[lbo-talk] Tea Party: less than meets the eye

[Fernando Cassia]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, Chip, given your position my sense is that the folks you need to worry
> about are the Democrats, not the Tea Party.  This American Life's second
> segment last Saturday was about an angry/flummoxed Democrat who went to DC
> to find out if there was some stealth program behind the Dem's incompetence
> at even promoting their own moderate/neoliberal program because HE saw
> opportunity after opportunity to defeat Repug and Tea Party screaming with
> easy, clear and powerful (in context) talking points and alternative
> framings.  What he found out is that Democrats are afraid, afraid, afraid -
> they don't even have the courage of their middle right convictions despite
> the fact that they could win easily on health care, on taxes, on Wall
> Street, on the environment, on the family, you choose.
>
> The alternative interpretation, repeatedly put forth here, is that Dems are
> tools of at least one wing of the corporate right to start with - though I
> don't think most members of the House are consciously so in any
> sophisticated kind of way - and that their "fear" is rooted in something
> other than misinterpreting electoral possibilities and public reactions to
> strong responses to right wing BS.

Have you taken into account "fear of the media"?. The right wing media
are attack dogs. It only takes a mild statement from anyone in the
political establishment supporting left-of-center politcal positions
to unwind a campaign of hate against that legislator or whatever.

I´m not in the US of A but I´ve seen it down here. Only when the media
started being democratized -as part of the new Media Law that opened
the broadcast spectrum to more players, public universities and NGOs-,
with new news channels with a center-left leaning, that progressive
legislators started saying what they really think.

Just my $0.02
FC
Buenos Aires, Argentina