George Will: Ahead Of Midterms Dems Can Only Envy Tea Party Energy

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by Glynnis MacNicol | 2:16 pm, October 10th, 2010

» 14 comments

With the midterms almost (finally) upon us the possibility of a GOP dominated Congress highly influenced by a possible influx of Tea Party candidates is becoming a reality. Should the country be worried? Should the GOP? Moreover, does the Tea Party even matter when there is so much anonymous big money sloshing around this election cycle.

On the This Week roundtable today George Will argued that the Tea Party is, in fact both important and authentic.

The fact is, the Tea Party is, as I’ve said here before, an enormous net benefit to the Republican Party, because it’s brought out an energy that the Democrats can only at this point envy… I don’t think they’re irrational at all. I don’t think that the Tea Party is doing anything other than asserting something deep in the national political DNA, that is, a suspicion of the central government and a belief in limited government.

Tavis Smiley, meanwhile, not only had very little sympathy for Christine O’Donnell — “let’s be clear: She got herself in this mess” — but thinks the Tea Party is only going to make things more difficult for the GOP and that their tactics should be questioned:

I don’t want to ignore the angst of the Tea Party. This economic angst that they feel, many of us feel, so this is real. But their tactics ought to be questioned, number one. The candidates they’ve put forth aren’t the best candidates, I think, in the long run. And most importantly these Tea Partiers are probably somewhere sipping tea when the last administration was running up these deficits? They all of a sudden show up now. And, again, I don’t want to underestimate their concern and their issues, but where were they when the deficit was being run up by the last administration?

And does the Tea Party matter at all amidst all the big anonymous money everyone’s been discussing this week? Interestingly, Paul Krugman didn’t appear to be that upset about the idea of foreign money influencing America’s elections mostly because he seemed to feel it was just business as usual.

Things haven’t changed as much as — as the story suggests. We had the Chamber of Commerce, which draws in an enormous amount of money from multinational corporations. Some of those multinational corporations have headquarters in the United States; some of them have headquarters in other countries. It hasn’t mattered. It’s the — the fact that some of them have headquarters abroad is not the important point. The point is that, actually, this is a huge amount of money from people who don’t have that much of a stake in the things that American voters care about.

You can watch the whole segment below. Hard to miss the conclusion that no matter how endlessly the pundits discuss the Tea Party or speculate on the outcome of November’s elections, no one has any better idea of what is going to happen next month than they did 12 months ago.

George Will, Paul Krugman, Tavis Smiley, This Week

Fox News: We proudly pander to Teabaggers

Glynnis, Is Colby Hall the man to speak to when there is a troll resurfacing after being banned?
Azarkhan

Glynnis, can I go to the restroom?
DrFunke

The Tea Party is new so seeing them with energy is not really surprising

Democrats had the most energy ever heading into the ’08 elections yet now it is down significantly

Once the Tea Party candidates take office and do nothing, they will die away
felixw

DrFunke said:
The Tea Party is new so seeing them with energy is not really surprising

Democrats had the most energy ever heading into the ‘08 elections yet now it is down significantly

Once the Tea Party candidates take office and do nothing, they will die away

You don’t seem to understand the mood of the country. Even if tea party candidates “do nothing” — as you put it — this will be a huge improvement over the Democrat’s track record of wasting another $100 bill of borrowed money every month on their failed programs. Doing nothing would have been better than blowing a trillion dollars on stimulus. Doing nothing would have been better than Obamacare, which voters begged their representatives not to pass. When politicians becomes so corrupt and incompetent, doing nothing starts looking better all the time.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Matt-Herrick/100000969560328 Matt Herrick

Dear Mr. Smiley, I will tell you where tea-partiers were during the last election under the previous administration. Staying home, allowing a massive takeover of the entire government by Democrats. They were unhappy with the scope of government under Bush, but when Obama trebled that in his first year they became loud. Nothing sinister or racial.
newzmaker

George Will asks, “where were they?” Will must have missed the backlash against Republicans in 2008, which managed to give the Dems control of the House, Senate, and White House. In case Will needs to be reminded, elections are the only way to get rid of the scum in Washington. Does Will also not remember the protests against the Bush bailouts? The ‘Tea’ first began to seep under Bush’s watch, not Obama’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG2ojZhDsps
newzmaker

newzmaker said:
seep

I meant to say ‘steep.’
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Mangan/100000213524770 David Mangan

What is a total Glenn Beck emo freak in Blackface like Smiley doing infesting a show with a great pundit like George Will on the line-up roster card? Beck actually deals with facts from American history that the academicide victims cover up with fake histories like anything Arrhur Schlesinger, Jr, ever wrote and the many Pulitzers to phony third-rate agitprop specialists like Jon Meacham, who’s masquerading as a “Christian” socialist and ex-head of Newsweak. Now PBS has hired him with a roster of retards from the far-left to replace serial DUI offender Moyers and his infinite and insufferable programs on how GINORMOUS GOVERNMENT will cure all our ills.

Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already” and it means that the Obimbo ObomaCare and other destruction of the fiscal integrity of the USA with a three trillion dollar deficit in less than two years, more than GWB amassed in 8, is not going to go unpunished.
C.Moore

David Mangan said:
What is a total Glenn Beck emo freak in Blackface like Smiley doing infesting a show with a great pundit like George Will on the line-up roster card? Beck actually deals with facts from American history that the academicide victims cover up with fake histories like anything Arrhur Schlesinger, Jr, ever wrote and the many Pulitzers to phony third-rate agitprop specialists like Jon Meacham, who’s masquerading as a “Christian” socialist and ex-head of Newsweak. Now PBS has hired him with a roster of retards from the far-left to replace serial DUI offender Moyers and his infinite and insufferable programs on how GINORMOUS GOVERNMENT will cure all our ills.

What a bunch of crap. Since when does Glenn Beck deal with facts? Almost everything he saids is grade A Bullplop. No wonder his ratings are declining. He tells people the sky is falling, they look up and see that everything is just fine.
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/glenn-beck/
C.Moore

David Mangan said:

Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already” and it means that the Obimbo ObomaCare and other destruction of the fiscal integrity of the USA with a three trillion dollar deficit in less than two years, more than GWB amassed in 8, is not going to go unpunished.

Again, like Beck, you’re full of crap.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/25/mark-tapscott/did-stimulus-cost-more-war-iraq/
glenn113

I just wish every Tea Party member would read the attached link to know what they are acutually doing: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/oct/08/tea-partiers-are-still-servingcause-of-power-and/
Franktruth

While the TEA party is truly a spontaneous populist phenomenon, it cannot stand alone. Beyond taking the Taxed Enough Already stance there are no unifying factors. While there may be some disgruntled Democrats, a few informed independents, and a few generation Xers – most are disgruntled Republican Baby Boomers or older. There may be some hope for reforming the Republican party into a viable contrast to the Humanistic Socialism adapted by the Democrats via the TEA Party movement. But this can only happen if the Republicans can shed themselves of transnational corporate lobbyists who shove “free trade” and fiat currency down our throats. Republicans should have incorporated the policies of Ross Perot and Ron Paul into their agenda to have a traction with the drowning middle class.
Unfortunately, Ross Perot and Ron Paul were neither accepted nor understood by their own generation. The policies of Nixon-Ford (stimulating Communist China) and Reagan-Bush 41, 43) (GATT, NAFTA) were major partners with the Democrats in wrecking the economy.
Generation X will assume the reign of power now. And they are not visible in the TEA party. Perhaps that generation will see the wisdom of Paul and Perot.
RIChris

MacNichol, are you still concerned about the tens of millions in campaign contributions that Obama raked in that remain unaccounted for? Or were you ever?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Drewing/542453594 Thomas Drewing

I love this! Apparently the word “vetted” simply means that there are now candidates that have not had a chance for their parties to figure out their embarrassments and hide them, fix them, whatever.

Krugman is particularly funny…”these people…” . Did you mean to say “Teabaggers”, Paul? Odd that “those people” are simply out protesting the very sort of failed Keynesian economics you champion, and are insisting work, though we have yet to have any evidence of that.

When George Will points out that there are FIVE Democratic freshman running for re-election, with ads that claim they voted against TARP, even though they weren’t there to vote at the time….IOWs they are flat out lying…Krugman jumps in with a serious and cogent refutation…wait for it….”That’s different!”

I have no idea bout the candidate that likes to dress up and play war renactments. He may be a complete goof. OTOH, I know people who go to renaissance fairs dressed as knights, and some who dress up like confederate soldiers and re-enact civil war battles….I’m pretty sure they don’t go though, thinking that maybe this time the South will win.

Smiley is apparently not smart enough to realize that a group of people who come together to share common cause….aren’t an actual person who has “strategies” or “makes decisions”. Maybe he was sick those days, and doesn’t remember civil rights marches. Or maybe, he is simply being disingenuous.

At any rate…..the constant media attempts to conflate the TEA Partiers, who are people and are acting…with the traditional Political Parties, which are merely nominalizations for groups of people who are willing to allow someone else to make decisions in their name, on the basis of some largely imagined and ambiguous label affiliation, is failing. Enough people have awakened to the game now.

Here’s how to tell the difference between a real party…which is an action…and an imposter, pretending to be an action. Ask it as a question. “Have you ever been to a TEA Party?” ….Maybe….”When is the next TEA Party?”

Now try that with the regular “Parties” “When is the next Democrat Party?” “Are you going to the Republican Party?” Does that make any sense at all? Of course not. Although we might wish that it will soon…implying that ones we currently have are over. At any rate….remember that “party” is a verb. An action. It means someone is actually doing something. Like voting. If you don’t perform the action, then “having” a vote, doesn’t really mean anything at all, does it?

Party like it’s 1776.