bagger protest

With what seems to be an impending deal in the Senate today to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling (for a few months at least) and a total capitulation of The Republican-controlled House, it certainly seems that The Day of the Bagger is coming to an end.

This is a case study of giving people enough rope to hang themselves.

There are some people who should never be put in a position of power. They don’t have the wisdom, compassion or humility to wield power over others in any other way but a destructive one.  And that typically includes being self-destructive, often as has happened in this case, by abusing that power.

What is the Tea Party anyway? It is a conglomeration of racists and religious extremists from rural areas, low-info, Right Wing media addicts and a sprinkling of Ayn-Rand-fantasizing faux libertarians (who want government out of the lives of wealthy people and corporations and in the lives of the poor, minorities and women). They are self-funded and funded by wealthy plutocrats like the Koch brothers in an attempt to use these people they see as rubes to cement their plutocracy in place.

The energy of the Tea Party and the GOP though comes primarily from the most hateful and destructive people in that group. So when you have a lynch mob leading the party that’s leading one half of our legislature, it shouldn’t be surprising that our country ends up with a rope pulled tightly around its neck. That’s the only way they know to “negotiate” on race, equality, progress, etc. They can’t argue based on facts because the facts dispute their positions. They can’t use majority rule because they are unpopular with the majority of Americans. The way they win arguments is by self-righteously Hulking out and verbally or physically attacking their adversaries and winning through the use of force.

In this case, the adversary of the Tea Party was America itself. The nation refused to elect their Presidential nominee who would kill the ACA so they see America as being as much as an adversary as Democrats. You’re either with them or against them so in their hate-filled eyes, they see only enemies when they don’t see their views and themselves reflected back.

Governing based on hatred and spite is not sustainable in a democracy…especially when that hatred is aimed at the majority of voters. They may have become very sophisticated in the art of propaganda but that too can only be sustained so long. When people have personal experiences that refute propaganda, it destroys both the propaganda and the propagandists.

People now know first hand who shut down the government, who laid off their spouses from government jobs and who threatened destruction of the U.S. economy. They are learning more and more that the ACA is a good thing, that Obama hasn’t turned the country socialist and that the government doesn’t work with this GOP in power.

The spin has already started. MSNBC hack Luke Russert claims that this debacle actually made Boehner look good because he “stood strong” with the Tea Party and will fold only at the last minute. Huh? The rest of the nation sees a yellow tennis ball knocked around by waves and Russert sees a tennis ball that is a strong leader of the waves?

Ted Cruz said in an interview this morning that this was a big success for the GOP because no one believed the House could stand up like they did. Huh? So bank robbers who threaten to shoot innocent hostages if they aren’t allowed to rob the bank and get arrested by the police…are actually heroes because of the guts it takes to rob a bank even though they failed at it?

It would seem to be very difficult for the GOP to reverse the damage they have done to themselves in the eyes of the voting public by election day in 2014. What do they stand for aside from trying to damage our President and our nation? What policies do they promote aside from giving the wealthy more and the 99% less? How can their philosophy inspire people to flip their negative views of Repubs into positive support?

Their gerrymandered districts are all that stand between them and long term minority status but even so, there is enough resentment of Republicans now that if elections were held today, they would likely lose the House back to the Dems.

It is the important job of Democrats to nationalize the 2014 election. This latest failed extortion attempt must be hung around each and every Republican’s neck like belling a cat. That bell needs to be rung continuously through 2014 to remind voters that the election of their House Representative and Senators is a vote to support our nation or to threaten its stability and its future.

We may have witnessed the breaking of the back of the Tea Party through this disastrous attempt at national blackmail but to truly put them out of our misery, we need to keep the memory of this anti-American act alive and vibrant in the minds of all voters throughout next year.

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Assumed NameHaruko HaruharaKillgoreTroutQuestiniakesmarn Recent comment authors
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Assumed Name
Member
Assumed Name

Ad Lib,

I agree whole-heartedly with your description if the far-right generally and the tea Party specifically. However, long memory isn’t a virtue of Americans generally…and the political distance between October 2013 to November 2014 is forever. The 24/7 corporate news will certainly hammer “a reading,” and in so doing construct history as desired. If only facts were facts and if only the truth were “whole and nothing but.” That all said, once again, I hope I’m wrong.

Assumed

Haruko Haruhara
Member

Rememeber the line from the John Lennon song about “if you go around carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you aren’t going to make it with anyone anyhow?”

That can be applied to the Confederate flag. Dead giveaway. Don’t expect me to take you seriously if you go running around with a Confederate flag.

Kalima
Admin

They were in turmoil way before they passed the bill. You have to shake your head at the comments in this article after they lost. It’s almost amusing how they attack each other like packs of feral dogs. Idiots like Cruz who now blame Republican moderates in the Senate, is seriously off his TeaBugger rocker. What a truly pathetic bunch of losers but we knew that already.

Kudos to your President for not giving in to their blackmail, and Obamacare stays unscathed. Ha!

Eat that Cruz, Cantor, Lee and the rest of you degenerates.

—-
Break back Mountain??

