A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

[Wry Catcher]

George Wallace, Lester Maddox and the same old demogoguery - tea baggers are little different than the aforementioned governors.
Those who doubt that the Tea Bag movement is a hybrid might want to study the history and ideas of the American Independent Party.
See, Minor/Third Party Platforms: American Independent Party Platform of 1968

 

[Oddball]

A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

Nothing covert about it....You've been overtly pounding the same tired old theme of trying to frame the Tea Party as rednecks and closet racists since day one.

 

[Barb]

Offended by the counter culture, fearful of the civil rights groups, and tired of the disruption that culminated in the violence of the 1978 Democratic National Convention, the “Middle America” Richard Nixon appealed to were the “forgotten” Americans that comprised Kevin Phillips “Southern strategy.”

The new Conservative majority was in the making, he argued, with members with members of the Catholic working class, white southerners, suburbanites in the Sun Belt, and average middle-class Americans sharing a common revulsion against minority groups, radical young people, and arrogant intellectuals.

The people of the “Republican Majority” that Phillips spoke of desired patriotism, quiet, law, order, and an end to what they considered the increasing decadence represented by the counter-culture, the women’s movement, and the new left.
The Sun Belt was also a natural environment for the exploitation of racial animosities, and Richard Nixon proved to be brilliant at showing that the Republican Party was intent on “protecting white Southern interests.” He appointed his deputy counsel, Harry Dent, to that specific task, and used the Presidential bully pulpit to redefine certain terms in the legally settled argument of desegregation. Established Supreme Court law was now “extreme.” Violation of that law was also “extreme,” but of a softer sort, one that needed mitigation, because if the law itself was extreme, it logically followed that the law was illegitimate. There had to be one more redefinition for this to work. What anyone would logically consider obstruction and abdication of the duty of the President to uphold the law became “the middle way.”

The second part of the Southern strategy followed in making the Supreme Court itself, illegitimate, and identifying its Justices as Northeastern liberals intent on “[imposing] an alien social philosophy on the land.” Vice President Spiro Agnew furthered this agenda with confrontational and heated rhetoric that clearly identified the politics of polarization as the means of Republican ascendency. President Nixon followed up by keeping his promise to the Southern states by nominating to the Supreme Court conservative, pro-business, and segregationist Jurists. Although two failed the nomination process, even those failures were skillfully successful in solidifying Southern conservative dedication to the Republican Party. Regardless of how his presidency ended, the foundation put in place by President Nixon would prove to be his most enduring legacy to the Republican Party. The Sun Belt would prove crucial to Ronald Reagan and Congressional Republicans when the evangelical Protestants who would make up the “Moral Majority” and the “Religious Right” learned to exert their demographic influence.

What today's tea party movement has in common with the coalition of the Reagan revolution is the seeming and actual disarray of the movement itself. The Reagen coalition was a loosely bound "collection of resentments," single issue voters who could be targeted by direct mail in an appeal to their most evident resentment, and while the donations coming from this group hardly covered postage and the staff researching preferences and writing the letters, this method of communication by-passed the already sympathetic media and offered no avenue for public rebuttal.

Reagan was a uniter. What he gathered together is still in evidence today. What that is though, is still the politics of resentment, and populism turned to the memes of corporate servitude.

The “politics of resentment,” was not new to American political discourse when Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency, but he perfected the use of code words and catchphrases that stirred racial animosity, and economic hostility against the poor gained in social legitimacy during his presidency. The term “welfare queen,” used in speeches during his first run for the Republican nomination against Gerald Ford criminalized poverty, and feminized crime. This served the memes that government was wasteful of hard working peoples’ money, and that the poor were not only undeserving of concern, but also prone to criminal activity. A story about “a woman on Chicago’s South Side,” cheating the system to live in luxury, coupled with tales of a “strapping young buck” paying for his groceries with food stamps drew on the racial hostility that served the continuation and growth of the Republican’s Southern Strategy.
During his administration, President Reagan further succeeded in redefining the term “special interests” to mean the opposite of what Noam Chomsky and Edward Sherman identify as its more valid description:

We use the term “special interests” in its commonsense meaning, not the Orwellian usage of the Reagan era, where it designates workers, farmers, women, youth, blacks, the aged and infirm, the unemployed-in short, the population at large. Only one group did not merit this appellation: corporations, and their owners and managers. They are not ‘special interests,’ they represent the ‘national interest.’”

