What's your opinion on the Tea Party?

fancyy

i am a supporter of the tea party movement, but i also identify myself as a republican, i dont believe it is harming conservative views, it is merely upholding the values and principals of what the founding fathers were all about. in a time where the democrats are becoming closer to socialists, and the progressive republicans are becoming more like the ‘old’ democrats, the tea party is needed to uphold traditional conservative views and to voice that the constitution and or personal freedoms need to be upheld- not taken away.

the last election should have sent the message.

I let the quotes speak for themselves. Crazy people usually dont need to be commented on…

‘’American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.’’

‘’God may choose to heal someone from cancer, yet that person still has a great deal of medical bills. The outstanding bills do not determine whether or not the patient has been healed by God.’’

‘’It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can’t mastu.rbate without lust!’’

‘’The reason that you don’t tell [people] that mast.urbation is the answer to AIDS and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because again it is not addressing the issue. You’re just gonna create somebody who is, I was gonna say, toying with his sexuality. Pardon the pun.’’

‘’You know what, evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?’’

‘’We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we’re having weekly shootings practically. We had the ‘60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS.’’

‘’I was dabbling into every other kind of religion before I became a Christian. I was dabbling in witchcraft, I’ve dabbled in Buddhism. I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn’t want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why – because I’m Italian, I love meatballs!’’ —Delaware GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell

‘’I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners – I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant – but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.’’ —Kentucky GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, arguing that government shouldn’t require private businesses to serve customers of all races, interview with Louisville Courier-Journal, April 25, 2010

‘’Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes.’’ —Carl Paladino, New York State Tea Party-backed candidate for Governor, on why people are poor, Aug. 2010

‘’You’re dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.’’ —Mark Williams, national spokesman for the Tea Party Express

‘’I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown – in this case a $20 billion shakedown … I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown.’’ —Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) member of the Tea Party Caucus, during a congressional hearing with BP CEO Tony Hayward, referring to a $20 billion fund for damages that President Obama pressured BP to set up to pay for the Gulf oil spill. Barton, the biggest recipient of oil and gas industry campaign contributions in the House of Representatives, was forced by Republican leaders to apologize for his BP apology.

‘’The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.’’

‘’I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.’’

‘’We’re talking about a militant terr.orist situation, which I believe it isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it. My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.’’ —Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, claiming that Muslim Sharia law is taking hold in parts of the U.S., Oct. 2010

‘’You know what I’m talking about. You’re paying for things that you don’t even need. They just passed the latest one, is everything that they want to throw at us now is covered under ‘autism.’ So, that’s a mandate that you have to pay for. How about maternity leave? I’m not going to have any more babies, but I sure get to pay for it on my insurance. Those are the kinds of things that we want to get rid of.’’ —Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, mocking the notion that health care coverage for autism treatment and maternity leave should be mandated, 2009 Tea Party rally

‘’I just think my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful getting married and raising a family. And I don’t want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn’t.’’

‘’I’m in the construction industry.’’ —Carl Paladino, New York State Tea Party-backed candidate for Governor, on why he sent emails of a woman having sex with a horse, President Obama and Michelle Obama dressed as a pimp and ho, and various other pornographic and racist chain letters

‘’Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from? It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they’re Nazis.’’ —Glen Urquhart, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for the Delaware House seat held by Rep. Mike Castle, April 2010

Wow!!… This appeal to fear and ridicule is worthy of Larry O’Donnel himself. Sadly… thanks to the borg… whose entire perspective is drawn verbatim by either FOX… MSNBC in this case… whichever alphabet propaganda arm… political discourse has devolved into this. A game of gotcha whereby political efficacy is predetermined for us by the talking heads. This is an attempt to poison the well… easily accomplished because the movement was co-opted with that very purpose in mind.

I don’t intend to defend all of the quotations listed… unfortunate for those insistent to poison the entire well by proxy. I do find issue with your characterization of Rand Paul’s stance on those portions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in regards to free association and private ownership. This is not the domain of the federal government constitutionally. The federal government is mandated to protect civil rights… not to enforce morality. For example… mur-der is a federal crime because the victim’s right to life was taken… not because mur-der is immoral. Once the federal government takes on the mantle of enforcing a moral imperative… it contradicts our guaranteed right of free association. Rand Paul suggested that this contradiction was troubling… he also stated that the Civil Rights Act was justified in reversing the Jim Crow laws as they infringed upon free association.

But Hey!… why let a little factor like adherence to personal freedom and guaranteed rights stand in the way of the demonization race-baiting nets you? You don’t really care about those formalities if they somehow stand between you and the imposition of your designs upon the rest of us.

The Tea Party is a desperate attempt by far right Republicans to disassociate themselves from political disasters like Limbaugh and GW Bush. It appears to be even farther to the right than the Bush administration. What we need is for both parties to start heading toward the center. The extremist politics that are in play by both the Democrats and the Republicans help no one, except the major corporations that are funding both sides and sending our jobs overseas.

Are you done? Was anything I stated misquoted? No? Then I will let people decide for themselves what they think. As for civil rights, you do not decree that discrimination based on race is an issue of civil rights? You think it’s a moral issue? Well then we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that. Pompous grandstanding aside.

Discrimination of any sort by a private individual does not violate those rights safeguarded by the constitution. To the contrary… federal intervention into the realm of freedom of association does violate an enumerated right. The sanctimonious use of the race card to trump any discussion of the matter is a political device that has outlived its shelf-life for those of us not indoctrinated into your cult of priggery.

The crony-capitalism that has cost the country its middle class…and all of our livelihoods is the result of the convergence of the body politic into the false left/right dichotomy. The big central government robs the plebeians to pay the plutocrats… who split the loot with the politicians. I agree… we don’t need a two party system that plays one side against the other. Allowing them to drop the pretenses and exploit the singular accord is to acquiesce to the nepotism. Bush was a warmongering centrist. So is Obama. More of the same maintains the status quo… while most of us are languishing.

