NY Times Book Review Likens Tea Party to the Klan
A piece in Sunday’s New York Times book review section compared the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan. |
The review, written for the Times by historian Kevin Boyle, evaluates two new books on the Klan. It opens with an indirect but unmistakable suggestion that the Tea Party is a modern version of the racist white supremacist organization. |
Imagine a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it. |
No, not that movement. The one from the 1920s, with the sheets and the flaming crosses and the ludicrous name meant to evoke a heroic past. The Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they called it. And for a few years it burned across the nation, a fearsome thing to behold. |
That a portrayal of the Tea Party as a racist and intolerant movement could get past the editors of the New York Times is perhaps not surprising, given what I think are widely held assumptions about the movement among the Northeast’s liberal ruling class. |
NY Times Denies Broad Anti-Semitism at OWS; Quick to Uncover Racism During Tea Party Rallies
While the New York Times was hypersensitive to any signs of racial prejudice among the massive, peaceful Tea Party protests, reporter Joseph Berger raised and dismissed the idea of anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street, in Saturday’s “Cries of Anti-Semitism, But Not at Zuccotti Park.”
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Just two of many references: Reporter David Herszenhorn assumed racism was a force in the movement in an April 1, 2010 podcast: “One is clearly there’s a racial component. Some members of Congress you know, had epithets hurled at them as protesters marched around the Capitol on the day of the big House vote.” Those claims have never been substantiated. On July 18, 2010 Matt Bai reported about fictional “hateful 25-year-olds” at Tea Party rallies.
By contrast, reporter Berger played strong defense for OWS against the anti-Semitism allegations.
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Among the hodgepodge of signs that have sprouted in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, one man in jeans and a baseball cap has been carrying placards that shout their suggestions: “Google: Jewish Billionaires” and “Google: Zionists control Wall St.”
At the same time, among the sea of tarps under which protesters have been sleeping, a sukkah, a makeshift hut, was erected to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. |
NY Times Again Goes After Personal Finances of Tea Party Favorite
New York Times reporters Jennifer Steinhauer and Steven Yaccino unfurled a hit piece (accompanied by a severely unflattering photo) on Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois, conservative freshman congressman and Tea Party favorite, on the front of Tuesday’s National section: “G.O.P.’s Freshman’s Fiscal Message Clashes With His Finances.” It’s not the first time the paper has gone after a Tea Party conservative on such personal terms.
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There is Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman from Illinois, deriding his colleagues once again for their poor stewardship of the economy. During the debt ceiling debate, Mr. Walsh took to the airwaves to call President Obama a liar for suggesting that the nation might default. Just the other day, Mr. Walsh held court at a Tea Party rally, complaining that Republican leaders in Congress had “been there too long” to understand how best to deal with the nation’s daunting fiscal issues. |
Among the 87 Republican House freshmen, Mr. Walsh is perhaps the most visible when it comes to televised economic exposition, refracted through the lens of the Tea Party that helped him eke out a win last year in a suburban Chicago district. Although his district is among the least conservative of any won by a Republican, Mr. Walsh has among the most conservative voting records; he was one of 22 Republicans to vote against the debt-ceiling agreement last summer and among the 24 Republicans to reject a short-term spending agreement passed in September, arguing that its cuts were not deep enough. Read more at www.mrc.org |
Is GOP Absorbing the Tea Party, or Is the Establishment Toppling?
Is the GOP co-opting the tea party movement, or are tea partiers taking down the establishment and sending the RINOs packing? |
A lengthy New York Times magazine article this week quoted several establishment Republicans crowing over what they see as the demise of the two-year-old tea party activism. |
Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News contributor, said the tea party peddles “an infantile form of conservatism.” |
They fear the TEA Party Hobbits
On Tuesday the New York Times published an Op Ed titled “Crashing the Tea Party”. This rambling piece of gibberish was penned by elitist members of the realm of Academia; the same vaunted institutions that spawned the Dark Lord and his minions now attempting to force their Marxist ideology on the Hobbits of the Shire.
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The professors, Campbell and Putnam, begin their fairy tale by stating the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion among most Americans and our brand is becoming toxic. They arrived at these conclusions using polls conducted by the New York Times/CBS News. Given the high self esteem in which Academics hold themselves, one would assume they would have used a more credible source. Really, the New York Times and CBS News? How about a poll on how many Americans, other than the liberal elite, actually read the Times or watch CBS News. The toxic swimming against the tide tea parties are adding new groups and new members daily.
