Fighting the Culture of Dependence

[unixronin]

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, writes about what the Tea Parties are really about.

(Hint:  It doesn't involve hating anyone, hunting wolves from helicopters, funding from the Bavarian Illuminati, or any of the other smears you've heard.)

Comments

[yndy.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting this - but remember, we live in a time when using rational arguments for a political side is pointless - because the opposition of whichever side it is doesn't *want* to believe that their opponents are rational.
No matter which side you're talking about, the other guys are 'lunatics and extremists'

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And more's the pity. Because when you base your thinking on that, you can't have a dialogue, and when you can't have a dialogue, you have a divided country that becomes ever more divided as time goes by.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

A lot of the tea-party-ists don't really seem to be arguing against dependence. Nor for independence. What they seem to be arguing against is change, without regard to whether or not each change is for the better, whether or not the status quo was good, and whether or not it was the actual status quo. Which isn't really anything new. It's really "conservatism as usual".

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Which might be the dumbest thing said about them that didn't include the worst 'racist', so congrats there.

They're arguing against and for quite a lot. Finding out what will take you about 3 min if you bothered to find out.

Of course, you probably believe that many of these same people never said a word about government spending until a black man was elected, too. (Tom Daschle would disagree with you. He'd know, since they were hounding him at the time...).

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

I've looked at what they've said. And I've looked at it for more than 3 minutes. And, I stand by my summary.

Same crap, different label.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about your functional illiteracy. We're all praying for you.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

If all you can come up with is a strawman attack (I never said anything with regard to Obama/black-man-elected), follow it up with an ad hominem attack, and no actual substantive statements, then you're really only undermining your own credibility, Chris.

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

You're right - it does not involve any of the common smears I've heard against the TEA Party.

BTW - I hadn't heard the one about helicopter hunting - what's that about?

It does, however, contain common smears against the Democrats, which shows that it is not a balanced analysis, but rather a biased justification.

> "The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people
> cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes
> supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and
> guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by
> union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better
> decisions for them than they can make themselves. That is the
> culture of dependence."

Translation: "Oh noes, the Dems are gonna make us a socialized country!"

> "But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are
> trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens'
> dependence on it."

This is stated baldly, with no supporting evidence. It's just assumed as a truth known about the intent of the Democratic Party, and is used as a premise for later analysis in the article. Hence, it is essentially an axiom.

I don't buy it as such.

* * *

The TEA Party claims to be a populist movement. Yahoo's online dictionary defines "populism" as: "1a. A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite."

Fair enough. The TP certainly uses rhetoric attacking elites. But look at the elites they attack - almost exclusively Democrats and any Republican who crosses the aisle. They decry unions - but say nothing against Massey Energy, a coal company with one of the worst safety records in the industry, and one that has successfully prevented unionization of its employees.

Don't get me wrong - I'm against most unions. Not because I see unions as creating a "culture of dependence", but because, IMO, too many unions have become the very things they were formed to prevent - reactionary organizations interested only in maintaining the power of the top dogs, and abusing the workers who actually provide the elite class with its power.

The TP may be against elitism, but it is an unbalanced choice of elites to be against.

* * *

The TP claims to be a popular movement. "Popular": "3 Of, representing, or carried on by the people at large: the popular vote."

If you look at the demographics of the TP, this is not true. While it is true that the TP does draw from all races, ages, genders and political views, the majority of its membership base can be described as "WASP, male, conservative." This demographic is skewed to that of the country as a whole.

* * *

My opinion: The TP is a fracturing of the Republican Party, representing those who feel the Party is insufficiently conservative. It is neither truly populist nor popular, and whether denied or stated boldly, at the core it is a reactionary response to a non-"WASP, male, conservative" president.

* * *

The Republican Party has long had an internal power struggle between the more centrist conservatives and the far right. This latter group has spawned the militia movement, the "Moral Majority" and others of that ilk, and now the TP.

The TP has some good ideas. I'm in favor of smaller government, fiscal responsibility and only spending what you've got funding for. In that, I do identify with some of the more centrist Republican platform points.

But I cannot support the TP because it is unbalanced. If they equally attacked the elitism of the Republican Party, perhaps. But as it is, no.

