Tea Party America: We Have Awakened a Compliant, Orderly and Fastidious Giant

I’m sure National Review Editor Rich Lowry meant well in his New York Post fugue on Glenn Beck’s Tentless Chautauqua Revival on the Capitol Mall. But perhaps it was the perennial pub-deadline trap of staking out a novel, contrarian claim in an oyster bed of commentary that’s already been shucked clean that led him to type this Pearl of Faint Praise:

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches and throw out their trash.

...not unlike, say, the attendees at a Soviet May Day Parade or the rapt crowds at a Fidel Castro talkathon, with venue litter patrols directed by the People’s Committee for Culturally-Correct Beautification and Turf Amelioration, although I doubt those were the parallels Rich intended to invoke. 

Then again, maybe it was the humiliatingly Pee-Wee-ish “He who smelt it dealt it” pose Elite Country Club Conservatives are compelled to strike whenever expedience demands that they flatter their upstart, common-folk allies-of-necessity by attacking their Limousine Liberal counterparts for being, you know, “elite”:

In extremis, Democrats and liberal commentators have dragged the debate over the Tea Party into the well-worn rut of elite condescension to the bourgeois

...as opposed to the Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware and Washington GOP establishments who’ve framed the Tea Party debate in friendlier terms such as “criminal,” “crazy.” “extreme” and “unelectable.”

Could be, too, that Rich is the sort of well-heeled, genteel beau who will dutifully contrive a compliment for even the most repellent blind date: 

To be sure, the Tea Partiers are fiercely anti-establishment, and that produces political candidates who are exotic and unexpected.

...like, for example, the tattooed stripper who just showed up on the veranda of your parents’ vacation house at Hilton Head to announce that you’re her Baby-Daddy. 

Or, quite possibly, Rich has simply popped a major neural pathway trying to reconceptualize his party’s invasion by throngs of RINO-Hating Islamophobic Flag-Fucking Theocratic Birther Conspiracy Nuts as a “teachable moment,” and an admonition to the soon-to-be-enthroned Mutant GOP to eschew the Icarian hubris that drove the Newt Gingrich Congress to fly too close to the sun:

They could do much worse than to take their cue from the Tea Partiers at the Lincoln Memorial, who knew how to make an impression without scaring anyone or trashing the place.

Oh, but, Hell’s Bells—now that I think about it, it occurs to me that Lowry’s whole gymnastic ramadoolah is nothing more than a simpering “You-don’t-have-to-do-this” plea to the evolutionary next-links who are poised to supersede him in the Republican fossil record:

Dear Tea Party Nation:

A lot of people say you’re crazy, but deep down I know you’re not.

You proved that when you didn’t bring guns or nutso signs and picked up the trash at the Restoring Honor rally.

You proved to everyone that obedient, well-behaved listeners can Make the World Right Again.

Newt Gingrich, he was crazy. He thought taking control of Congress meant he could enact or repeal anything he wanted to.

He acted like an Ideological Demagogue—just like Lucifer, whose children killed Christ.

He acted like Hitler, who hated the Jews and didn’t understand that sometimes principles have to be bent, and one hand washes the other.

Newt Gingrich was no better than Osama bin Laden, who leveled the World Trade Center and attacked Freedom from behind.

Newt Gingrich gave us Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Death Panels and abortions-on-demand.

You don’t want to be like that. You aren’t like that. You don’t have to be like that.

You recognize, as I do, that a rocking boat can’t float, and a house divided is worth a lot less than a nice little duplex with a city view.

You are good, decent, God-fearing people who know better than to Sow the Wind. [Hosea 8:7]

We at the National Review salute you and look forward to being your sword and buckler in this Historic Restoration of America’s Moral Values, which, when it gets down to serious horse-trading, can be surprisingly elastic.

Please don’t kill us.

Yours in Jefferson and Jesus,
Rich Lowry

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 09/04/10 at 04:04 PM • Permalink

I’m sorry—did somebody say starbursts?

Rich reminisces about it here.

Cenk: The Political Line Has Moved so Far Right Reagan Couldn’t Run as a Republican

Who in the hell gives a flying fuck if Reagan the dumbass could today run as a republican or not? Why are you seemingly adding this legitimacy to the issue that what Reagan did was good conservatism? Why not just state that what Reagan did to the country was malicious conservatism and today’s republicans are way off farther than that. Why can’t the liberals just bring it, man? Just lay it down, smear these assholes and their heroes like Rand and Reagan. Paint them as deranged and out of order in a decent society. Demonize them, don’t bring wishy-washy thoughtfulness to the table. No one is going to quit conservatism until it’s not painted as an actual insidious malice to society that it really represents.

