The GOP Civil War: The Demise of a Party

[JAD_333]

JAD You are focusing on the economic part of the tea party platform and as we have agreed before how you achieve the goals is just as important as the goals themselves. There are social aspects as well and that comprises huge stumbling blocks for the tea party. Lastly they really need to put a muzzle on Palin and Bachmann. Every time they get their sound bites in the media those on the fence cringe and turn away.

I agree the tactics are crude. They have too much anger. Look at the reaction to the Ryan-Murray budget. I get it, but this time they had an opportunity to appear reasonable by at least saying they would have to study it before spouting off. I think we got the best we're going to get from either side. Puny as it is, the budget is a step forward.

[astralis]

JAD,

But it was factual only from the POV of their opponents. (The second sentence?)

i don't think so. if the Tea Party had a comprehensive platform, one would expect the Tea Party to have a candidate/politician able to speak to all the points.

the Tea Party doesn't, for both counts. a huge reason for this being that the Tea Party is not an actual "party" so much as it is a decentralized movement, where each little group has their own focus/specific agenda (ie, no specific S&T agenda). it's animated by core beliefs vice policy.

're going to paint the entire Tea Party with everything every member believes. Come on. Would you define the Democratic party by what its zaniest members say?

this -isn't- what the "zaniest members" say. if i were doing that, i'd be talking about the various conspiracy theories floating around the RedState/Limbaughverse, such as the Syrian chemical weapons being a Obama-AQ allied false flag operation (you can google that, it's a thing).

everything i listed in terms of history IS a part of the Tea Party overall meme, akin to me saying that Goldwater/Ronald Reagan is the historical guidepost for the establishment GOP, or how FDR/LBJ/New Deal is the historical guidepost for the old Dems.

lol...yes; he's a work of art. We could trot out all the Huey Long types and the far left who support the entitlement apparatus and make even you dislike Democrats

you could, but i don't think it's correct to state that Huey Long started the Dems. :) you said yourself; the Tea Party is an angry populist movement, crude with tactics. they very clearly point to the Rick Santelli rant as a catalyst for the movement-- a "founder" of sorts, not a freak show.

A reactionary reacts to existing conditions. Conservative or liberal, it doesn't matter. .

no, humans tend to react to existing conditions. :) under the definition above, hippies were reactionaries because they were reacting to the culturally conservative 50s. :)

[Parihaka]

Asty, To paraphrase Jad, there is nothing new in politics. How much of the Democrat/progressive movement is new. IMHO the tea party is simply reiterating base principles of governance to argue against a movement that has been expanding since FDR. That's why they align with the GOP rather than the democrats because they are trying to remind the GOP that they supposedly represent conservatism, rather than the Dems who represent liberalism. They are simply the conservative version of the progressive movement or 'third way' as Blair et al would have had it.
I don't know enough of your system to understand why it automatically prevents a third party, I simply see the effects of a multi party system here and how it has prevented capture by extremists whilst also giving them some voice, making nearly every piece of new legislation open to negotiation. I think this would be good for the US given it's current apparent legislative logjam.

[astralis]

pari,

How much of the Democrat/progressive movement is new.

in this context, "old" or "new" is not a factor of age but merely outlook. for instance, progressives are progressives because they believe the Union can be continuously improved to a new, better model. conservatives, not so much ("A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."). reactionaries want to actively re-create the past.

IMHO the tea party is simply reiterating base principles of governance to argue against a movement that has been expanding since FDR. That's why they align with the GOP rather than the democrats because they are trying to remind the GOP that they supposedly represent conservatism, rather than the Dems who represent liberalism.

as can be seen above, there's a difference between conservative and reactionary. even with Goldwater, there was an implicit acceptance of the modern welfare state as it stands. preventing new expansion, certainly, maybe even a moderate rollback.

but the root of the Tea Party is a distaste for (small-c) conservative tactics and traditions. they are radical reactionaries, whose worldview is that the Constitution is under assault and the Republic is in imminent danger. thus their ends justify the means.

they align with the GOP because of course their worldview is closer to that of the conservatives, and because they wish to use the GOP brand, money, and contacts. they're rather more intelligent than the old-school libertarians, whom scorned both and were correspondingly frozen out of politics.

