Opinion: Tea Party update: Who they are, why they are and a new book for their kids
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Some pickings from The Ticket’s tea tree:
Detailed new data look at Tea Party people, thanks to the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll:
Powerful force, they say, that includes 71% of Republicans as self-identified supporters. Tea Party people are largely responsible for the enthusiasm gap that distinguishes the C’mon-C’mon-We-Can’t-Wait-for-Nov. 2 Crowd from the November 2d-November 2d-Why-Does-That-Date-Ring-a-Bell crowd of Democrats.
President Obama tried to rally the latter group this week with his Muzak-like-rhetoric about the economy, the sidelining of which for healthcare for so many months is what got him and his Democratic Party in so much trouble with 33 days to go.
Lord knows what his 747 Air Force One foray to Albuquerque-to-Madison-to-Des-Moines-to-Richmond-to-Washington cost taxpayers, let alone the non-offset carbon footprint, not to mention Jumpin’ Joe’s jet jaunt to New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. But it’s an excellent and free political investment for them.
They cannot lose politically.
If the Democratic congressional majorities get shredded on midterm day, at least Obama showed he....
...tried to sell the unsellable to angry Americans in the latest autumn of their economic despair that they no longer blame you-know-who for so much. And the Real Good Talker ends up with Republicans running at least one house as the handy scapegoats for all his inaction the next 24 months. But if Democrats don’t lose as badly as the seriously overhyped tsunami-like predictions portend, then Obama becomes Superman for saving the day. Just try to prove it wasn’t all his talking.
According to author Will Bunch, the Tea Party is not just a ‘spontaneous combustion of anger.’ After all, who’d buy a book about something that simple and passing. It is instead, he maintains, ‘mainly rooted in a cultural revolution, whipped by winds of anxiety and fear -- not just about the loss of so many middle-class jobs in America, but also about sweeping demographic and cultural change in America.’
Not to mention, steeping disappointment among millions about the over-promised, ever-so-hopeful changes promised by the once little-known state senator.
According to Bradford Kane’s analysis, the 18-month-old Tea Party has four main roots: fiscal responsibility or, more accurately, reaction to fiscal irresponsibility; the exploding role of government into American lives; inchoate anger; and, what he calls, demonization over a variety of issues such as the Obama birth certificate, lack of enforcement over the illegal immigrant problem and the reaction to Obama’s support for the ground zero mosque in New York City.
Finally this morning, word came recently that Obama will soon publish a children’s book. David Letterman described the book this way: Sure, why not? What else has Obama got to do? It’s called The One-Term Engine That Could.
Every movement needs a children’s book. So now comes ‘The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids’ with, not surprisingly, coloring pages, a song and descriptions of the Tea Party’s origins and, among other topics, the importance of self-reliance, freedom of choice and government of, by and for the people.
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-- Andrew Malcolm
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