By redefining “special interests” in this way, with the support of the news media, President Reagan brought to the Republican fold a significant number of the working class who, because they did not view either party as representative of their interests, did not bother to vote in the 1980 election. By 1984, in spite of President Reagan’s upward redistribution of wealth under “trickle down” Reaganomics, he managed to convince the majority of the voting public that “he was the ‘equal opportunity’ candidate; a believer in ‘conservative egalitarianism,’ he trumpeted his identification with the average citizen and his opposition to ‘special treatment for blacks.” This was especially appealing to a growing demographic of white men angry about “quotas” and “fairness” at the expense of what they considered a standard of equality.

Chafe, William H., The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II, 4TH Ed., Oxford University Press, Inc., New York (1999).
Hamby, Alonzo, L. Liberalism and Its Challengers, 2nd Ed., Oxford University Press, Inc., New York (1992).
Horton, Scott, Harpers Magazine, “The southern Strategy Comes of Age” retrieved November 20, 2009 from The Southern Strategy Comes of Age?By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) (4, November, 2008)
Sherman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass media Pantheon Books, New York, (2002)

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

Nothing covert about it....You've been overtly pounding the same tired old theme of trying to frame the Tea Party as rednecks and closet racists since day one.

Spot on Dude.

 

[Wry Catcher]

A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

Nothing covert about it....You've been overtly pounding the same tired old theme of trying to frame the Tea Party as rednecks and closet racists since day one.

You missed the point (gee, what a surprise). A thoughtful response might have pointed out the differences between today's tea bag movement and the overtly jingoistic racisim of Wallace/Maddox and their supporters.
Of course I've pounded the Tea Baggers, why not? IMHO TB's are extremists, whose passion is fueled by the same old demogougery which, when reduced to its essence, is nothing more than hate and fear of any idea or person whose beliefs differ from their own. Of course that describes extremists of all stripes, what is unique about the TB movement is its blatant hostility to facts, overt hypocrisy and absence of critical thinking.

 

[Oddball]

I missed no point at all...Your lack of introspection is bordering upon legendary here, to the point that the irony of each and every one of your Freudian projections doesn't even register.

But at least your sociopathic behavior is still marginally amusing.

 

[Truthmatters]

Why is is so hard for the tea party leaders to denounce racism?

 

[Oddball]

Why is it so hard for the moonbat left to talk about virtually anything these days without playing the race card?

 

[Claudette]

YOu got that right.

Anyone or organization that disagrees with the boy king is a racist.

MY God. They couldn't possibly disagree with his lefty loon agenda. Perish the thought. That leaves RACISM. Thats what its gotta be. LOL

Ask Truthmatters, I'm sure she'll agree. LMAO

 

[Flopper]

The use of federal power to enforce integration upon the South resulted in southerns feeling that the federal government had no place in interfering with laws and customs of the southern states. Out of this grew a hatred for the federal government that exists today. The issues have changed but the philosophy remains the same. Stop the federal government's intrusion into our lies. Return the power to the states, reducing the size and power of the federal government. This is the underlying theme of the Tea Party just as is was the segregations.

The states make laws to protect the rights of the majority. The feds make laws to protect the rights of the individual.

 

[Wry Catcher]

I missed no point at all...Your lack of introspection is bordering upon legendary here, to the point that the irony of each and every one of your Freudian projections doesn't even register.

But at least your sociopathic behavior is still marginally amusing.

Funny response. In prior posts you acknowledge never reading/studying psychology and yet continue to characterize those with whom you disagree in pejorative psychological terms. I'd suggest you're a phony but know you would then respond with an allegation I'm engaging in an ad hominem attack (even though you're never studied philosophy or taken a course in ligic, formal or informal).
But, who gives a shit. You're a phony and a stupid asshole. Of course, that's only my opinion. Anyone else agree?
[Now is the time for the echo chamber of RW Fringers to come to the defense of Dude).