Republicans in turmoil as Congress passes bill to end debt crisis

US debt default averted and federal shutdown over for now, after bill goes through with barely any concessions to hardliners

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/17/republicans-disarray-congress-passes-debt-default-bill

—-

Inside the GOP Surrender

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/17/inside-the-gop-surrender.html

KillgoreTrout
Member

It makes me sick to see a photo of our president smiling, along side of one of the most anti-American pricks in US history! What is there to smile about when our government is so broken? Would any decent person smile at a funeral? How do the families that have had a big chunk of their livelihoods taken feel about these game players. People who have played political games while they went without? How many jobs have been lost because congress has acted like spoiled children? It makes me sick!

KillgoreTrout
Member

Of course they made a last minute deal. That’s what our government does. They try to scare the shit out of we the people, while they play their insane games, then at the last minute, they do whatever it is to keep a catastrophe from happening. It’s a sick game they all play in a bid for power. This shit has to end and we the people deserve more of our REPRESENTITIVES!
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Nirek
Member

KT, I have to agree! The representatives are NOT doing the will of the people. They are NOT representing all the people just their owners. Politicians should NOT be for sale , but that is exactly what is happening now. They sell themselves to the highest bidder. It is unfortunate that some (most) of them are for sale.

I think the problem lies in the fact that most of them are professional politicians. The founding fathers envisioned citizen legislators. Someone who took time away from his/her job to legislate and then return home. The professional politician just spends most of the time campaigning.

choicelady
Member

SEVENTY FIVE REPUBLICANS JUST VOTED YES ON REOPENING THE GOVERNMENT AND RAISING THE DEBT CEILING DESPITE THREATS FROM THE RIGHT.

Something massive is changing. Something GOOD is happening here!

Nirek
Member

CL, we can only hope that sanity spreads throughout our government.

Questinia
Member

I’m sure it’s been said many times before but Ted Cruz looks an awful lot like Senator McCarthy from his eponymous “era”.

kesmarn
Admin

He does indeed, Q.

But I think he looks even more like Lou Costello, the clown:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhng56vgyX1qz8gt5o1_500.jpg

choicelady
Member

But Costello was cute. McCarthy? Not so much.

Questinia
Member

I’m so embarrassed. I just googled McCarthy Cruz and the comparison has been made a million times.
I’ll just crawl beneath my crossword puzzle now…

I agree with choicelady on this one, kes. Lou Costello is too cute.

kesmarn
Admin

c’lady and Q — would it help if I said that I heard that Lou Costello was not a very nice guy in real life? Hmmm… Didn’t think so… Still too cute. 🙂

kesmarn
Admin

AdLib, this is just so totally on the money; it’s as though you set up a model of sanity next to a model of madness and then just stepped back to let the high-relief differences emerge in the bright light of truth. It really works.

When this whole shutdown debate was going on, it occurred to me that in a high-stakes dialogue like this there are three things that you can communicate to the other person in the conversation; namely: (a) You must hold the same opinion that I do. (b) You may hold a differing opinion and you may express it and I will hear you out. (c) You must shut up.

Teabaggers know how to say (a) and (c), but (b) totally escapes them. They give you only two options: Agree or shut up. So it’s impossible to have a real conversation with them.

And that in turn means that their opinions are immutable. Because changing them would mean being open to something outside their own heads. So it doesn’t surprise me that they’re now trying to spin this as some sort of victory. What else can they do?

To do anything else would be to admit that they were wrong. And they can’t do that. Because even though there’s no evidence to support the validity of their point of view, it has to be right.

Just the way those polls that predicted a Romney win were right.

So as you say, here’s a bunch of people who are impervious to reality, rationality and persuasion. In short: lunatics. And as the rest of the world has frantically been trying to tell us: you can’t trust lunatics with the financial well-being of the entire globe.

This really does need to be changed in 2014. Because one of these days we may not be able to stop them from pulling the cord on the suicide vest, yanking the pin from the grenade and/or hitting that button labeled “nuclear option.”

Greta42
Member
Greta42

Another excellent well-thought out posting, AdLib – You’ve identified the problem group and described them to a T. One thing I would like to add is the co-operation of Eric Cantor in the changing of the rule about who could bring a bill up for discussion in the House and a vote – He did this on Sept. 30th, the day before the ACA went into effect and 2 weeks before the debt ceiling deadline. The purpose was to prevent anyone else from being able to introduce a clean CR and vote on it.

This sounds to me as though his actions need to be investigated and the rule struck down. Anyone who has legal knowledge of this, I’d appreciate hearing from you.

agrippa
Member
agrippa

The hotheads are not done yet.
They will continue to cause as much trouble as they can.
I doubt if they have learned very much; they learning curve is fairly flat.

MurphTheSurf3
Editor

Ok…on to matters of substance.

I went to a meeting yesterday at my Congressman’s office.

On Martin Bashir this afternoon; Great comment from McKay Coppins from Buzzfeed- “Conservative Activists Don’t Really Care If They’re Hurting the Republican Party” on BuzzFeed

The Republican Party is Now the Enemy….with every faction of the GOP regarding the Republican Brand Name as contrary to their own identity
Tea Parties say the GOP is way too moderate
Moderates think the Party has been overrun by Wacko Birds
Libertarians think it is way too religious
The Religious right thinks the GOP has abandoned its core values

All operating in their own realities believed that they have to Conquer the Party to purify it and make it righteous and worthy to lead and govern

Most say “I am a Conservative NOT a Republican.”

