Frank Rich: The Tea Party Wags the Dog

[Babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinio...ml?_r=1&hp

The Tea Party Wags the Dog


Barry Blitt

By FRANK RICH
Published: January 29, 2011


snip//

There was no drama to Obama’s address — just a unifying theme, at long last, as he reasserted the role of government in rebooting and rebuilding the country for a new century and putting Americans back to work. The president wisely left any theatrics to his adversaries, and, as always, they were happy to oblige.

snip//

Obama must be laughing about how the party that spent a year hammering him for focusing on health care over jobs is now committing the same supposed sin. And one can only imagine his astonishment on Tuesday night, when the G.O.P. respondents to his speech each played Jimmy Carter to his Reagan by offering a grim double-feature of malaise and American decline. Hardly had the president extolled record corporate profits and a soaring stock market in his selectively rosy spin on the economy, than Ryan, who has the television manner of a solicitous funeral home director, was darkly warning that America could be the next Greece. Bachmann channeled Glenn Beck to argue that we are living in a nascent police state where government “tells us which light bulbs to buy” (G.E.’s, presumably).

The most revealing moment in either Republican response, though, came from Ryan, who, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, implicitly threatened another government shutdown, or catastrophic fiscal meltdown, if the House majority doesn’t get its way. “The president is now urging Congress to increase the debt limit,” he said with distaste, referring to the vote required possibly as soon as March to allow the Treasury to keep paying its bills. Should the House majority hold that vote hostage to its vision of the budget, it will throw the markets into turmoil and upend our still-embryonic recovery.

It tells you all you need to know about Ryan’s tilt to the right that, for all his professed disapproval of increasing the debt limit during an Obama administration, he voted to do so twice himself during the gushing deficits of the Bush years. Funny he didn’t mention that Tuesday night. It tells you all you need to know about the G.O.P.’s overall tilt to the right that not just the Tea Party is making barely veiled threats to play dangerous political games with the debt limit. Mitch McConnell and Cantor did so last weekend, as have a plethora of potential 2012 presidential candidates, from Tim Pawlenty to Gingrich. The Bachmann-Beck-Palin tail is now firmly wagging the Republican dog.

Like virtually every other week since the shellacking, the State of the Union week was another salutary one for Obama. But the state of the union itself could yet be in the hands of radicals whose eagerness to see the president fail is outstripped only by their zeal to make an ideological point, even if it forces America into default.

[NJMaverick]

Being overly emotional leads to bad judgment. As such, the GOP, via the Tea Party, is invested in keeping as many Americans angry and upset as possible

[Andy823]

(01-30-2011 06:40 AM)NJMaverick Wrote:  Being overly emotional leads to bad judgment. As such, the GOP, via the Tea Party, is invested in keeping as many Americans angry and upset as possible

Yes "doom and gloom" works well for religions, and the GOP! All you have to do is scare people enough, and the will believe anything! Cults and other high control religions use it all the time, and it works. Since the vast number of republicans are crazy right wing christians, it also works on them! If you can convince them that "YOU" are their only hope, you can control them.

The right has been using this for decades, and it has pretty much worked. The names of the right wing nuts have changed over the years, now they call themselves the "tea party", but they are sill the same gullible people who don't really have a clue as to what is going on, they just want "someone" to lead them, and they follow the ones who use the most "doom and gloom" tactics, like Limbauh, Beck, Palin, fox news, and of course the GOP!

The tea party is a whole new ball game in town, and has attracted some of the really far, far right crazies, crazier than the religious far right. The tea party is dangerous, and I think most of this country is going to find that out in the next two years. The only good thing about the tea party crowd is the fact that it is dividing the GOP, and will continue to divide it right on up the the elections in 2012. Good for the democrats, bad for the republicans!

[Cha]

I found this revelation(to me) interesting..

"The G.O.P. grandees’ consternation was palpable. Earlier in the day Bachmann had dispatched an e-mail announcing that her speech would be carried live by Fox News. But when the time came, Fox relegated the live feed to its Web site, forcing viewers to scurry to CNN, of all places, and delaying its own television recap until after prime time in the East. Rupert Murdoch’s other major organ, The Wall Street Journal, toed the same line, burying Bachmann’s speech in a half-sentence in its print edition the next morning. By then, John Boehner, seconding the disdain of Eric Cantor, was telling reporters that he hadn’t watched Bachmann because of “other obligations.”

What were they all afraid of? The answer cuts to the crux of the right’s plight less than three months after its supposed restoration. Having sold itself in 2010 as the uncompromising champion of Tea Party-fueled fiscal austerity, the enhanced G.O.P. caucus arrived in Washington in 2011 to discover that most Americans prefer compromise to confrontation and favor balanced budgets in name only..."

cnn owns Bachmann and the teabaggers and having deeply invested they're obligated to keep their brand on life support if necessary.