Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2009/07/13 - 2:03pm

So Kleinheider has a report on yet another Tea Party, this time in Rutherford Co.

According to a spokesperson, Republicans are holding the events as "anti-tax demonstrations" and also to raise awareness of our Constitutional Rights and "how we are slowly losing them."

All this noise started back in August when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for President, and intensified in January when he was sworn in.

So my question for the tea-baggers is, how much have your taxes gone up since President Obama took office? And specifically which taxes?

As for the Constitutional rights we are slowly losing, can you say specificially which rights you have lost since January?

(We'll give you a pass on the shredding of the Constitution that occurred during the eight years before that.)

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Blake's picture

A few points about your

A few points about your post:

1) It's not just Republicans (even though the numbers are larger because of disaffected Republicans, and some of those no longer consider themselves Republicans because of the last 8 years)
2) The noise was going on before August, but it increased due to the perceived lurch to the left it seemed like the country was going to be heading in (larger bail-outs, bigger corporate welfare, healthcare, cap and trade, etc).
3) You discredit yourself by calling them "tea-baggers." Get yourself out of the gutter.
4) You narrow your question down from January and just to "Constitutional" rights (as if rights are only granted by the Constitution).
5) There are a large amount of people involved with these groups that have been screaming for longer than the last 8 years. You just prefer to shift the argument to bring in Bush apparently.

But all those points aside...to answer your question, there are a few tenants that people are basing themselves on here (and I may not cover them all, but it's why I'm interested in the movement):

-Both parties have let us down. Republicans grew government at an out of control rate. Democrats are putting it into overdrive.
-Does anything Congress do anymore fall under it's authority granted by the Constitution? It's been shredded well before your narrow time-line. This (unfortunately for your argument) has less to do with Obama than you think.
-The proposed Cap and Trade bill would create taxes that would be passed on to citizens.
-The government takeover of private companies (shredding Constitution).
-Transparency has taken an even further back seat with this administration, but it's been suffering for many years.

You are narrowing the argument down to just Obama, but...again...I hate to tell you...it's not about Obama. It's about the government as a whole. But, at the same time, what's being proposed and what has been happening is not really going to be good for this country (and not limiting the timeline to just since January).

metulj's picture

3) You discredit yourself by

3) You discredit yourself by calling them "tea-baggers." Get yourself out of the gutter.

Hate to tell you this but the origins of the term with in the anti-Obama movement has everything to do with being completely and totally socially inept, and not checking the message. A cursory bit of research into calling a bunch of protests a "tea bag" movement would have given pause to the idea without the easy sophomorics that not doing so exposed the whole shooting match too. Now the cognitive dissonance, suspect reasoning, and completely ahistorical viewpoint of the movement alone would have come under scrutiny then. Instead, it's just risible.

True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler

Seppuku is in a way the ultimate awful libertarian act -- Frank Popper

gonzone's picture

uh..

...it's not about Obama.

One word: bullshit.

Want pictures?

Organized and promoted by FAUX News, the propaganda arm of the GOP, and another classic FAIL.

Show me where this "concern" was before the last election.

"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"

Elrod's picture

To be fair...

...there are really two wings of the Tea Party movement. One side is broadly affiliated with the Ron Paul movement - libertarian to the core and truly angry at the Rove-built GOP Big Government Conservatism machine. These folks loathe the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and any other metaphoric "war" that has, in truth, eroded our civil liberties. They also saw the Medicare Prescription Drug bill that the GOP passed as a shameless attempt to steer religious conservative voters to the GOP despite the economic pseudo-populism (really a corporate giveaway) at the heart of it. Blake may very well belong to this group.

The second group is the partisans looking for traction. This is the Fox News/RNC crowd fixated entirely on Obama and suffering with amnesia over the last eight years.

Now, which group is bigger? Which group is more representative of the Tea Party Movement?

Well, look at the difference in attendance between the April 15 and July 4 protests. Fox News and the GOP machine completely backed the April 15 protests and they yielded a great deal of participation and energy. The July 4 protests were a non-event, ignored even by Fox News for the most part.

What does this say? It says that most of the Tea Partiers back in April really were just sore loser Republicans angry that they lost power. They were little more than Palinish hate fests.

The July 4 protests were more ideologically coherent because they weren't hijacked/organized by the GOP machine.

Andy Axel's picture

"It's not just Republicans."

"It's not just Republicans."

Love this bit of handwringing.

Keep flogging this talking point, Blake. It's a loser for y'all.

Tea b-- I mean "party" speakers in Nashville have included Ben Cunningham, Marsha Blackburn, Steve Gill, Phil Valentine... I have yet to have seen a prominent Democrat or left-affiliated person appear at War Memorial Plaza when the Luzianne-Lipton Axis is on parade. And I don't count the guy with the NORML sign as representative of the group.

Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher is slated to appear at the next one.

____________________________

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

Hayduke's picture

He's Right

I suspect most of these people have moved to the right of the Republicans on many issues while being anti-government anarchists on others. If it was all about freedoms it would make more sense, but it's mostly about getting rid of the government (so big business can further pwn these poor schmucks) and lowering taxes (ignoring the fact that the countries with more personal freedoms that ours also have higher taxes).

The message is garbled, contradictory and incoherent and the people willing to wrap themselves in the flag and wave misspelled signs are being played by the party with nothing left in their bag of tricks but obstructionism.

Matt Collins's picture

Better question would be....

The better question would be:

How many times and in what ways has Congress and the President violated the Constitution in the last 115 years?

tennesseevaluesauthority's picture

Worth noting... when many of

Worth noting... when many of us were protesting the PATRIOT Act's Constitutional abuses and the falsified evidence for going to war against Iraq, the self-same tea bag party said we suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

I have no sympathy for their sudden need to whine.

Andy Axel's picture

Via Roy Edroso: Tea Party

Via Roy Edroso: Tea Party Conservatives are talking up the notion of "calling in conservative" on 7/30/09.

In a saner universe, this would be referred to as "disaffected Republicans join call for a general strike."

Please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeease do this. I would love to have a one-day vacation from the super-producers in my midst.

____________________________

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

KC's picture

The tea party movement has

The tea party movement has taken on a momentum of its own:
in a spiral...downward.

The key problem for the GOP is that the party can't function, in a primary sense, without some of these people, and yet it can't compete nationally, in a general sense, with these people.

By creating and nurturing this vocal, aggressive group of people over the years through talk radio and the Internet, the GOP may have created its own worst enemy for the future.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present.
President Abraham Lincoln 1862

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