 

[Oscar Wao]

Why is is so hard for the tea party leaders to denounce racism?

Because maybe it's time we quit being offended at every little thing for once?

 

[Wry Catcher]

Why is it so hard for the moonbat left to talk about virtually anything these days without playing the race card?

Why is it hard to discuss Earth biology without playing the gas card (Oxygen & Carbon Dioxide)?
It must really piss dude off, a black man is president of the U.S., and dude is, what? Oh, he never says, does he?
(Hint, are you getting sleepy?)

 

[Oddball]

Doesn't make me angry at all, because I don't give people I don't know and cannot control that kind of power.

And you're still a sociopathic jackass.

 

[Charles_Main]

A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

Nothing covert about it....You've been overtly pounding the same tired old theme of trying to frame the Tea Party as rednecks and closet racists since day one.

You missed the point (gee, what a surprise). A thoughtful response might have pointed out the differences between today's tea bag movement and the overtly jingoistic racisim of Wallace/Maddox and their supporters.
Of course I've pounded the Tea Baggers, why not? IMHO TB's are extremists, whose passion is fueled by the same old demogougery which, when reduced to its essence, is nothing more than hate and fear of any idea or person whose beliefs differ from their own. Of course that describes extremists of all stripes, what is unique about the TB movement is its blatant hostility to facts, overt hypocrisy and absence of critical thinking.

I think it has more to do with Hate and Fear of Over bearing government and Economic RUIN!

 

[Oscar Wao]

A new yet covert iteration of the same old theme!

Nothing covert about it....You've been overtly pounding the same tired old theme of trying to frame the Tea Party as rednecks and closet racists since day one.

You missed the point (gee, what a surprise). A thoughtful response might have pointed out the differences between today's tea bag movement and the overtly jingoistic racisim of Wallace/Maddox and their supporters.
Of course I've pounded the Tea Baggers, why not? IMHO TB's are extremists, whose passion is fueled by the same old demogougery which, when reduced to its essence, is nothing more than hate and fear of any idea or person whose beliefs differ from their own. Of course that describes extremists of all stripes, what is unique about the TB movement is its blatant hostility to facts, overt hypocrisy and absence of critical thinking.

I know you did NOT just type that with a straight-face.

 

[Barb]

Why is it so hard for the moonbat left to talk about virtually anything these days without playing the race card?

Why is it hard to discuss Earth biology without playing the gas card (Oxygen & Carbon Dioxide)?
It must really piss dude off, a black man is president of the U.S., and dude is, what? Oh, he never says, does he?
(Hint, are you getting sleepy?)

I don't think its fair to paint Dude as racist. His political ideology is in opposition to President Obama's policies. I agree that many in the tea party are racist, but the whole coalition has so many issues and resentments, its hard to pin them down to wholly agreeing to one thing.

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

I missed no point at all...Your lack of introspection is bordering upon legendary here, to the point that the irony of each and every one of your Freudian projections doesn't even register.

But at least your sociopathic behavior is still marginally amusing.

Funny response. In prior posts you acknowledge never reading/studying psychology and yet continue to characterize those with whom you disagree in pejorative psychological terms. I'd suggest you're a phony but know you would then respond with an allegation I'm engaging in an ad hominem attack (even though you're never studied philosophy or taken a course in ligic, formal or informal).
But, who gives a shit. You're a phony and a stupid asshole. Of course, that's only my opinion. Anyone else agree?
[Now is the time for the echo chamber of RW Fringers to come to the defense of Dude).

Sounds like dude hit the nail on the head...especially judging from your reaction.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

George Wallace, Lester Maddox and the same old demogoguery - tea baggers are little different than the aforementioned governors.
Those who doubt that the Tea Bag movement is a hybrid might want to study the history and ideas of the American Independent Party.
See, Minor/Third Party Platforms: American Independent Party Platform of 1968