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These gentlemen state the Tea Party is even less popular than 23 other groups, among them “atheists” and “Muslims”, but the Christian Right is almost as unpopular. Are you grasping the big picture here, Hobbits? Two far left organizations poll people of their choosing and use it to attack those who hold Christian beliefs. They constantly try to dissuade Americans, particularly our young people, of the notion our country was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. “One Nation Under God” and “In God We Trust” are mere figments of our imagination, This Hobbit has never been contacted by these people to voice my opinion. How about the rest of you? It’s also interesting to note they use “Muslims”, not “Islamists”. |
Why Is Obama So Clueless About the Tea Party?
How can community activist President Obama continually underestimate the Tea Party? Mr. Obama celebrated his ability to clean up asbestos from public housing as a young organizer; why is he blind to the growing power of Tea Party activists who are trying to clean up our country’s balance sheet? |
In the recent debate on raising the debt ceiling, the president completely dismissed the influence of the Tea Party. He ignored the pledge signed by some 236 House Republicans and 41 GOP senators sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform – an organization sympathetic to the Tea Party — vowing to not raise taxes or to sanction tax reforms that would result in higher revenues. The president continued to grandstand about a “balanced approach” that would include higher taxes even as he and his improbable proposals were ultimately relegated to the sidelines. |
One thing is clear: the Tea Party won the debt ceiling skirmish and changed the nation’s discourse. The movement shifted the country’s focus to cutting spending and restoring our country’s fiscal health – a stunning volte face for our indulgent body politic. You have to wonder, when will Mr. Obama take the Tea Party seriously? |
David Brooks vs. hillbilly tea partiers
A recent offering from syndicated columnist David Brooks, the “conservative” voice of the New York Times, is a prime example of the Ruling Class mindset that gave rise to the tea-party movement. His column, “No compromises: Fanatics take over the Republican Party,” appeared in my local paper (the Greensboro, N.C., News & Record) on July 6.
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I will address the absurdities of Brooks’ piece in the order in which they appear, beginning with the term “fanatic.” According to Webster’s, a fanatic is “a person with an extreme enthusiasm or zeal.” There is nothing inherently menacing about enthusiasm and zeal. My two Golden Retrievers pursue falling leaves with enthusiasm and zeal; my two feline companions stalk and pounce upon shoelaces with enthusiasm and zeal. Equally frightening is the tea party’s “fanatical” devotion to certain principles, such as limited government. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were limited-government fanatics, and so are we. For this, we do not apologize.
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Brooks writes that Barack Obama needs to reach a deal with Republicans on the debt ceiling “so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate.” But one would have to be ignorant of both Obama’s record and the fundamentals of political philosophy to believe the president is a “moderate.” Obama’s ultra left-wing, statist ideology – and its catastrophic failure – is obvious to everyone who has any business within 100 yards of a voting booth.
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Tea Party’s Voice Booms Over Debt Talks
Fighting deficits is a core belief of the Tea Party, which emerged as a significant force in the 2010 midterm elections, especially in the Republican Party. Host Scott Simon talks with New York Times reporter Kate Zernike about the Tea Party’s influence on the deficit and debt ceiling talks, as well as the resulting impact on the GOP. |
Religious Right and Tea Party Are Split on Eliminating Public Schools
This week controversial Maine tea party governor Paul LePage signed a law making Maine the 41st state to establish a charter school program. |
The state of Maine has debated charter schools for years but this year the controversial tea party supported governor and the increased hostility toward public employees unions (especially, in this case, the teachers’ union) gave the pro-charter forces the boost they needed. The New York Times recently reported on the tie between the hostility to unions and the variety of anti-public school measures across the nation, fostered by the tea party group Freedom Works. |
Privatizing public education (and ultimately eliminating it) has long been a goal of the religious right and it has, really for the first time, become a viable possibility, thanks in some measure to active tea party support. Yet the various efforts toward privatization across the nation are provoking some disagreement within the tea party movement and in conservative circles in general. |
Cain presidential campaign gains momentum
Cain, the radio talking head and former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, has long been a Tea Party favorite. But his appeal in recent months has been spreading to mainstream Republicans. His name recognition, despite being at a fairly low 37 percent, has come up 16 points since March. Pundits declared him the winner of the first GOP debate last month, and he’s won straw polls at several conservative conventions. And just last week, a new Gallup poll found Cain had the highest voter intensity score in the Republican field of potential candidates, meaning his supporters are actually excited about him. |
Cain has a simple response to those critics: “They don’t get it.” Echoing the message of his biggest supporters in the Tea Party, he told the New York Times, “There is a big disconnect between the quote unquote establishment and regular folks. The people on the ground get it.” |