[More to come, trying to stay under 4300 caharacter comment limit]

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

BTW - I hadn't heard the one about helicopter hunting - what's that about?

Quite a few pundits have declared that since Sarah Palin reportedly likes hunting wolves from helicopters, and Sarahy Palin has spoken at several Tea party rallies and not been booed off the stage, it must naturally follow that the Tea Parties support everyone's right to hunt wolves from helicopters.

It does, however, contain common smears against the Democrats, which shows that it is not a balanced analysis, but rather a biased justification.
[...]
This is stated baldly, with no supporting evidence. It's just assumed as a truth known about the intent of the Democratic Party, and is used as a premise for later analysis in the article. Hence, it is essentially an axiom.

I'm rather regarding much the rhetoric you quoted there as opinion. However, Democratic administrations do have a well-established history of expanding the role and scope of government, which is not changed by the fact that recently Republican administrations have shrugged, said "What the hell", and jumped right in there with them.

The TP certainly uses rhetoric attacking elites. But look at the elites they attack - almost exclusively Democrats and any Republican who crosses the aisle.

Referring back to the article for a moment, "Barack Obama carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and those with incomes over $200,000, and lost those with incomes in between." If the majority of voters making over $200,000 voted Democratic, this sort of implies that the majority of "elites" are Democratic. In which case, if the Tea Parties position themselves against wealthy elites, it sort of necessarily follows that the majority of those are going to be Democrats, by simple demographics.

the majority of [the Tea Parties'] membership base can be described as "WASP, male, conservative." This demographic is skewed to that of the country as a whole.

I'm not convinced the demographic is as clear-cut as you think it is. In particular, from what I've seen, it seems actual membership/support is pretty well gender-balanced, and I'm not convinced about the overwhelmingly-WASP charge either. Conservative? Yes, that's pretty clear; more fiscally conservative than socially, but yeah, the TP demographics are pretty clearly conservative-leaning. However, one can equally clearly say that the Democratic Party's demographic is clearly progressive-leaning. Does this inherently discredit or invalidate Democratic politics?

My opinion: The TP is a fracturing of the Republican Party, representing those who feel the Party is insufficiently conservative. It is neither truly populist nor popular, and whether denied or stated boldly, at the core it is a reactionary response to a non-"WASP, male, conservative" president.

Now we're getting into semantics. If you were to say something like "It's composed heavily of former Republican voters who feel their party has abandoned them", I'd have to agree with you. That's not the same thing as being a fracturing of the Republican party. It might be more true to say that it's a return to much of what the Republican party once was, but has not been since at least Reagan.
"Not populist or popular"? I think it's pretty hard to support a statement that a movement which, according to polls, has grown from 16% to 24% of the electorate in the past month (http://lnk.nu/rasmussenreports.com/19b8), plus a further 11% undecided, is not popular, and if a movement composed mainly of middle-class, former middle-class, and working-class voters isn't populist, then I have to admit to being a little baffled at what it would take to qualify.
Comparing the Tea Parties to the Moral Majority says to me that you haven't actually listened to what the Tea Parties are saying. Many Tea Partiers are strongly religious, yes. To tar them with the Moral Majority brush or say they're far-right because of that is completely unjustifiable.

I cannot support the TP because it is unbalanced.

Then how can you support the Democratic party?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant to add - As for 'reactionary response to a non-"WASP, male, conservative" president', I think you're projecting. The TPers aren't saying "Obama is the problem." They're saying that the government as a whole has become the problem, from the Oval Office down to the bloat in the alphabet-soup of Federal agencies. Remember, what really got the movement going was the bank bailouts initiated by Bush, and they've had some pretty harsh words for the Republican leadership as well as for Democrats. Sure, they're angrier right now at Obama, Reid, Pelosi et al — but, hey, look who's in the hot seat right now. If you object to the direction the bus is going, you complain to the driver, not to passengers in the back seats of the bus.

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

Returning after a stressful, hour-long commute (in the Rain! Uphill! BOTH WAYS!) Raiman pontificates ...

1. Helicopter hunting:

aaAAaahh. Hadn't heard that. But then, I don't consider Sarah Palin to be representative of anything except Sarah's Palin's best interests. The news that she likes to hunt wolves from a helicopter makes me like her even less, but that's about it.