Markos has a book coming out, titled “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right”
Now, do you see any words in there which implies anything related to conservatives? What is this “radical right” business? There is no such thing as radical-right, dammit. The conservatives, republicans and their 27% zombie supporters are not radical-right. It’s all mainstream conservatism . Why does Markos have to pussyfoot around and use the radical-right as stand-in for living breathing mainstream conservatives and republicans that the far-right actually is nowadays? Fergawdsakes, add the word conservatives or republicans or conservatism to the title, join them at the hip with the Taliban like siamese twins, don’t let it go. Do what Jonah Goldberg did to us, whose book “Liberal Fascism” was astroturfed to popularity by wingnut groups and Koch fronts.

Sometimes, I think, liberals and the left in general are really not up to the bare-knuckle-brawl that is politics. They put too much faith in rational discussion in a field where public perception and opinion is everything. It just makes me despair.
/end rant

Also, could you guys pitch in and write reviews for Markos’ book listed on Amazon here? The rating is sucking as usual (13 one star reviews compared to 16 five star ones), many a wingnuts seemed to have risen from the gutters to drive it down.
You don’t have to do it unless you care about it.

Polly, you should read up on Bhagwad Gita for a change. Here, let me put up the main theme of the Gita.

The content of the Gita is the conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjuna taking place on the battlefield before the start of the Kurukshetra war. Responding to Arjuna’s confusion and moral dilemma about fighting his own cousins over materialistic things such as Rajpaath and above all over a princess called Dropadhi who had five husbands , Lord Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince and elaborates on different Yogic[5] and Vedantic philosophies, with examples and analogies.

Arjuna had to eliminate his own brothers, relatives and even his teacher, to achieve what’s right. What means he used is not important, the end he achieved out of it is of value.
Politics, at best, is a game of public discourse with the goals of increasing favorable perception of one’s ideology in the public domain. Policy is not politics and the two should be kept separate. We have to use any and all means necessary in politics to make our ideology (liberalism) dominant in this country which would help us deliver the policies that it deserves. Our doubts, as to the means to be used, have to be buried if we ever wish to achieve that goal.

On the odds it might be relevant, and that it hasn’t already been brought up here, Al Giordano has started musing on how to approach this coming election.  Some of it is his usual good, solid approach - choose your target campaigns, organize, then hit the streets and work the plan.

The more interesting thing - to me at least - was his dismissal of the Netroots as being a likely factor this time around (as opposed to the 2006 midterms).  He seems to favor the strategy of pointing out and mocking the insane and absurd, much as Jon Stewart and Colbert do.  But he also said he thought the Wonkette approach might be appropriate this time around (much to the surprise of the Wonketeers):

Another factor that cuts somewhat against GOP chances to retake the House or Senate is the dysfunction in its own party ranks, between the Republican establishment and the in-house radicals broadly painted as “tea party” factions. Think Progress has a very interesting story that reveals seven congressional and three senate elections (as well as various gubernatorial races) where the Republican candidate defeated in that party’s primary has not endorsed the party’s nominee: there is a lot of internecine bad blood flowing inside the GOP ranks. And in cases where the more radical “tea party” associated candidate won many primaries, the sheer battiness of the nominee produced is going to scare some voters away (and this phenomenon could still happen in some contests yet to have their primaries, such as the Republican senate primary in Delaware).

In this sense, a political parody site like Wonkette has become more relevant to the 2010 midterm elections than the entirety of the so-called Netroots, which in 2006 became a kind of kingmaker in the Democrats’ midterm electoral triumphs. I tuned out completely on the Netroots blogs since June and only started browsing them again recently, and its as if they’re stuck on autopilot, still debating “Obama, good or bad” and blissfully disinterested in the midterm elections, certainly compared to where they were in 2006. On the eve of the 2010 elections, they’re still infighting like it’s 2009! Meanwhile, day in, day out, Wonkette is producing wonderful caricature profiles of the insane class of GOP congressional and senate nominees this year, and is actually driving the media discourse about them.

I would think that would apply to this fine snarkatorium as well.

*Via Cole, “Tex” Edroso on conservatives who have relabeled themselves as libertarians.

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