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May 20, 2013
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 The Tea Is Getting WeakerPosted on May 17, 2012LOS ANGELES—Uh-oh! Some people are looking over the right shoulders of the Republicans who rode into the House of Representatives on the tea party wave of 2010. And they don’t like what they’re seeing. The Club for Growth is fundamentally a conservative lobbying and research group pushing for lower taxes and reduced government spending, which positions itself well to the right of Republican elected officials and even to the right of tea party rhetoric. The club’s basic goal is a flat tax to replace graduated income taxes or a national sales tax. The idea, pardon my liberalism, is to reduce taxation on business and on the rich. It seems the club has decided that much of the tea party is reneging on its promises of reducing taxes and spending. Last Wednesday it issued a broadside targeting many of the 87 Republican freshmen who roared into the House of Representatives under the rhetorical umbrella of the tea party. Mike Allen, in his blog, the morning wake-up call of Politico.com, reported the club’s scorecard this way: “FRIENDLY FIRE—Club for Growth releases ‘Just How Tea Party Are They?: How Freshman Republicans of the Class of 2010 Rate on Economic Freedom’—‘While the rhetoric of the freshmen may be loud, the Club for Growth strives to hold lawmakers accountable by examining how they actually voted once they got to Congress. In many cases, the rhetoric of the so-called “Tea Party” freshmen simply didn’t match their records.’ Advertisement “—Another 36 have scores between 50 and 75 percent. “—Only three have perfect scores.” The three pure tea partiers were Justin Amash of Michigan, Raul Labrador of Idaho and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who all received scores of 100. Basically, they voted against everything. More interesting are the 10 low-scorers, led by David McKinley of West Virginia, who voted the way the club wanted only 37 percent of the time. Whatever McKinley said during his campaign, it doesn’t take Machiavelli to figure out what he’s doing now. He won in 2010, in the panhandle district that rises almost to Pittsburgh, with just 50.4 percent of the vote. So, words aside, he has voted and is going to run as if he were a moderate Democrat. The same is true of more than two dozen other Republican freshmen. The club rating for Pat Meehan of Pennsylvania was 42 percent. He won in 2010 with 55 percent of the vote in a district where Barack Obama won 56 percent. Bob Dold of Illinois also scored 42 percent, after winning with 51 percent of the vote. Jon Runyan of New Jersey was rated 45 percent by the Club for Growth, after winning exactly 50 percent of the vote in 2010. So it goes. Congressmen run and govern to win re-election every two years. If they have a safe district, they can vote any way they want. If not, they do whatever it takes, particularly in their first re-election campaign. History tells us that if new congressmen win that second term, they are set for a long time. Whatever the future holds for the tea party or the Club for Growth, these guys are now fighting only for themselves. So, what these numbers mean to me is that the tea party will be absorbed into the mainstream of the Republican Party or the Club for Growth will be just another faction driving wedges into a fracturing Republican Party. The GOP, despite its continued lockstep voting against most everything—and paraphrasing one of its most distinguished members—is a party divided against itself, actually agreeing on very little now, except that it is desperate to destroy President Obama. If Republicans can do that, they can really go after each other. © 2012 Universal Uclick  TAGS:
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By Ted Whitney, May 18, 2012 at 5:11 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
In the 60’s, the Weather Underground and other leftist groups attempted to organize people to destroy the economy and political system of the United States. In this decade, we may finally see that happen through the good work of the Tea Party, Koch Brothers, and the Republican Party.
Report thisBy fitley, May 17, 2012 at 8:57 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Tea Party Wave? I saw it more like the Republican Toilet backing up.
Report thisBy Ivan Hentschel, May 17, 2012 at 4:22 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Hard to say if it is getting weaker, because so many fringes have co-opted the title to hide behind. The big problem is the continued use of the title by the media. If you own a TV, you hear “Tea Party” attributed to everything, as if it were still a viable entity. Chris Matthews is the worst offender. And the Tea Party poopers would do well to change their name, to reflect the real cause which is IWMMW, or “I Want My Money’s Worth” for the taxes they already paid.
Report thisBy americanme, May 17, 2012 at 2:33 pm Link to this comment
The tea may or may not be getting weaker.
But what is certain is that the BULLSHIT is getting deeper every day.
Live it up, voting addicts.
“Like eunuchs talking about the Kama Sutra, voters talk about the elections.”
Aravind Adiga
Report thisTHE WHITE TIGER
By Marian Griffith, May 17, 2012 at 10:43 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
@M Henri Day
—-Could someone please explain what a moderate Democrat is ?—-
Moderate Democrat [n]: A politician desperately trying to catch up with Fox News’ ever moving goalpost of the politcal centre. Not to be confused with:
Report thisModerate Republican [n]: A politician desperately trying to stay ahead of Fox News’ ever moving goalpost of the political centre. See also:
Tea Party Politician [n]: A politician so firmly entrenched in faith in their own righteousness and correctness that they have left the plane of existence of mere mortals and entered an enlightened state of being where the earth is flat and they are no longer subject to the laws of reality. When heading to the event horizon of the political right right their feet soon leave the earth as it curves away from them and they refuse to acknowledge the reality of that.
