Through the 1970s and 1980s in Great Britain we had an even nastier kind of socialism than usual (which takes some doing) called Militant Tendency. They were so bad and nasty that nobody in their right mind would vote for them, so they became a part of the Labour party, where their aims, aspirations, ambitions and policies could be hidden from public view whilst being advanced surreptitiously. They were like a small parasite trying to take over a bigger organism for their own benefits. In politics this is called entryism. It took a long time for the Labour leadership to grow big enough balls to kick Militant out, even though they clearly broke party rules. But eventually they did, before the parasite destroyed them.
Zoom forward around 40 years and we have a similar phenomenon, this time on the right and in America, it is called the Tea Party and it is a more right wing version of the Republican party that is using the party to advance its own agenda.
The United States of America has a fundamental problem. The last two presidents, Bush and Obama, have been abysmal and have spent immense, almost unbelievable, amounts of money that the country simply doesn’t have. With no thought to how it will ever be paid off. They only got away with this profligacy because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency so there is a big queue to buy American bonds.
America grew to be great by implementing libertarian policies with low spending, low tax government. Now they have a total muddle with high spending, low tax government and it quite simple cannot go on. America needs to cut back the size of the state, massively increase taxation, or some combination of the two. We know from looking at the rest of the world that cutting back the state works best, but it is difficult to get the state to realise this, they mostly don’t want to cut themselves back, no matter how inappropriate their spending is. They always want to spend more, just look at what Gordon Brown did.
The Tea Party movement is a grassroots, populist movement within the Republican party that seeks to achieve this return to libertarianism and their “Contract from America” contains the sensible policies needed to fix the vast economic problems that they have:
Identify constitutionality of every new law
Reject emissions trading
Demand a balanced federal budget
Simplify the tax system
Audit federal government agencies for waste and constitutionality
Limit annual growth in federal spending
Repeal the healthcare legislation passed on March 23, 2010
Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy
Reduce Earmarks
Reduce Taxes
It is a pity we don’t have a Tea Party in the UK, these are the kinds of policies we need to sweep away the evils of socialism that are embedded in our society and which cause us an immense number of social and financial problems. The recent riots, for example.
But the Tea Party has a problem. Whilst it is practising entryism on the Republican party there are some who are practising entryism on the Tea party. And what these people are doing is bible bashing. They are people who actually believe in an all powerful divine being, that are religious fundamentalists who want to impose their views on everyone else. And they are very socially illiberal. They don’t even like the knowledge of the science of evolution being taught, never mind homosexuality, the use of recreational drugs or a woman’s right to abortion. In other words they are not the sort of person that the world wants or needs to have with any sort of power in society. We have seen the effect of similar nutters running Iran.
Which makes the Tea Party a bit of a curates egg. Economically they are bang on the nail and are proposing exactly what is needed. But the illiberal Christian fundamentalist nutters who they are carrying along with them as fellow travellers are not the sort of person that any educated person wants to see anywhere near power.
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“But the Tea Party has a problem. Whilst it is practising entryism on the Republican party there are some who are practising entryism on the Tea party. And what these people are doing is bible bashing. “
Odd. I happen to live in the United States, but fail to see any fundamentalist religious types exerting any undue influence on those who hold to Tea Party values.
Do you have any sources to back up your assertions? Something that is more credible than essays from those who hate America, and reflexively seek to find anything to say, no matter how false, which might lead those with weak minds to conclude that my country is a backwards place full of ignorant and violent people.
In other words, don’t bother quoting the BBC.
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@James R. Rummel
Various polls have also probed Tea Party supporters for their views on a variety of political and controversial issues. A University of Washington poll of 1,695 registered voters in the state of Washington reported that 73% of Tea Party supporters disapprove of Obama’s policy of engaging with Muslim countries, 88% approve of the controversial immigration law recently enacted in Arizona, 82% do not believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to marry, and that about 52% believed that “lesbians and gays have too much political power”.
At a Tea Party event on February 27, 2009, a photo was taken of TeaParty.org founder and president Dale Robertson with a sign that said “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar”
On March 20, 2010, during a rally at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Bill was voted on, several black lawmakers said that demonstrators shouted “nigger” at them. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was spat upon, although it is unclear if this was deliberate, and said he heard the slurs. Congressman Barney Frank, who is gay, was called a “faggot”. Representative André Carson said that while walking with John Lewis and his chief of staff from the Cannon building, amid chants of “kill the bill”, he heard the “n-word at least 15 times”.
While attending the health care rally in Washington, D.C., on March 21, 2010, Springboro, Ohio Tea Party founder Sonny Thomas posted a racial slur on the Springboro Tea Party Twitter webpage he managed. Directed specifically at the Hispanic community, it stated “Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?”
Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams referred to Allah as a “Monkey God”. Williams’ comments elicited strong rebukes from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York state senators and Muslim leaders. In a subsequent blog posting, Williams wrote, “I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God. Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength, and devotion … Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship.”
These are not the actions of intelligent, educated people.
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And http://www.economist.com/node/21526349
On Michele Bacmann
“Since joining the race for president she has exhibited a flair for organisation and a political cunning above the ordinary. If her victory in Ames was no great surprise—an evangelical Christian with hard-boiled pro-life, anti-gay-marriage credentials was always likely to prosper in the God-fearing cornfields of Iowa.”
and
“Now that she is running for president, Mrs Bachmann is choosing her words more cautiously, especially on social issues. But she has had to resort to credulity-stretching gymnastics to explain past utterances. Did she become a tax lawyer against her own will because, as she once argued, it was a wife’s duty (see the fifth chapter of Ephesians) to be “submissive†to her husband, who thought it was a good idea? No, she says now, in an assertion that would dumbfound a lexicographer: to “submit†means to “respectâ€. Why in 2004 did she equate homosexuality to “personal enslavementâ€? “I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge.†Such evasions are less than convincing. As a Minnesota state senator a decade ago, Mrs Bachmann made her opposition to gay marriage into a crusade that helped to build her political career. The clinic she set up with her husband Marcus (which she cites as evidence of her understanding of job creation) offered to make gays straight via the agency of prayer. Judgmental, moi?”
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Oh, I see how you got that impression.
The one undeniable fact you have to get straight in your head is one you mentioned above: that the Tea Party is a populist movement. There are no dues paid, no party headquarters, no ID cards issued to the party faithful. It is not a political party as you understand it.
I note that you quote an essay that identifies “TeaParty.org founder and president Dale Robertson”. That certainly sounds impressive, but Mr. Robertson has done nothing besides buying a domain name for a year and setting up a website. He has never organized a rally, taken part in efforts to get people to vote, and is not part of local Tea Party leadership at all. You can read all about by following the URL below.
http://houstontps.org/?p=1050
In fact, it seems that he was asked to leave the very same rally where that picture mentioned in your comment was taken. Hardly a move that would be made if he was such a mover and shaker as you claim, no?
In fact, just about all of the examples you seem to find so compelling have been debunked as efforts to spread lies in order to discredit the Tea Party, and very obviously so. The claims that people shouted racial slurs as black lawmakers walked down the street, something you mention above, has been disproved by video that was taken by the staff of those same politicians.
http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/03/21/media-lying-about-racist-attacks-at-on-black-reps-by-tea-party-protesters-video-proof/
I realize that you are looking at American politics from afar, and it seems to me that the citizens of the United Kingdom have never developed the same healthy skepticism of the media that virtually all inhabitants of the US enjoy. But repeating lies that have been exposed months ago in an attempt to justify your biased views?
You are going to have to do better than that, Bruce. Remember, Google is your friend!