Yes, yes, they are against the gubmint, except when it comes to girls’ uteri. 

Explain that, Jane.

Explain that, Jane.

She’ll be happy to, especially if you’re a cable news producer who wants to book her on your network to do so.

Jesus, she’s Susan Estrich without the academic background.

Yeah, apparently Jane missed the coverage of Tom Tancredo and Joseph Farah spouting their non-partisan and principled hatred of minorities and black presidents to rave reviews by the crowd.  I actually kind of respected Jane at one point.

Useful idiot is useful.

The teabaggers cheered Tom Tancredo’s call for a return to Jim Crow-era voter suppression tactics and gave a warm reception to birfer nutbag Joseph Farah. Even for slow learners, that should have been the final straw.

They do hate Banksters, but unlike Jane, they don’t want to DO anything about them, because that would be SOCIALISM! Or some bullshit, all these people hear is their taxes MIGHT go up and they freak.

Damn, that Obama hate runs long and deep.  Can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything like it, but I remember my parents telling me about FDR hate.  This has to be worse.

The Teabaggers are insecure racists, xenophobes and anti-intellectuals—America’s “go-to” Third Party for the last 200 years. Their perennial platform is “Hate & Fear.” Only the name changes, and occasionally the theme song.

They love the automatic, unearned “exceptionalism” that accompanies the blessed accident of being born in a country that was great before they got here; but they despise the fact that not only “real” achievement but vast swaths of the everyday reality they sleepwalk through are grounded in realms of abstraction and subtlety that are inaccessible to them, and frankly indifferent to their injured pride.

As for Hamsher, she’s a silly, self-promoting opportunist who’s living in a Star Trek movie. There is no Tea Party/Progressive “common ground.” There is no “à la carte” pick-and-choose Third Party platform that will magically unite the ultra-left and ultra-right in mutual grudging respect, like Klingons and Tribbles. That’s just political escapism, a kind of Fantasy Football strategizing that kills time on cable and gives elfin yack-hacks something to do till a paid gig arises.

They do hate Banksters

I don’t even agree with this.  They think the entire global financial meltdown was caused by Fannie and Freddie and ACORN.  They blame Franklin Raines more than anyone on Wall Street.

Exactly. The “independent” woman on with Hamsher echoed that.

How many times do we have to debunk the CRA bullshit? The mortgage crisis was not created by millions of poor blacks buying Pete Dyer golf-course overlook mansions on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Jesus.

Someone on a very paranoid Republican blog has a post up about “Palin Democrats.” If I’m not mistaken, that’s the textbook example of a “null set.”

You have to give ratfuckers and liars like Hamsher credit for producing gymnastic, in-your-face horseshit like that. It’s what Donald Barthelme archly referred to as “diddling the manifest.”

The teabaggers are just a group of Bush 22%-ers who realized the Republican brand was still radioactive in 2009. For fuck’s sake, they’re neo-cons. They hate taxes and immigrants. They love torture and Jesus. They value “common sense” over reason and intellect. They think corn pone rhetoric is the distinguishing mark of authenticity. Hamsher’s an idiot for spending her time lending authenticity to the demands of these mental midgets/moral monsters.

I admit I have been trying to tease out the consequences of Hamsher and apparently a significant subset of progressives believing there is some upside to common cause with the Teabaggers, but I just can’t see it. So far, her efforts have caused her to lie shamelessly about who they are and what they want in order to claim some manner of sisterhood with them.

It is really strange to watch. I wonder if some of those on the Left who have decided there is merit in the primitive, inchoate rage of Teabaggery will ultimately be seduced by a combination of its anti-government hatred and their own denial of Obama’s bog standard centrism into becoming shiny new fierce right wingers, a la the neocon conversions of the 1970’s and 80’s.

There is no rational destination for Lefties getting on the Teabagger train, and I suspect it is a one way express with no return ticket.

