E.J. Dionne -- The Tea Party Is Winning

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_tea_party_is_winning_20110220/?ln

Take five steps back and consider the nature of the political conversation in our nation’s capital. You would never know that it’s taking place at a moment when unemployment is still at 9 percent, when wages for so many people are stagnating at best, and when the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its economic dominance.

No, we are acting here as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit, the only test of leadership is whether a president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly, and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.

Take another five steps back and you realize how successful the tea party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, tea party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country’s dialogue.

Consider all the things Washington and the media are mostly ignoring. You haven’t heard much lately on how Wall Street shenanigans tanked the economy in the first place—and in the process made a small number of people very rich. Yet any discussion of the problems caused by concentrated wealth (a vital mainstream issue in the America of Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts) is confined to the academic or left-wing sidelines.

More at the link --

[ananda]

1. Disagree. It's the media and corporate funding.

nt

[Donnachaidh]

4. and who is it that bankrolled the Tea Party?

The Koch Brothers.

So yes, corporate funding and a complicit media is working against the workers in this country.

[demwing]

5. 6 of 1

The Tea Party IS media and corporate funding, right?

[Bonhomme Richard]

10. +1 n/t

[starroute]

14. But calling it the Tea Party makes it sound grassrootsy and populist

Saying the Tea Party has won is very different from saying the corporate oligarchs have won. It's one of the lies that we have to beat back.

[WCGreen]

23. It's a cynical attempt to create populism with corporate cash...

The fools believe it.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. Bingo

The tea party is a front for the Koch brothers. The only reason they're winning is because thye overtly and implicitly own the media. If it were left to people alone to look at the tea party, they would be laughed off the street.

[spanone]

2. yep, these fuckers got elected on JOBS...now they are attacking labor

[aquart]

3. Of course the Kochheads are winning.

They have endless, untaxed, unregulated money.

[HereSince1628]

6. Every crisis presents an opportunity to be myopic

and short-sightedness currently abounds in Washington.

Consider for a moment that Rand Paul, with his training in eye care, was able to get elected.

I suspect he is making a killing selling tea-colored lenses.

[Solly Mack]

7. K&R

[lonestarnot]

8. If you are counting on TV box to frame your political issues for you, well

good luck with that. Personally, I don't see a populace uprising as a loss. Other issues may be supressed in reporting, but this is not new, in fact, here, this has been going on for a time. Here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXJIV4f4ZQ0

[vi5]

9. This paragraph...

"Yet any discussion of the problems caused by concentrated wealth (a vital mainstream issue in the America of Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts) is confined to the academic or left-wing sidelines."

Again and again, this is all because our elected Dems are falling for it hook line and sinker. If no elected Dem, not in the Senate, or the House, or the White House will stand up and say what needs to be said, of course it will be relegated to the sidelines and the fringe. Not only don't they stand up and speak these truths, instead they give credibility to the tea party line by engaging them and acting as though there is a compromise to be made and failing to completely call them out on their hypocricy.

I expect the Republicans to be how they are. That's not my problem. My problem is that I expect Democrats to stand up for Democratic economic and social principles, which is where the failure to counter this has come from.

Again and again, the Republicans engage and pander to their base while the Democratic party relegates their base to the sidelines.

[Poboy]

11. "falling for it", or LIHOP?

[riderinthestorm]

25. Yes, LIHOP. Both parties are complicit.

It's funny but I wasn't sure about the Democratic party collusion with the money grab with Clinton but Obama's moves have me convinced. I shouldn't have been so optimistic with Clinton. I know but truly, I didn't want to see how bad both parties had been co-opted.

And I had such high hopes for us with this Admin.... (dammit)

[OHdem10]

12. As usual the Left rolls over and we will have a Right Wing Country

[Enthusiast]

13. The far right wing thoroughly

controls the media. The only thing that exists is what people see on their TV. Print media has lost nearly all the influence it ever had. If the media says spending is THE only discussion, spending will be the only discussion. The Tea Party phenomenon is purely a creation of the right wing media and corporate money. Right wing media = Teabagger.

[jillan]

16. I assume this op-ed was written BEFORE Wisconsin? It's a new day in America - WAKE up EJ!

[KharmaTrain]

17. It's Winning Inside The Beltway...

...and that's all that matters to most politicians. Their focus right now is on gathering as much cash as they can for what is sure to be a very expensive 2012 campaign. No one is immune...you either are raising for yourself or for the party. They only hear from those who write the big checks...the little guys come only after the big coin is collected.

[Poboy]

19. Correct. The narrative is promoted, and the politicians sell it to us.

They create an alternate reality bubble whereby mere logic and truth are optional.
What matters is that their perception is manufactured and maintained through constant propaganda.

[Vinnie From Indy]

18. "You haven’t heard much lately on... "

IS it really that hard for national pundits like Dionne to find the real culprits here in regard to our "national discussion" and the alleged influence of the Teabaggers?

The reason WE have not "heard" much lately about real issues of importance etc. is because the mainstream media is thoroughly corrupt and they march in lockstep in the service of their owners - the ultra-wealthy and corporate interests.

I am always amazed at how mystifying the corruption in modern America is to our national pundits. It is there in plain sight.

[Bucky]

20. The extreme right has dominated the dialogue since 1980

[kenny blankenship]

21. Democrats have only themselves to blame. They wouldn't take on Wall St.

and without an accounting of the systemic criminality there you can't very well mount a conceptual challenge to Reaganism. Reaganism therefore won by default, and remains the ruling ideology of the US despite the utter destruction it has wrought.

Thanks Obama! Thanks Democrats!
YOU SUCK.

[Poboy]

22. I agree kenny.

[WillyT]

24. K & R !!!

:kick:

[walldude]

26. Winning what? A country run on lies and greed?

They can have it.

[Tatiana]

27. We're seeing what it's like for a party to actually listen to their base and do the things

the people elected them to do. No matter how abhorrent those things are, the Republicans actually do fear their base. They don't smirk at their base and rhetorically question "so where you gonna go?" They know these teanuts will primary them and/or run as third-party candidates and keep on doing so until they are successful.

[Poboy]

28. Exactly. They don't hurl insults and demean their voters.