2. The quotes and whether they're opinions or axioms.

Certainly they're opinions. They may even be informed opinions - something I'll agree to disagree on.

But they're stated as bald truths, and much of the enduing analysis is based on them. Thus they assume the function of axioms.

3. "Then how can you support the Democratic party?"

Short answer: I don't.

Long answer: I'll ask to move this to my LJ, because I have a feeling it's gonna take several days, several drafts, and several thousand bytes overthe comment size limit.

4. Elitism.

I think there is a flaw in their statistics. They're comparing number of voters and wealth. If the wealth was evenly spread out among those >$200k voters, the claim would make sense. But you I both know that it's not. Wealth is clustered, with the top brackets holding a disproportionate amount.

What would happen, I wonder, if they split that $>200k into finer granularity? Would they find that 200k-1m bloc might have the voters and be heavily Democratic, while the >1m bloc was vastly smaller but had far more of the total wealth, and was heavily Republican?

I've got a strong feeling it would show that. So that while it is true - and loudly stated in the article - that the body count of >$200k voters leans Democratic, the true elites and concentration of wealth is Republican.

Be a fun question to check out.

5. Demograpics, WASPs, etc.

I don't say it's clear-cut. I say it's _skewed_ to the general population. That means that, IMO, an analysis would show a statistical significance beyond sampling error. But it's not, and never will be, a 1:1 correlation.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

What would happen, I wonder, if they split that $>200k into finer granularity? Would they find that 200k-1m bloc might have the voters and be heavily Democratic, while the >1m bloc was vastly smaller but had far more of the total wealth, and was heavily Republican?

I've got a strong feeling it would show that. So that while it is true - and loudly stated in the article - that the body count of >$200k voters leans Democratic, the true elites and concentration of wealth is Republican.

Be a fun question to check out.

It would be interesting to find out. I'm not sure how useful it would be, and I suspect it's over-analyzing the question.


Side note: Yeah, I find the comment length limit obnoxious. It betrays poor design, IMHO. It suggests a static allocation for comments (and why 4300?) which is too small for a very few and more than an order of magnitude larger than needed for the vast majority. Even if it is dynamic allocation with a 4300-char cap, really, how many comments would exceed that? One in a thousand?

[pauamma]

I'm pretty sure the comment limit was originally lower and was bumped up when LJ went from "all ASCII except for a smattering of 8859-* (or the windows equivalent) and KOI8-*" to "all UTF-8", to compensate for the expansion of average bytes per character. (I can't swear it happened for comment length, but I know it happened for other text length limits.)

And I'm also pretty sure that the limit isn't (or mostly isn't) due to storage considerations, but to network traffic. A lot of the design, I understand, stems from the fact that Danga, for most of its existence until 6A bought it, was strapped for cash, and had to pinch pennies on everything - not just servers and disks, but network gear and ISP/hosting/telco recurring costs.

More to come ... is here ;)

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

The Tea Party Patriots are, as far as I can tell, the largest organized group under the TP umbrella. Their mission satement, at:

http://www.teapartypatriots.org/mission.aspx

is somewhat vague, and I have several comments and questions (in no particular order, just as they come to me):

1. First off, the use of the term "Patriots". How do they define a "patriot"? Does "patriot" equal "someone who agrees with my views"?

Obviously I disagree with that. I consider myself a patriot and I disagree with the views of the TP.

IMO, the use of the term "patriot" by the TP is one of "my country right or wrong, to approve of anything done by a republican president, and to diapprove of anything done by a democratic president - even if it's the same thing."

What's the TP's position of waterboarding and other torture methods of interrogation? The denial of due process and habeus corpus merely on the say-so of the executive branch? Warrantless wiretaps? Other violations of civil liberties under the auspices of the "Patriot Act"? The whole concept of the "imperial presidency"?

I note that the current administration continues to defend those abuses perpetrated by the previous administration, and in cases, continues to use them. I have opposed them from the start, and I consider their contiuance to be a blot on Obama's promises. Where were the TP'ers when they were occuring under Bush II?

2. "Fiscal Responsibility": from the mission statement: "Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. ..."

_Now_ see? Yes, there's a lot of deficit spending in DC. But there's nothing new about it. Why haven't the TP'ers complained about the multi-TRILLION dollar waste that was/is the Iraq War? Or the deficit spending of the last three Republican administrations?