I don't know enough of your system to understand why it automatically prevents a third party,

reams of political science 101 papers written on it; at its most basic version, winner takes all system vice a proportional system.

I think this would be good for the US given it's current apparent legislative logjam.

at the root of the current day dysfunction is the ability for highly motivated, small interest groups with strategy/funding to overwhelm masses of largely apathetic voters, combined with corrosive gerrymandering. resolving this would go a long way to fixing the system without the dramatic shift to a proportional system, which can just as easily lead to deadlock/paralysis (see Italy).

[Bigfella]

Asty, To paraphrase Jad, there is nothing new in politics. How much of the Democrat/progressive movement is new. IMHO the tea party is simply reiterating base principles of governance to argue against a movement that has been expanding since FDR. That's why they align with the GOP rather than the democrats because they are trying to remind the GOP that they supposedly represent conservatism, rather than the Dems who represent liberalism. They are simply the conservative version of the progressive movement or 'third way' as Blair et al would have had it.

Pari,

I would argue that there are some important differences between the TP movement & the 'Third Way'. TPers are much more like revolutionaries. There is a lack of compromise at its heart that is in many ways the antithesis of the 'Third Way'. Those folk sought a compromise between progressive ideas & market economics. 'Compromise' remains a dirty word among committed TPers, as JAD has illustrated several times. That will not always be the case for everyone, but having that instinct at the heart of the movement & present at its birth will have a lasting impact on outcomes.

The TP movement is also a 'bottom up' populist movement. Sure, folks with position, money & power have jumped on the train, but they didn't lay the tracks or get up a head of steam. The 'third way' was anything but populist. In fact, it spent pretty much its entire existence battling populist elements within left wing parties. It was always very much an 'insider' movement trying to move progressive parties away from traditional territory, not toward it.

These aren't just quibbles. They are important in understanding the historical parallels for the TP. I agree it is nothing new, but the best recent comparison in is the 'new left' of the 60s. A populist movement (within a particular demographic) with revolutionary overtones that morphed from a protest movement to become an important part of the Democratic Party. The comparisons are not 100%, but they are closer. This movement isn't to blame for the split in the Democratic party, but it helped to push the party further to the left at a time when the US was beginning to move the other way. While it would be unfair & simplistic to put all that happened in the following decades at the feet of that change, it seems too much of a coincidence that the only Presidential election the Dems won before the rise of the 'Third Way' was a backlash against the excesses of Nixon.

I'm not assuming the TP will have the same impact in the US, but the GOP has only won a majority of the vote at 1 of the last 5 Presidential polls and the impact of the TP during the last election was very definitely negative. The next few elections will be interesting indeed.

[Parihaka]

pari,



in this context, "old" or "new" is not a factor of age but merely outlook. for instance, progressives are progressives because they believe the Union can be continuously improved to a new, better model. conservatives, not so much ("A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."). reactionaries want to actively re-create the past.

sorry, but that's simply liberal propaganda from within the paradigm. I return to my original, albeit poorly put post. You will never be able to understand the tea party movement unless you step outside that paradigm. Yes, every thing the tea party espouse can be related to some point in history, but there is no single point in history that reflects the tea party. They do not wish to wear hose, ride round on horses nor remove all government.
At the moment you can laugh and encourage the internal ructions, but whenever the Republican Party or whatever emerges from it does emerge, you'll be ill-equipped to deal with or too it.

[Parihaka]

Pari,

I would argue that there are some important differences between the TP movement & the 'Third Way'. TPers are much more like revolutionaries. There is a lack of compromise at its heart that is in many ways the antithesis of the 'Third Way'. Those folk sought a compromise between progressive ideas & market economics. 'Compromise' remains a dirty word among committed TPers, as JAD has illustrated several times. That will not always be the case for everyone, but having that instinct at the heart of the movement & present at its birth will have a lasting impact on outcomes.