By DornDiego, May 17, 2012 at 9:59 am Link to this comment
Hmmm… they’re starting to shoot each other?
Report thisBy Shenonymous, May 17, 2012 at 9:09 am Link to this comment
Oh…I meant to add that the deficits without all those factors rides
Report thisalong as zero or nearly zero to a high in 2012 of about $0.1, which
is astonishingly a livable level!!! Again I recommend not to believe
me, but to see the chart. Let the Tea Party have its way as Romney
promised he would do all he can †o pass the Tea Partier Paul Ryan’s
Budget Plan, and do you hear that sinking sound? Flushhhhh! There
goes the American people down the toilet. There won’t be any way
to not drown in the fecalful water that fills the Republican toilet bowl,
there is no salvation on the table.
By Shenonymous, May 17, 2012 at 8:52 am Link to this comment
The causes of the national deficit (debt), has been glaringly graphed
by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBO) using data from
about a year ago that showed up the other day on an MSNBC Ed Schulz
online article, see http://tinyurl.com/bp2skma and the Tea is bitter.
The chart can’t be put into the TD forum but for those who don’t
want to navigate to the Schulz article it can be summarized as Policies
from Bush Administration Projected to Be the Main Source of Future
Deficits. Using deficits in trillions of dollars over a period of years from
2009 to 2019 it can instantly be seen from the chart where the problem
originated and where it will be sustained due to Republican strategies
to undermine the United States economy’s social programs (meaning
against the benefit of the people who could be called the 99%). Over the
range it can be seen that the economic downturn started at a little more
than $0.45 trillion in 2009 and ended at about $0.4 in 2019, so some
progress there, where 5 trillion might be significant? All money is
expressed in the negative because it is what it took to pay for and will
take to sustain the economy. TARP, Fannie and Freddie input started at
close to $0.7 trillion with a large share between 2009 and 2010 and
dwindling to a slightly fluctuation from $0.5 around this year 2012 and
ending in 2019 at also at $0.45. Keep in mind all money represents
trillions of dollars. The recovery measures, meaning expenditures,
started off in 2009 between $0.7 and just under $0.9 trillion dropping
significantly to $0.4 in the period between 2014-2016 rising slightly to
about $0.46 or so. This is a good thing and can be attributed to
Obama’s having pulled the economy from the brink by ‘saving’
government jobs and creating more than a few jobs in the public and
private sector with the autobailout and stimulus would have solved a
great many of the fiscal problems except the Republicans choked off all
such possibilities. The Bush-era Tax Cuts begin between $0.9 and just
over $1.2 trillion in 2009 dipping to between $0.6 and $0.8 in 2013 but
rising almost immeasurably to a bulk between $0.5 to around $1.1
trillion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is really costing the shockingly
amount starting in 2009 it looks like from between $1.275 and $1.4
trillion with a consistent dip with all the other estimations in 2013 of
between $0.8 and $1.0 trillion back up to $1.1 to $1.2 trillion in 2019. It
is worthwhile to link to the article to see the chart first hand.
Romney’s melodramatic and deliriously faulty warning (as faulty as are
Report thisall his other theatrical lies) of a prairie fire of debt does not even brush
by the truth that the deficits are largely, no hugely, the result of the Bush
tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. There is absolutely no reason
to think Romney has any expertise to change the trends but only would
exacerbate it with his promised further tax cuts to the rich class while
eviscerating the national integrity of much needed social programs for
the general public!
By M Henri Day, May 17, 2012 at 8:01 am Link to this comment
«... he [David McKinley] has voted and is going to run as if he were a moderate Democrat.» Could someone please explain what a moderate Democrat is ? Please note that I have not included the noun phrase in question is quotation marks - I have some idea of what a «moderate Democrat» is, i e, someone who never saw a US war of aggression of which he or she did not approve and who loves drones, who approves of corporate political contributions and is skeptical of unions, who admires «enterpreneurs», even when they «cut corners», who does not believe that Glass-Steagall should be resuscitated, but who, on the other hand, is not entirely convinced that Citizens United (or, for that matter, Dred Scott) was the best decision ever made by the US Supreme Court, or that corporations should pay no taxes at all, or that Mr Obama, while certainly a lefty, is a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist who is attempting to subjugate the United States to the rigours of Sharia law, while at the same time making godless atheism (is there any other kind ?) the law of the land. But what is a moderate democrat without the quotes ?...
Henri
Report thisBy THX 1133 is not in the movie..., May 17, 2012 at 2:14 am Link to this comment
Tea Party = Loons (my apology to the species; Gavia,
Report thisfamily Gaviidae and order Gaviiformes).
Started off great; finished irrelevant.