I've said it before. The Democratic Party is the party of tax and spend. The Republican Party is the the party of borrow and spend - then blame it on the Democrats when they're forced to raise taxes to cover it.

NEITHER party is willing to be fiscally responsible. The basic reason is that the voters themselves want something for nothing, and BOTH parties will kowtow to that bread and circuses desire, merely to stay in office. For the TP to claim that it's one-sided is false.

3. "Constitutionally Limited Government": "We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent."

This raises a red flag with me. What I read from it is "we have the absolute handle on TRUTH, JUSTICE and THE AMERICAN WAY. Any court rulings we don't like are due to JUDICIAL ACTIVISM by LIBERAL JUDGES", etc. etc. etc. To me it smacks of treating all constitutional issues as a zero-sum game, with the TP'ers always in the winner's position.

What is the TP's position on Roe v. Wade and other personal liberty cases?

What is the TP's position on Kitzmiller v. Dover, and other Establishment Clause cases?

What is the TP's position on the ACLU? Do they castigate them for "judicial activism" whenever the ACLU wins an Establisment Clause case against an illegally-imposed religious intrusion, while ignoring the Establishment Clause & First Amendment cases the ACLU takes on for right-wing causes?

IMO, "Constituionally Limited" is too vague, and lets the TP claim conflicting viewpoints when it serves their purposes.

4. "Free Markets": "we ... oppose government intervention into the operations of private business."

Once again, IMO this is vaguely worded to allow the TP to claim conflicting viewpoints, as long as it serves their biases.

What's the TP's position on usury laws? building standards? workplace safety issues - indeed, what's the TP's position on the Massey Energy mine disaster? What about the DMCA and the constant extension of copyright?

* * *

That's all for the moment. I need to drive Mo to work now, so I have the car for errands.

Be well, Alaric.

Re: More to come ... is here ;)

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

Yay! it posted the first try, under the 4300 limit!

Part 1.

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

Alaric-

I offer the following:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35988.html

From the poll:

64% male
49% 45-64
84% White
39% church >= once a week.
43% Republican + 36% independent v. 9% Democrat (I combine it this way because I suspect the libertarians are statistically hidden within the independent group. Poor question construction, methinks).
70% McCain 2008 / 12% Obama
74% Bush 2004 / 8% Kerry

Remember what I said about WASPs ...?

I believe this poll further supports my contention that:

- - -

- The TEA Party is not a true populist group, consisting of the common man against the broad range of elitism. It is instead the ideologically-driven "populism" that erroneously conflates elitism with the Democratic Party.

If the TEA Party were truly the populist movement they claim to be, they would attack elitism everywhere. The fact is, however, that all the reports I can find about them show that their attack on elitism is ideologically skewed. I can't find ANY attacks on Republican elitism by the TEA Party Patriots - who are apparently the largest organized TEA Party group.

This is telling. There can be no argument that elitism crosses party lines. To ignore the elitism of one party while castigating the other indicates that the focus is ideologically driven, and not true populism. One doesn't even need to delve into the subtleties of elitism statistics.

- - -

- The TEA Party is not a true popular group, drawing from a wide demographic. It is instead a fracturing of the Republican Party, drawing from divisive elements within the Republican Party, and maintaining that internal division.

That was my original contention. I modify it, based on the polling, thus:

- The TEA Party is not a true popular group, drawing from a wide demographic. It is instead a coalition between far right-wing Republicans and more moderate independent & libertarian groups. As such, it represents a fracturing force in the Republican Party.

The polling (page 7 of 9) asks the question:

How well do these organizations represent the views of the Tea Party movement?

The results are telling:

While the Republican & Libertarian Parties are (IMH,BOOSOSO*, anyway) pretty closely matched in the "Extremely Well" & "Very Well" columns:

EW VW
Rep 7 43%
Lib 20 37%

The Democratic Party, OTOH, is heavily biased into the worst column, "Not At All Well", at 76%

This indicates to me that the demographic that the TEA Party is drawing from is already heavily skewed in one ideological direction, and certainly implies that the focus of the TEA Party is similarly ideologically skewed, and not a true popularism that draws from a wide, cross-party demographic.