Those Tea party members who remain populists… who wish to rein in the central government and the cronyism… who wish to withdraw our troops. Who advocate laissez-faire capitalism are not more of the same. I support these ideals… and support those Tea party members to the extent that they share these ideals. I would much rather see a populist left group such as the Greenback party come to power than any more centrists.

i don’t understand the whole tea party thing, someone please explain

I forgot to mention the ideal supported by some Tea Party members that I am the most adamant about… ending the Federal Reserve and returning to a specie backed currency. My only big hang up with the Greenback party… along with the fact that centralizing power is foolhardy in my opinion.

The Tea party began with the disillusioned supporters of Ron Paul after he failed to win the Republican nomination in 2008. Ron Paul’s political views are more in tune with modern Libertarian than Republican tenets. He advocates shuttering the Federal Reserve… laissez-faire capitalism… shrinking defense… anti-federalism… decriminalizing dru*gs. Since its informal start… it has grown and morphed into a bigger tent movement that includes its share of opportunists and warmongers. Because of its populist appeal… the media has attempted to broadbrush it as “extremist” Those in the media enjoy the amenities of life as long as their parent companies retain a stranglehold conglomeration with a strong central government that can provide them corporate welfare… and regulate all of their competition into bankruptcy. It’s definitely not perfect… but I think throwing the baby out with the bathwater… as the propaganda machine would have us do… is a mistake.

I agree the Federal Reserve has outlived its usefulness and must go, it has become a huge parasite that is killing the U S economy. And many of today’s plutocrats are the single-minded corporations like Monsanto that are being nourished by our elected officials for their huge campaign contributions. The American people are like aphids being farmed by ants.
Bush was a puppet president operated by Cheney. If you watch some of the early news clips, when Bush first became President, Cheney would say, “I’ll answer this one” and all but push GW out of the way: Unheard of in any previous Administration. I don’t follow your thinking about GW being a centrist. I see his policies clearly as being profoundly right wing. While Cheney had GW’s small but focused mind directed at Afghanistan and Iraq, the VP was having a field day letting the banks back in this country make hundreds of billions of dollars in default prone loans that brought this country to its knees economically. And Cheney’s old employer Halliburton made about a trillion tax free dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild the countries. But the fact is ten years later not one project is complete.
There is a lot that has to be done to make this country thrive again. One is eliminating the Electoral College. This system of voting for someone who will do the actual voting for you is corrupt, with untold millions of dollars of corporate funds ensuring that corporate friendly candidates get into office. I see the Tea Party as a slight of hand trick to try to dupe the public into thinking they will be different, when in fact it will undoubtedly be more of the same.

Sanctimonious use? Wait. Let me guess. You’re a white, middle-class, heterosexual male. With no actual experience of what discrimination really means. Institutional racism is still in effect, it is not your fault you just happen to have all the characteristics that put you on top of the food chain, which means you have no clue of what reality actually is. And you’ll note, I was talking about civil rights. I’m not one to believe that any document written over a hundred years ago (correct me if I am wrong, my American History is not all that great), needs to go unquestioned and taken as is. This would be same document which allowed slavery? So, things change. Constitution has changed with the time. People have acknowledged things like racism is not ok, and that people should not be forced into poverty because of the color of their skin. I realize it may not be a personal issue to you, but how could it be? You’re at the top of every food chain there is.

You’re arguing that because I am a white devil… if we’re free to list assumptions about one another… I am not allowed to participate in the discussion of discrimination. You pander to the rest of the world that it’s okay to exclude me from the conversation because of the false perception of what I am… because I happened to be born both white and male. To call you on your appeal to novelty or special pleading… won’t amount to much when according to you… my viewpoint isn’t based in the reality of non heterosexual white maleness. What then is my reality? If I am exempt from from the broader reality… do I remain exempt from the ramifications should someone of your mind pass laws regarding me? This is the reason I remain stalwart in the struggle to prevent someone of your mind from attaining any authority over me… unsuccessful as it may be. This is why Rand Paul’s view of federal interventionism is appealing to me. You have expressed that equality to you begins and ends with your misguided notions of who I am. You have no qualms in the biased treatment of individuals on a federal level… just so long as it is biased in your favor. Scary!… that someone liked it… scarier. For the record… you don’t know me.

I basically agree with everything you say. I would go further and suggest that Bush was a puppet to the elite… as all presidents have been in some capacity since the inception of the Federal Reserve… and some going back further to the birth of the nation… the same players were around then… the names have changed somewhat. I consider Bush a centrist as he basically maintained the status quo. He grew the government more than any president before him. He advocated amnesty for immigrant workers. This flood of workers artificially inflated the supply/demand ratio of workers to jobs and has had its part to play in the unemployment problem as well as poverty levels. I agree with you that the Tea Party has in large part been co-opted by the powers that be… but I am not entirely dissuaded against them. Ron Paul… Rand Paul for the most part… are both suitable to me. I agree with the Tea Party position to shrink the government. If you are in agreement that corporate welfare is a problem… less money for the government to give them can’t be bad. I would also rein in the bureaucratic and legislative ability to regulate on these matters… as they tend to work in favor of big companies and against smaller competition. I would definitely be in favor of rescinding Obamacare… I don’t like the idea of being extorted on behalf of big insurance and pharma. Not to mention that the big employers have gained exemption from having to cooperate with the law. To that end I support the movement. If they don’t live up to the promises… then I have no problem in ushering them out. I don’t see any hope for populist laws stemming from anywhere else at the moment.