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Instead of posting separate threads, below are two interesting articles on the tea party. The second piece is an apology piece but interesting as it gets into historical aspects of populism and progressivism. I disagree with the piece and think it off base, but it is worth a look.
"The dissolution of the Obama constituency provides a vacuum for the Tea Party, which, like the Obama groupies, has figureheads and slogans, but no real ideas. So Democrats should just acknowledge that they're no better than the Tea Party and take to the streets with dumb signs and costumes. It'll be a gas. It's just theatrics anyhow." Hiram (from comments in last link)
"Because racial privilege cannot be separated from the defense of local liberty in American history, it is no surprise that the state has been seen by many whites -from Oxford Mississippi to Boston Massachusetts- as the enemy of their local liberty.
In addition, herrenvolk republicanism invokes a producers republic to attack both a state parasitic on productive labor, and the undeserving (unproductive) poor supported by it. In the American political imaginary, indeed, blackness is linked to (among other things) state power; the central image in the counter-subversive politics of culture war is a demonic love triangle composed of the liberal state supporting unproductive blacks and aborting (i.e. unproductive and not only autonomous) women, at the symbolic and literal expense of white men. Tea Party rhetoric sustains these historical themes: a blackened Obama is associated with state power and redistribution as taxation of the productive supports the unproductive. (The health plan does avow a right to healthcare for 40 million uninsured people, who are coded black and/or alien, not poor.)" The Contemporary Condition: The Politics of The Tea Party.
"Why do populists see arrogance institutionalized only in liberalism? Cant populists discern at least an equal degree of arrogance in conservatism? Anyone who finds a practical way to address that question should become a Democratic Party strategist. In 2000 Al Gore told voters clearly and repeatedly that Republican policies were intended to benefit the richest one-tenth of one percent of Americans. George W. Bush called the math fuzzy, but its far from clear that voters who chose Bush did so because they agreed with him that Gores numbers were lacking. As Rich and others have noted, many in the Tea Party movement dont like Bush or his dynastic roots. The last administrations use of government to shore up power and enrich those it favored are part and parcel of the Tea Party complaint. But most in the Tea Party would choose Bush again, not Gore." Boston Review — William Hogeland: Real Americans [ See comments 6, 8 and 10.]
"The dissolution of the Obama constituency provides a vacuum for the Tea Party, which, like the Obama groupies, has figureheads and slogans, but no real ideas. So Democrats should just acknowledge that they're no better than the Tea Party and take to the streets with dumb signs and costumes. It'll be a gas. It's just theatrics anyhow." Hiram (from comments in last link)
"Because racial privilege cannot be separated from the defense of local liberty in American history, it is no surprise that the state has been seen by many whites -from Oxford Mississippi to Boston Massachusetts- as the enemy of their local liberty.
In addition, herrenvolk republicanism invokes a producers republic to attack both a state parasitic on productive labor, and the undeserving (unproductive) poor supported by it. In the American political imaginary, indeed, blackness is linked to (among other things) state power; the central image in the counter-subversive politics of culture war is a demonic love triangle composed of the liberal state supporting unproductive blacks and aborting (i.e. unproductive and not only autonomous) women, at the symbolic and literal expense of white men. Tea Party rhetoric sustains these historical themes: a blackened Obama is associated with state power and redistribution as taxation of the productive supports the unproductive. (The health plan does avow a right to healthcare for 40 million uninsured people, who are coded black and/or alien, not poor.)" The Contemporary Condition: The Politics of The Tea Party.
"Why do populists see arrogance institutionalized only in liberalism? Cant populists discern at least an equal degree of arrogance in conservatism? Anyone who finds a practical way to address that question should become a Democratic Party strategist. In 2000 Al Gore told voters clearly and repeatedly that Republican policies were intended to benefit the richest one-tenth of one percent of Americans. George W. Bush called the math fuzzy, but its far from clear that voters who chose Bush did so because they agreed with him that Gores numbers were lacking. As Rich and others have noted, many in the Tea Party movement dont like Bush or his dynastic roots. The last administrations use of government to shore up power and enrich those it favored are part and parcel of the Tea Party complaint. But most in the Tea Party would choose Bush again, not Gore." Boston Review — William Hogeland: Real Americans [ See comments 6, 8 and 10.]