This divisive force within the Republican Party is illustrated by the following article:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/22/ariz-immigration-debate-pressures-mccain/

The power of the TEA Partiers, especially the Palinite portion that identifies heavily as far-right Republicans, is sufficient to force a more moderate Republican such as McCain to harden his stance in order to appease them and keep his Senate seat. Regardless of how one views McCain's policy changes, they are indicative of how powerful the Palinite TPer's are in their attempts to move the Republican Party to the right.

It also, due to the Rep/Lib split, illustrates the internal divisions in the TEA Party, which the following article (and the essay it links to) analyze:

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/04/andrew_sullivan_on_the_tea_par.php

And which are further shown by the Palin/Paul split in the poll.

Remember my analogy of the Republican bus being yanked into a ditch ...?



- - -

*IMH,BOOSOSO - In my humble, but only one semester of statistics opinion.

(Also posted to my LJ, just in case ...)

Part 2

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

- - -

- The loudest, most vociferous and most identifiable portion of the shaky TEA Party coalition is what the (first article I linked) calls the "Palinites", which are (IMO) essentially a rebranding of the white supremacy militia of the 90s and the religious reich of Falwell & Robertson from the '00s.

While I could agree with some of the positions of the "Pauline" TPer's (and will require further analysis to define those points of agreement), the anti-science, anti-civil liberties, and inherent contradictions of wanting smaller government - while at the same time insisting that that smaller government be MORE intrusive into peoples' private lives - stand of the Palinites disgusts me. I will make the following distinctions:

The Pauline bloc of the TEA Party I will refer to as TEA Partiers, or TPer's for short.

The Palinite bloc of the TEA Party I will refer to as "teabaggers". They started the use of the term in reference to the Democrats ("Send a tea bag to Washington before the Democrats teabag you"); the fact that it has rebounded to become a term of mockery for them is, IMO, poetic justice.

- - -

I stand by my original analysis that the TEA Party is a loose coalition of people drawn almost exclusively from the right end of the political spectrum, who base their platform on ideological grounds while trying to project those biases as being representative of the country as a whole.

I maintain that while some of the points the TEA Partiers raise - the outrageous growth of he national debt, the continued deficit spending, etc. - are valid and definitely should be fought - their attempt to blame said debt and deficits on Obama and the Democrats is not driven by true populist anger, but rather ideological biases.

I further claim that the attacks on Obama by the TEA Partiers are not simply because he's in the hot seat as the latest president who happened to have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the country went into a financial meltdown, but rather that he is being attacked because he's the latest DEMOCRAT president in the hot seat.

I state that if John McCain had won in '08, you would not see this sort of vitriolic backlash, even if (IMO) the country were in worse financial shape as a result.

You might see a backlash against taxes, the debt and deficits, but it would be driven by the Pauline/libertarian portion of the current TEA party, while the Palinite/Republican portion would be silent, or would be in their element blaming everything on the Democrats.

I finish by stating that I feel the analysis I have provided is more balanced and accurate than the original article, which, in my opinion, is essentially a fawning hagiography.

Be well, Alaric

Re: Part 2

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I can entirely see the viewpoint of a "Paulite" libertarian wing and a "Palinite" Republican-splinter wing. In fact, I rather like that label usage. For the record, file me firmly with the Paulites. :)

That said ... while I see your point as regards Tea Party/Republican compatibility vs. Tea Party/Democrat compatibility, and am not greatly surprised by it, I'm not sure your conclusion from it that the Tea party is not truly populist is valid. I would put it to you that the Republican and Democratic parties have so polarized the country with their "Us vs. Them" politics that it is probably not possible to have a platform that would appeal both the the majority of generally-conservative voters AND the majority of generally-liberal voters. In short, I think you're trying to set a standard of populism that just is not possible in the current political landscape of the US.

I state that if John McCain had won in '08, you would not see this sort of vitriolic backlash, even if (IMO) the country were in worse financial shape as a result.

You might see a backlash against taxes, the debt and deficits, but it would be driven by the Pauline/libertarian portion of the current TEA party, while the Palinite/Republican portion would be silent, or would be in their element blaming everything on the Democrats.

Or perhaps the Tea parties would have a smaller Palinite element and a larger Democratic element. But since he didn't, all one can do is speculate.