent in driving long-time residents out and have engaged in some really foul tactics. Tomorrow I will be voting a straight Republican ticket...that's a first.
I don't know about this. If the GOP becomes even more extreme right-wing, then the centrism and center-right positions of the Democratic Party may win even more appeal from the discouraged Republicans.
So let me get this straight. Both parties are big business stooges so let's just limit our discussion to gays and abortion. Every election year, the feminist groups go out of their way to play cheerleaders for the Democratic Party but when they see genuine supporters of feminism such as Ralph Nader and Cynthia Mckinney, they complain about winnability. But here we have the conservatives who go beyond the party and boldly endorsing a conservative who just so happens to be independent. Why couldn't all the "feminists" and the gay rights groups who throw their support to the same Obama who kept quiet about the proposition in CA invalidating same sex marriage and botched the debates on abortion last year have just thrown their support to Nader and Mckinney?
"Why couldn't all the "feminists" and the gay rights groups who throw their support to the same Obama who kept quiet about the proposition in CA invalidating same sex marriage and botched the debates on abortion last year have just their support to Nader and Mckinney?"
Feminist writer Katha Pollit had this to say to Ralph Nader: "I wanted to shout at the screen, where's your dignity? Do you really want to go down in history as the world's most irritating vanity candidate?" Katha Pollit (so urbane and saavy, a significant cut above the rest of us silly third party supporters, eh?).
John Nichols, what's your answer? What could be the compelling reason for supporting corporate Democrats over Nader or McKinney? Why do you oppose punishing sold out whores for empire, actively supporting them instead? I think it has nothing to do with the "lesser of two evils" strategy because that has only moved the country to the right. So there must be another reason.
Could it be this: Your job! If Nader had pulled significant votes from Obama causing the Dem to lose, you would have lost your job along with any chance of finding a new one. If Obama turned out to be just what we'd hoped for and you had supported Nader, you'd be marginalized and maligned. There goes your reputation. It's fear. Same reason our reps would never seriously oppose the empire. Who wants to be un-employed?
Bless all the true progressives who aren't afraid of discomfort?
Nader 2012! Run Ralph Run. (plus, I'd love to hear you cream John Nichols in another debate.)
I don't feel like looking for exact damning quotes, but Pollitt also clutched her pearls and howled in dismay when Cindy Sheehan wised up and left the Democratic reservation.
Sheehan was never a latte liberal or Democratic partisan in the first place, but so-called "progressive" Democrats welcomed her in 2005 as part of their pretext of being anti-war and anti-security state, i.e. anti-Bush.
Pollitt, like the insufferable Joan Walsh, insisted that the sensible thing for Sheehan to do would be to more or less "work within the system" by serving as a cheerleader for truly "electable" Democratic anti-war candidates. They supported the Gorgon Pelosi, of course-- probably still do.
Something in their heads just disconnected somewhere along the line, and they really think it's no more than obvious common sense. Or at least they preach it; I don't claim to know what's really going on in their soulless psyches.
Perhaps they became so obsessive about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good that they've forgotten whatever they knew of the "perfect" OR the "good". And it shows.
Sorry for the tangent, but the Sheehan-bashing bothers me as much as the Nader-bashing.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I couldn't imagine what Katha Pollit would've done if Hillary had won the nomination. It was bad enough to be called a racist for voting for anyone other than Obama. We'd be called misogynists for opposing Hillary. It's unbelievable to watch these 'feminists' fighting for people who actually oppose feminism. Katha isn't alone. I have come across such typical behavior from macho feminists. Some of them voted for Mccain because of Sarah Palin while others voted for Obama for Roe v wade crap. Even as we speak the 'feminist' looking groups support expanding Obama's war in Afghanistan. I suppose our new generation of 'feminists' will be getting their training from the Teen Titans ?
Do you prefer to be called a misogynist for deriding people for voting for "Roe v Wade crap"?
Fine then. You're a misogynist.
Pure Limbaugh. Now we're getting real.
Since the GOP became the party of the Mugwumps, it has stood as the voice of business, particularly big business. Now it seems the party is becoming something that is beyond the control of its masters.
Our government has become expert at creating Frankenstein monsters abroad, and now one has been unleashed inside the US. It is good to see the monster attack its creator, but schaudenfreude offers no protection when there is a monster on the loose.
"Mugwump:" an old political word refering to a fence straddler; a creature whose mug is on one side of the fence, and whose "wump" is on the other side.
Yes, and the issue being straddled was reconstruction. Would the GOP remain the party of Lincoln and press for equal rights for all, or would it become the party of business? The party became the latter, laying the groundwork (since repaved many times) for what it has become today.
Sieg Heil, Herr Viguerie. Eight years of George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney set up the very real possibility of an out-and-out fascist USA. The Republican beer hall brawlers may be temporarily crawling through the mud but they will be back. When the seething, angry volcano that is the United States erupts, people will not be turning to well spoken thieves and liars like Obama; they will want the real thing, the Waffen SS of American politics . . . the Republicans.
Because of the bad economy they will be back sooner than many will think/want. This is because of our two party state that some think is so great. No matter how crazy the Republicans get they are the ONLY other choice in a two party system.
So when the Democrats fail to fix the economy, (which IMHO is unfixable, so they can't), the Republicans will get to run the joint again, and they know it. They are just biding their time like vultures circling a dying donkey.
Lets all hope Viguerie is correct. Its lovely to see the GOP cannabalize itself.
I still say they need to change their name from GOP to GGG:
the party of God, Guns & Greed.
Not to mention the rest of the world, and the younger generation in the US, is moving beyond the small-minded ideology of the neocons.
In the end they'll be a small band of morons "on display" for all to laugh at as they spit corn from their mouths, stomp their feet, and hit themselves in the back of the head with a bat.
Unfortunately, Obama is more responsive to "the small band of morons" (who would never vote for him in a million years), than he is to the people who voted for him.
Just as the Republicans are controlling Congress without having a majority, a few choice words from the teabaggers and Obama cans Van Jones post haste.
The moron$ 0 works for bought his election.