The TP movement is also a 'bottom up' populist movement. Sure, folks with position, money & power have jumped on the train, but they didn't lay the tracks or get up a head of steam. The 'third way' was anything but populist. In fact, it spent pretty much its entire existence battling populist elements within left wing parties. It was always very much an 'insider' movement trying to move progressive parties away from traditional territory, not toward it.

These aren't just quibbles. They are important in understanding the historical parallels for the TP. I agree it is nothing new, but the best recent comparison in is the 'new left' of the 60s. A populist movement (within a particular demographic) with revolutionary overtones that morphed from a protest movement to become an important part of the Democratic Party. The comparisons are not 100%, but they are closer. This movement isn't to blame for the split in the Democratic party, but it helped to push the party further to the left at a time when the US was beginning to move the other way. While it would be unfair & simplistic to put all that happened in the following decades at the feet of that change, it seems too much of a coincidence that the only Presidential election the Dems won before the rise of the 'Third Way' was a backlash against the excesses of Nixon.

I'm not assuming the TP will have the same impact in the US, but the GOP has only won a majority of the vote at 1 of the last 5 Presidential polls and the impact of the TP during the last election was very definitely negative. The next few elections will be interesting indeed.

Not disagreeing with this in any way BF, I will simply say that I wasn't trying to draw comparisons between the TP's and progressives, merely the harping on about the TP's somehow being regressive or reactionaries and the historical analogies. Socialism in the form of FDR has been around for 80 years in the US. Seeking to revise it isn't reactionary.

[Bigfella]

Not disagreeing with this in any way BF, I will simply say that I wasn't trying to draw comparisons between the TP's and progressives, merely the harping on about the TP's somehow being regressive or reactionaries and the historical analogies. Socialism in the form of FDR has been around for 80 years in the US. Seeking to revise it isn't reactionary.

I'm pretty sure it is a dictionary perfect definition of reactionary depending on which dictionary you use: ie. wanting to return something to its previous state. I would have thought that trying to wind back 80 years of a particular policy mix would also fit the definition of 'regressive'. I also think the TP fits into a category that encompasses 'conservative revolutionaries/radicals', though that may not necessarily equate to 'reactionary'. Perhaps the issue here is whether or not you see the terms 'regressive' and 'reactionary' in this context as pejorative or not. They need not be.

Reactionary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Parihaka]

I'm pretty sure it is a dictionary perfect definition of reactionary depending on which dictionary you use: ie. wanting to return something to its previous state. I would have thought that trying to wind back 80 years of a particular policy mix would also fit the definition of 'regressive'. I also think the TP fits into a category that encompasses 'conservative revolutionaries/radicals', though that may not necessarily equate to 'reactionary'. Perhaps the issue here is whether or not you see the terms 'regressive' and 'reactionary' in this context as pejorative or not. They need not be.

Reactionary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Och really, so Laissez Faire is regressive? It has after all been a notion since trade first began. Or are Progressives regressive, since they want to roll it back? It all depends on which colour of lens you wear, which ideology you worship at the feet of.

[Bigfella]

Och really, so Laissez Faire is regressive? It has after all been a notion since trade first began. Or are Progressives regressive, since they want to roll it back? It all depends on which colour of lens you wear, which ideology you worship at the feet of.

In this context wanting to roll back the welfare state is regressive because it is a return to a previous state. As I said, that need not be pejorative, but it seems a reasonable description.

....anyway, this rabbit hole is getting sillier by the post. Not especially relevant to the main thrust of the thread.

[Parihaka]

In this context wanting to roll back the welfare state is regressive because it is a return to a previous state. As I said, that need not be pejorative, but it seems a reasonable description.

Then everything is regressive, including the progressives.

[JAD_333]

JAD,



i don't think so. if the Tea Party had a comprehensive platform, one would expect the Tea Party to have a candidate/politician able to speak to all the points.

the Tea Party doesn't, for both counts. a huge reason for this being that the Tea Party is not an actual "party" so much as it is a decentralized movement, where each little group has their own focus/specific agenda (ie, no specific S&T agenda). it's animated by core beliefs vice policy.

