On 11/3/2010 3:37 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> At 12:16 PM 11/3/2010, c b wrote:
>
>
>> Trent Lott, the
>> former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game
>> in July. 'As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them'."
>>
>> ^^^^
>> CB: They were always co-opted as Republicans. _All_ of them ran as
>> Republicans.
>
>
> They ran as Republicans against other Republicans. Lott was saying
> they will be co-opted after, and if, they win
I want to address this whole question of whether the TP will get "co-opted." It's a fake issue and it totally misunderstands what the Tea Party is about. The TP had two goals. The slicker, better-funded wing - e.g., FreedomWorks - mainly tried to elect TP candidates. The more humble grassroots flank - i.e., the 647 local groups the WP found - mainly wanted something less tangible; in the words of one of them, quoted in the WP piece, "We're not wanting to endorse individual candidates ever. What we're trying to do is be activists by pushing a conservative idea."
The bottom line is that *the TP has already succeeded*. You have to put your head in the sand not to see it . On the one hand, they've elected scores of people to Congress (though not some of the fringiest ones). Of the 9 Senate candidates identified by the NYT as "Tea Party candidates," 6 have already won and one is not yet decided (Alaska). That's 16%-19% of the total number of seats at stake in this election. And (technical point) those are the state-wide races, which are inherently less hospitable to ideological candidates.
But more importantly, on the second goal - "pushing a conservative idea" - they've already succeeded. Maybe I'm crazy, but when I look around, I feel that, yes, the country has indeed gotten much more conservative in the past 1.5 years, and the TP clearly has a lot to do with it. Is anyone denying this?
Go back to the lbo-talk archives. Look at what we were saying back when Obama first came in, around Jan. 2009. The general feeling - which I shared - was that he represented the triumph of a safe, corporate neoliberalism, a sane rationalization of American capitalism. Health care would be fixed through a deal with the insurers to give everybody coverage through the private sector. Stimulus was an "obviously" rational capitalist response to crisis, which was strongly supported at the time (lest we forget) by the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, and all the Blue Dogs. Cap-and-trade was the market-friendly solution to global warming.
Go back and read what the pundits were saying. The centrist Broder types believed Obamism was the wave of the future. The "reasonable conservatives," a la David Brooks, acknowledged that his agenda was pragmatic. Political pundits - including many Republicans! - were admitting that the GOP would probably have to move to the center. Bush conservatism had been repudiated. The TP was a revolt against that neoliberal rationalism. Through their town hall stunts and "death panel" routines, they convinced millions of people that this ultra-consensus private-sector reform was a government takeover. The stimulus urged on by big business was portrayed as a socialist plot. **The entire tone of political life in this country is several steps to the right of where it was in Jan. 2009**.
For 95% of Tea Partiers, this is what success means. They don't give a damn about earmarks or ethanol subsidies or anything like that. Why were they mad at the Bush-era GOP? Because of things like the Medicare RX benefit. The GOP elite found it electorally convenient to create a new government-handout entitlement (structuring it as a corporate giveaway as a side-payment) and this went against the principles of red-blooded conservatives. So my question for the TP skeptics is: do you think the GOP elite today is in danger of doing something like that again? Right now that seems very unlikely to me. Therefore the Tea Party has already won.
So anyone scrutinizing the minute details of Congressional legislative maneuvering looking for "splits" and "fissures" is totally missing the point. OMG, Boehner just voted to give more money to the interstate highway fund - the Tea Party is betrayed! Actually, 95% of the Tea Party doesn't care. They're already getting what they want.
SA