Conservative writer: Tea Party movement is "dangerously detached from reality"

[kpete]

Conservative writer: Tea Party movement is "dangerously detached from reality"

February 11, 2010 12:01 pm ET by Eric Boehlert

Reporting for Newsweek from the Tea Party convention in Nashville, author Jonathan Kay ("I consider myself a conservative")http://www.newsweek.com/id/233331/output/print , paints a rather damning portrait of the movement:

*****It's a charming act, which makes the tea-party movement seem no more unnerving than the people who spend their weekends reenacting the Civil War. But the 18th-century getups mask something disturbing. After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.

...............

****Within a few hours in Nashville, I could tell that what I was hearing wasn't just random rhetorical mortar fire being launched at Obama and his political allies: the salvos followed the established script of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have suffused the dubious right-wing fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

And behold the wonder here :

Perhaps the most distressing part of all is that few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin's Saturday night keynote address. It is as if, in the current overheated political atmosphere, we all simply have come to expect that radicalized conservatives will behave like unhinged paranoiacs when they collect in the same room.

Amen to that.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201002110016

[Fumesucker]

1. Nothing new.. Repubs have been creating their own reality for decades.. n/t

[Lorien]

2. The craziest part of it all is that what they are protesting are, for the most part, Bush

policies. Suddenly Faux "news" and the teabaggers woke up to The Patriot Act and dozens of other products of the Bush years and now they want to believe that Obama is the guy behind it all. It's just more Right Wing historical revisionism. :crazy:

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. They also don't have a grasp of US History, especially the Boston Tea Party

It was a protest against England for its decision to STOP taxing tea merchants who shipped tea to the colonies.

So which tax that has been halted in recent history do you suppose the present day tea partiers are upset about? :crazy:

[blm]

11. Ironic also that it was Bush1 who pushed the idea of 'New World Order', but, dumbass teabaggers

and most Republicans fully embrace the global fascism of NWO all the while they claim to be concerned about their freedom.

[G_j]

4. Timothy James McVeigh: honorary teabagger.. nt

[alfredo]

5. Sibling rivalry?

[stubtoe]

6. And eventually, they will go the way of the John Birch Society.

It's really hard for paranoid conspiracy theorists to remain organized for long.

[blm]

13. They just regrouped. Koch Brothers are STILL a driving force within BushInc. They're fascists and

adept at wearing their 'angry populist' masks.

[YOY]

7. You created them Republicans. You fed them. You nurtured them.

You OWN them. They're all yours!

[AlinPA]

14. The tbaggers and birthers are the republican party base.

[YOY]

16. One of my wife's friends is married to one of them.

Just an example of his delusions: he thinks the number 4 is bad. He refuses to take any flight with the number 4 in it.

All this because Obama is the 44th President. Yes...that's his reasoning.

I wonder how long their marriage would last if she didn't need him for visa status...

[HughMoran]

8. Tea Klux Klan

[Mari333]

9. on the other side of the issue is what the media covers

when they cover the anti war rallies (One coming up on March 20 )..even tho they dont cover the whole rally, they usually cover the speakers on C Span and it is always the fringe from ANSWER that run the speakers..
I , personally, cringe, when the ANSWER speakers speak. I dont know about anyone else, but yelling FREE MUMIA all the time becomes unnerving.

[Jennicut]

10. New World Order, now where have I heard that before?

Black helicopters...Ross Perot, Alex Jones, etc. There is always this element out there that gets some attention. They just name themselves something different each time.

[blm]

21. George HWBush used the words New World Order at least 45 times in his speeches as President.

New World Order is actually Global Fascism, Global Corporate Rule. It's absurd of any teabagger to try and hang that on the left, especially after the Supreme Court ruling that PROVED the left was right to fight against pro-fascist judges selected by BushInc.

[Initech]

12. The Tea Klux Klan - it's about racism more than anything.

[Warpy]

15. Uh, few media observers were allowed in!

The admen leading these poor suckers know exactly what they're doing and they know they need to do it away from prying eyes.

That there were few media people present was by design.

[gkhouston]

17. and one of the reasons for that was to keep the Tea Partiers ignorant.

I suspect they wanted to keep the Tea Partiers who are generically pissed off but not actually batshit crazy from realizing just how nutso their compatriots are. I'll bet there are some "mad as hell" folks (among them the ones who realized that attendees of this event were being fleeced) who will be slipping away from the Tea Party, or splintering off to form their own "real" Tea Parties.

[Odin2005]

18. anti-establishment rhetoric mixed in with conspiracist paranoia = WATCH OUT.

This kind of sentiment will grow on the Left as well as the Dems in Washington continue to show themselves as corporatist lackeys.

[Blue Owl]

19. Hell, even the freaking Fox new poll

Has +/-70% saying the tea party movement is fruitless lies and conspiracies.

[Echo In Light]

20. Basically agree, although find it funny how quick critics are to dismiss the notion of conspiracy

Given that it's impossible for govt's relying on The Big Lie to operate sans criminal collusion/conspiracy. Nothing "paranoid" about that...tis merely fact.