Not so. The Tea Party has a platform. Tea Party Movement Platform

Its core principles govern what it might say 'to all the points' you refer to. You seem to think they should provide specifics for each issue and each program. The reason they don't should be clear to anyone who is familiar with those principles.

Specifics compliment core principles. If, for example, the Tea Party were confronted with 10 bills in Congress, all containing good ideas which they can support, and they controlled Congress, they would not vote to pass a single one of those bills if it could not be paid for out of revenues, because it would violate two of their core principles: 1) No debt and 2) No deficit spending.

this -isn't- what the "zaniest members" say. if i were doing that, i'd be talking about the various conspiracy theories floating around the RedState/Limbaughverse, such as the Syrian chemical weapons being a Obama-AQ allied false flag operation (you can google that, it's a thing).

People on every side say outlandish things. My liberal friend doesn't care if the Constitution is violated if it helps the poor. Does she represent all Democrats? Of course not. A Republican friend thinks Obama is a Muslim plant. I am a Republican, and I know he doesn't speak for me or the party.

everything i listed in terms of history IS a part of the Tea Party overall meme, akin to me saying that Goldwater/Ronald Reagan is the historical guidepost for the establishment GOP, or how FDR/LBJ/New Deal is the historical guidepost for the old Dems.

Yes, they use historical quotes. But as you can see from the link above, they use them to support their principles, not out of a yearning to return to the Guilded Age. It's a mistake to judge the validity of a principle by its age. Whenever you dismiss the Tea Party as throwbacks to a bygone era, make fun of their Tricorn hats and their use of American symbol, you take the easy way out. It's just a form of ad hominum logic. Instead, you and like-minded thinkers should be defending deficit spending, the debt, and why the size of the Federal government is not a problem. You have plenty of ammo from eminent economic thinkers to back you up.

Now let me tell you what I think the Tea Party is.

First, it is made up mostly of Republicans. They are approximately as conservative as most Republicans. By that I mean they take seriously the oft-stated Republican goal of a fiscally responsible government. Now, we can argue over what 'fiscally responsible' means, but let's agree for the moment that, in its extreme form, it means balanced budgets, no debt, no deficits, and a smaller government that operates within its means--that is, from revenues.

This brings us to the real difference between the Tea Party Republicans and all the other Republicans, and that is, impatience. In other words, the Tea Party is made up of Republicans who are tired of waiting. It wants the party to push harder to achieve its own principles. Pushing harder means, among other things, blocking any legislation in Congress that allows the status quo to continue. They want to starve the "beast' so it can't grow, so the debt will come down, so deficits disappear, and they want to do it now.

Until the 2010 Congressional election, the Tea Party had little clout in the House of Representatives. In fact, the Republicans were in the minority in 2010. But the election put them into the majority, and enough Tea Party members were elected to form an influential block within the party. Their impatience could now be translated into action, and it was quickly felt. Most notably, they nixed a Boehner-Obama budget deal and then precipitated a near fiscal crisis by refusing to raise the debt ceiling without matching cuts in spending. The sequester, which averted a crisis, was seen as a Tea Party victory because it did cut spending across the board, which in turn began to shrink the size of government.

However, the Tea Party still remains a faction of the majority party. To get the party to push harder, they must increase their numbers in Congress. They believe they can do this only by replacing old line Republicans with new Tea Party members. The easiest way is through primary elections. Primaries decide which candidate will face the Democrat challenger in the general election. Typically primaries have very low voter turnouts. Thus, deep-pocketed outside organizations can significantly influence the outcome. It can help a candidate raise enough money and run enough negative advertising to generate a small winning margin in favor of their candidate. Overall, the strategy hasn't worked very well. Tea Party candidates are often light-weights who squeak by in the primary only lose big to better known Democrats, but there have been some successes in deep red states, such as Texas and Kentucky where Ted Cruz and Rand Paul respectively won Senate seats.

