The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Robert Reich: Tea Party Strawman Flaming, Not The Greenwich Village Way

Posted on | December 21, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

The right is currently in a struggle to determine whether it will nominate a Ruling Class Overlord who says sufficiently conservative sounding things to take the nomination, the veers to the center to win the election. Alternatively, somebody with both high moral and conservative track records, e.g. Perry, Santorum or Bachmann, could be selected both to run and govern in a way that will reduce that thumping sound from the Founders’ graves.

Recalling that Riech is doing a convincing impression of a buffoon, his Huffington Post column becomes hilarious.

Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from.

The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.

As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.

Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans — only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

Read the whole thing, if you need a belly laugh. If you have history, pound history; if you have economics, pound economics; if you have neither, pound some strawmen.

The crucial point for all of the Left is that there is never a substantial economic argument to refute the Tea Party’s disdain for living in Reich’s blend of 1984 and Atlas Shrugged. Reich could at least refute Will’s devastating point that the Baby Boomer households have sucked up the wealth, to the detriment of anyone younger. Coming up with an argument would be like work, or something. Why not just point a finger?

Supreme Field Marshall of the Endless Strawman Horde, General Leopold von Stubble, said of Reich:

We do not fear Reich, for we produce strawmen at a rate even more prodigious than his destruction rate. What we fear is that the minds of his readers become tainted with facts. If people realize what a colossal joke Reich has become, they’ll quit listening. People attending to Reich’s endless stream of flatus is crucial for us to manage our high strawman production rate without flooding the market. Fortunately, with the election year coming up, we can expect President Obama to do his part to eliminate strawmen, so the pressure is off of Reich’s readers, at least through November 2012.

Category: Economics, Huffington Post

Comments

6 Responses to “Robert Reich: Tea Party Strawman Flaming, Not The Greenwich Village Way”

  1. Anonymous
    December 21st, 2011 @ 1:05 pm

    Why is this mental midget still relevant?  He was wrong back in the Clinton days and he’s just as wrong today.

  2. ThePaganTemple
    December 21st, 2011 @ 1:25 pm

    You may think its funny Smitty, I find it infuriating though not surprising. But what’s really sad is this is the kind of thing that makes at least a third of Republican voters and almost all the establishment GOP elites wring their hands and bite their nails and set out to insure that a solidly conservative candidate can’t get any traction. They’ll go out of their way to make sure a Romney gets it, and when it looks like the deck is stacked against him they’ll float out that tired old Jeb Bush trial balloon, or Christy, or Daniels, etc. Hell, they almost managed to even suck you in with the bullshit about T-Paw, whose about as electable as the hair on my ass.

    I’m afraid this civil war in the Republican Party will have to be fought and won not at the top, but at the state, local, and precinct levels, and it will take time we might not have as a nation. And in the meantime, Democrats and other progressive idiots, like Reich, will just set back, throw a few bombs, and laugh at the chaos.

  3. K-Bob
    December 21st, 2011 @ 3:37 pm

    I like the way he wipes the drool off his mouth at the end, with that, “This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans,” line.

    He probably thought he was like James Bond, straightening his tie after kicking major ass.

    If he wants to do some demographics homework, and see who might be in the Tea Party, he could first read Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone  (which you could put in an update with a link  – IYKWIMAITTYD).

    Then he could look at some actual polling, for instance this Gallup poll:

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspx

  4. Charles
    December 21st, 2011 @ 7:51 pm

    If as seems a distinct possibility, Democrats lose the Senate while Barack Obama retains the White House, what new contortion will be employed to spin that outcome as racist?

  5. The Cob
    December 21st, 2011 @ 10:16 pm

    Guilt by geographic association is FUN!

    NYC, Chicago & Las Vegas are known for their mobster histories. Are Senate Democratic leaders secretly mafia frontmen?

    While not ALL Democrat leaders are from mob cities, independents might be alienated by the historical connections to corrupt criminal machines.

    …

    Wait. It’s self-marginalizing to be worried about communists and the mafia. Worrying about neo-confederates is totally OK and mainstream, though. Got it.

  6. David R. Graham
    December 21st, 2011 @ 11:21 pm

    Well, the first TEA Party rally was in Seattle, organized by Kellie Karendar (sp?), a Dem-leaning liberal-sympathizer.  I was at the second she organized, also at Westlake Park in Seattle’s retail core, adjacent Nordstrom’s.  She sported an Alice in Wonderland costume and filled it our more than nicely.