If you rule out innate political naivete or intentional deep-cover ratfucking, the only plausible non-criminal explanation for people like Hamsher and HillBuzz is that they are reacting on a purely emotional level to the break-up of a fantasy relationship they never had. They feel the Democratic Party has spurned their love, so they’re willing to fuck the pimply, tattooed spaz from Shop Class just to gross-out their liberal friends.

Look, I’m surrounded by tea baggers and I work for one. Here’s where you know if you’re going to find common ground with them—just ask yourself the question, do I hate niggers in charge? When you can answer that question you’ll know which side of the debate you are on.

The tea baggers, as described by numerous commenters above, hate the very fucking idea of poor people of any color or ethnicity getting any help whatsoever. Add in a good dash of good old American racism, sprinkle the whole shebang with a spittle-flecked ragegasm against “illegals”, serve with a side dish of welfare queens driving caddies and eating at the finest dining establishments paid for by hard-working (THAT MEANS WHITE! GODDAMN YOU!) Americans who have never, NEVER taken advantage of government institutions, EVER! and you have your pot of hate-tea.

If Hamsher thinks she has common ground with these assholes I expect to soon see her donating to Rand Paul.

If you rule out innate political naivete or intentional deep-cover ratfucking, the only plausible non-criminal explanation for people like Hamsher and HillBuzz is that they are reacting on a purely emotional level to the break-up of a fantasy relationship they never had. They feel the Democratic Party has spurned their love, so they’re willing to fuck the pimply, tattooed spaz from Shop Class just to gross-out their liberal friends.

I think this is true, but it doesn’t explain all of it. Not that I have a cogent explanation for what appears, at first blush, to be temporary insanity.

There was a lot of projection onto Obama during the primaries and the general campaign by people all over the political spectrum (hence teabaggery). Some lefties in particular lived a fantasy of single payer health care, big taxes on the banksters, immediate end to the wars, and so forth (all of which I support), none of which were ever, from the get go, on the table. Obama, from the start, has been wedded to the bipartisanship narrative, and I don’t think it was safe cover he used to get elected - it is really where he stands politically. This is unfortunate for a lot of reasons, not least of which it leads directly to pursuing policies that are almost always lousy answers to hard questions.

So this white hot sense of betrayal strikes me as patently false, the product either of true delusion or tactical necessity in service of a poorly thought out strategy. Which brings me full circle - there is no useful or rational component to an alliance with Teabaggerism, unless this is a way station to some sort of full conversion to willful political stupidity and know-nothingism on the part of some of my fellow disaffected lefties.

We all know what she’s up to.  I’m sure the writing gigs have dried up for her, no more movie deals.  She wants to be called back for another paid gig, so she buys into the narrative to continue her usefulness.  Nevermind doing the punditry the way Ed Schultz, though I think they’ll handle him the way they handled Donahue.  Besides they’re afraid he’ll get loud on there ass on national TV as a pundit.  So they give him a show at the wackest allowable hour of the day.  If we could build a prototype I’d at least give him Janes Brain and Ed’s balls…because frankly Ed ain’t the smartest and Jane, well Jane is just too smart for her own good.

Clean slate! Play nice! Don’t forget the funny!

*fart*

Well, I’m going with the “Jane Hamsher is a third-tier—at best—Hollywood has-been with delusions of adequacy who wouldn’t know authentic populism if it bit her in her narcissistic underachieving over-entitled ass” theory - it works about as well as anything.

Maybe if she’d done some real “community organizing” in the film world, I’d take her seriously. (I know, I crack myself up!) Seriously. Natural Born Killers. A Blog. Helping Ned Lamont lose Connecticut through tone-deaf tactic like “LieberYouth” and Lieberman in blackface. And so fucking what does that add up to? Why does anyone take this silly attention-seeking woman seriously?

Or to put it another way: either she’s stupid enough to think there really is common ground with the Teabaggers, or she’s feckless enough to know that it’s impossible, but to cynically flog that meme for her own advancement.

In either case, she’s proven herself someone who shouldn’t be taken seriously.