The Tea Party continues its strategy of knocking off old-line Republicans, some of whom are proven conservatives considered out of tune with Tea Party tactics. They are challenging leading Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader McConnell of Kentucky in the 2014 elections and a slew of other senators and members. The big money is coming such conservative groups as the Club for Growth and the Senators Conservative Fund. If the Tea Party succeeds in increasing its seat count in the Senate and the House, and the GOP keeps its majority in the House and gains a majority in the Senate, it's going to be a rocky road ahead for the Democrats and progressives.

So, what is the Tea Party? It's the impatient members of the Republican party, impatient for the party to live up to its principles and prepared to impose them in the most bullheaded way possible. Their tactics aim to achieve quick results.

The most important question is, will the Tea Party succeed overall? If we measure success on a scale of one to ten, IMO, they will get a 5. A five means they'll generate enough centrifugal force to move the political spectrum to the right, but they'll fail to impose the full measure of their core principles on the running iof the government. Why? 1) Because some of their core principles are unworkable (Asty can explain why), and 2) because they will not be able to command a working majority in Congress. Plenty of old-line and moderate Republicans will still have seats in Congress. These will be able to thwart Tea Party legislation too radical for them simply by voting with the Democrats. We saw that rare occurrence happen when moderate Republicans joined with Democrats to end the government shutdown.

Postscipt: Recent polls show the Tea Party losing favor among Republicans. That emboldened McConnell and Boehner to lash out the other day at outside Tea Party organizations after they opposed the bipartisan budget introduced Rep Ryan and Sen Murray before the ink was dry. In fairness to these groups they were just upholding key Tea Party principles: No increase in spending and no new 'taxes', which the budget proposal calls for in very modest proportions. The Tea Party may be chastened by its recent defeats, but it is far from dead.

[JAD_333]

Asty, To paraphrase Jad, there is nothing new in politics. How much of the Democrat/progressive movement is new. IMHO the tea party is simply reiterating base principles of governance to argue against a movement that has been expanding since FDR. That's why they align with the GOP rather than the democrats because they are trying to remind the GOP that they supposedly represent conservatism, rather than the Dems who represent liberalism. They are simply the conservative version of the progressive movement or 'third way' as Blair et al would have had it.

I already wrote an epic about this, but just to reiterate, the Tea Party didn't choose the GOP. It's members were already Republicans.

I don't know enough of your system to understand why it automatically prevents a third party, I simply see the effects of a multi party system here and how it has prevented capture by extremists whilst also giving them some voice, making nearly every piece of new legislation open to negotiation. I think this would be good for the US given it's current apparent legislative logjam.

One reason is, we don't have a parliamentary system. In the US, third parties can have no hope of ever taking the top office in the land. Thus, the prospect of winning the presidency tends to make politicians gravitate around the two largest parties.

[Blademaster]

In this context wanting to roll back the welfare state is regressive because it is a return to a previous state. As I said, that need not be pejorative, but it seems a reasonable description.

....anyway, this rabbit hole is getting sillier by the post. Not especially relevant to the main thrust of the thread.

yeah it is, I am sure with no little help from your posts. I am starting to notice that you are fond of saying rabbit holes in response to numerous posts and that you tend to be denigrating to others that don't agree with your position.

[Bigfella]

yeah it is, I am sure with no little help from your posts. I am starting to notice that you are fond of saying rabbit holes in response to numerous posts and that you tend to be denigrating to others that don't agree with your position.

Then your perceptions of me are askew....once again. That was my way of saying that the argument had wandered off course & I didn't plan to take it any further off course. I could have said 'gone off on a tangent'. It would have meant the same thing. By all means point out where I 'denigrate' Parihaka. Please. I suppose I could have said that he was too stupid to understand my argument, but I leave such insults to others. You are in too big a glass house to be preaching at anybody. I simply disagreed about terminology & then when I felt that the argument had run its course I announced that I was done playing my part. I even gave Pari a 'like' for his last comment.

Quite why you decided to make your first post on this thread an unrequested & inaccurate critique of my posts only you could possibly understand. We were doing just fine without you. Spend more time focussing on the quality of your arguments & less on the perceived flaws in mine and we will all be a lot happier. Guess this is your way of saying the 'sunshine policy' is over. Talk about thin skinned.