Fits right in with what you offer here.

MurphTheSurf3
Editor

Hello Ad Lib…

Another terrific analysis. Why the HELL aren’t you at HP or Politico where your comments would get the kind of wide ranging exposure they deserve.

Ok….I know, I know, I know…..but your comments are so good, so spot on, so pithy….that they deserve HUZZAHS and HURRAHS from a good sized crowd.

So, I shall ask again, as a matter of courtesy, since you have already given me permission.

My I take your post and edit it to meet the 450 word limit (they say its 500 but I find that the number does not quite work) and post it at HP (given name, site, and url credit of course)?

Kalima
Admin

Tut Tut Murph. Would you cut out the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s 9th symphony? 😉

Btw, it might surprise you to learn how many people read The Planet but don’t comment here or become members.

kesmarn
Admin

Quality beats quantity any day!

And even if he tried to jump ship (and we know he wouldn’t) we Planeteers would go on a hunger strike until we got our AdLib back.

We want to hang on to our founders! If any of them left it would be like Thomas Jefferson calling it quits and moving to Canada.

Kalima
Admin

😆 We won’t be going anywhere without you, and why would we leave a place we created for comfy blogging anyway? Our sparing with ignorant people and trollers are over, that’s why we are here and not there. AH has made enough money from using people like us by deceiving members into thinking she was a Progressive. Thanks but “Hell No”.

choicelady
Member

Looking at commentary on MSM, I found a reference to the Tea Party’s embrace of “nullification”, the John C. Calhoun ante-bellum belief that minorities should be allowed to “nullify” laws they do not like. In Calhoun’s case it was anti-slavery concerns. It supposes that the will of the individual or small group should be allowed to transcend the will of the majority.

That tension has existed for centuries in the colonies then the U.S. No one would dispute that when Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson decided they were ‘true light’ believers who lay outside Congregationalist predestination dicta, that they should have the right to practice what they believe. They were ejected from MA Bay Colony and created Rhode Island that from its inception was religiously diverse, opening the first Synagogue in America.

The difference between practitioners of conscience and those believing in nullification has everything to do with upon whom that ‘nullification’ falls. If it is your choice for your own self, it’s fully in keeping with the Constitution. If it is your choice imposed on others, if it flouts the laws decided via elected or electoral process and that lets you keep imposing on others, then it’s not Constitutional.

The Baggers who believe they should be allowed to nullify things such as ACA want this not just for themselves – and they actually already have the right to stay out of the Exchanges – but to impose that nullification on whole bodies of people in the states where Baggers run things. No use saying they’re doing this ‘for the good of the people’ because the people don’t get a voice here.

It was horrid when Calhoun asserted that an entire region should be able to imprison Black people as private property, and it’s horrid today that the Tea Party demands the overthrow of democracy so their Dominionist/Libertarian views become the rule EVEN IF no one else wants them, EVEN IF no one wishes a theocracy, EVEN IF no one else wants government help in times of need to end.

Those who pretend to know better than anyone else how things should be are not entitled to nullification of how the majority see the world. They may live by their own lights for themselves. They may NOT impose their views on the rest of us.

That is what Americans are now waking up to about the Tea Party. They are not rugged individualists at all. They are dictatorial in their demands and goals. That is why the Tea Party and its host the GOP are now at the nation’s all time low in support. We don’t want them. At all.

kesmarn
Admin

In a long history of wonderful comments, c’lady, I think this and the one below rank among your best. What a great contribution.

choicelady
Member

Thank you, dear kes!

It’s up to EIGHTY SEVEN GOP FOR YES

Something is going on. Wow.

kesmarn
Admin

c’lady, they seem to be at a moment of rejection of the extremist element. This is from Peter King:

“I think it’s important for Republican leaders around the country to speak out against him and neutralize him,” King said of Cruz. “Otherwise he’s going to start the same nonsense again in December or January. He’s the guy that caused this, he’s the guy who is a fraud because he never had a strategy to begin with. And if we let him do it again, it’s our fault.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katenocera/house-republicans-are-now-turning-on-ted-cruz?bftw=

choicelady
Member

However awful King can be, he’s been a breath of fresh air on the Dominionist nutjobs.

Did you see that following the vote one of the House stenographers went bonkers and seized the microphone ranting about how God cannot be denied, this is not a God-led nation or the Constitution would not have been written by Masons – she obviously has been captured by the very forces King despises.

How terribly sad. That is why King is correct – these extremists are exerting a horrible influence on too many people!

kesmarn
Admin

c’lady I did not see that story about the stenographer. Positively creepy!

They’re getting to be more and more overt about getting their warped message out there. Ah well…makes them easier to identify when they’re no longer in stealth mode…

Nirek
Member

Ad, the lack of wisdom , compassion, and common sense tells the story of the tea Party. They have no idea how much damage they have caused to the American economy and reputation world wide.