E.J. Dionne: The Populism of the Privileged

from truthdig:



The Populism of the Privileged

Posted on Apr 19, 2010
By E.J. Dionne


The tea party is nothing new, it represents a relatively small minority of Americans on the right end of politics, and it will not determine the outcome of the 2010 elections.

In fact, both parties stand to lose if they accept the laughable notion that this media-created protest movement is the voice of true populism. Democrats will spend their time chasing votes that they will never win. Republicans will turn their party into an angry and narrow redoubt with no hope of building a durable majority.

The news media’s incessant focus on the tea party is creating a badly distorted picture of what most Americans think and is warping our policy debates. The New York Times and CBS News thus performed a public service last week by conducting a careful study of just who is in the tea party movement.

Their findings suggest that the tea party is essentially the reappearance of an old anti-government far right that has always been with us and accounts for about one-fifth of the country. The Times reported that tea party supporters “tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.” This is the populism of the privileged.

Tea party backers are far more likely than others to describe their views as “very conservative,” and are decidedly more inclined than the rest of us to believe that too much is made of the problems facing black people. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_populism_of_the_privileged_20100419/

elections, i.e. Kentucky. Rand Paul will likely be the republican nominee for U.S. Senate, making it far easier for the Democratic nominee to be elected. Trey Grayson, the repub Sec of State in KY, would be a much tougher opponent in the general election. The tea baggers will have an impact in these elections and they won't like the outcome.

The Tea Party is just veiled racism and hate by the most ignorant among us....

Protestant, Above Average INCOME, organized and well funded.
Some might relate them to the Angry White Men of 80s.
(Old resentments: The rise of Women and Blacks in the Workplace
created simmering resentments. Remember that.

I believe if one investigated you could trace the Teabagger
Activists to be influential under the radar since then.
These were those "Conservatives" that effectively pulled
Grey Davis from Governorship and put Schwarzenegger in his
place in California. The theme there was Mexican Immigrants
were breaking the financial back of the state. Remember that.


Keep in mind there is a difference between Grassroots Teabagger
and Activists. Never forget the activists are there keeping
the grassroots roiled up.

The are created by the corporate media, for the fun and profit of corporate America. Without Fox, Limpballs, and all the rest of the mouth foaming hate mongers, advertising these events, there would be NO tea-baggers pretending to be a grassroots movement.

Look at the events. They are so carefully staged and organized they are a parody of themselves.

and how it is that they have that power--the power to tell us who won in 80% of the voting systems in the country, with us not having the right to verify what they claim about the results? Do you know how scary they are as to far rightwing connections*?

Unless you know these things, you are talking through your hat about who and what will determine the outcome of the 2010 (s)elections and future U.S. (s)elections.

The corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies merely write the script for the (s)election results that our corpo-fascist rulers desire.

My guess about the 'tea baggers,' based on knowing who will be tabulating the votes and how**, is this: The promotion of this phony 'movement' gives the Pukes and the 'Blue Dogs' the cover they need to continue the rape of the great American progressive majority by multinational corporate dragons and war profiteers. So what you will see is not-real Democrats toadying to the 'tea baggers' and not listening to you and me and the majority of Americans, and Pukes huffing and puffing fascist garbage so putrid that their mere breath withers whole neighborhoods--both varieties of corporatist being 'chosen' in primaries run by ES&S with 'TRADE SECRET' code. Between the HUMONGOUSLY corrupt money/lobbying of 'campaigns,' the HUMONGOUSLY corrupt corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies and the final blockade to reform, the HUMONGOUSLY corrupt, HUMONGOUSLY anti-democratic, 'TRADE SECRET' vote tabulation system, good ideas--ideas that benefit the great majority and the welfare of the country as a whole--and good leaders--bold leaders like FDR, uncorrupt leaders whose names you have not likely ever heard--have no chance at all.

'TRADE SECRET' code vote tabulation gives our corporate rulers the power to play our system like a piano--with crescendos of horror, such as the Bush Junta, or light lyrical interludes of ...ahem...'liberalism' (insurance giant-run health care; continued war), to keep us comatose, to be followed by...? Bush Junta II? I don't know. It's not up to us any more. It's up to them how this concerto ends. No one--NO ONE!--can verify who they claim 'won' ANY election in the U.S.

------------------------------------------------


*(The initial funder and major investor in ES&S--which just bought out Diebold and thus gained an 80% monopoly of the U.S. voting machine 'market'--was Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things. I read recently that the Ahmanson family divested its ES&S stock. I have not been able to verify this. But it doesn't matter. The origins of ES&S are FAR RIGHTWING LUNATICS (including the two Urosevich brothers who were running ES&S and Diebold when they were separate). ES&S is a secretive, anti-democratic cabal. THAT'S WHO is 'counting' all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code!)

**(Every voting system in the country is now run on 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public has no right to review--with absolutely no audit even possible in half the states in the U.S. and a miserably inadequate 1% audit in the other half. Experts whom I respect say that a 10% audit--comparison of paper ballots to electronic totals--is the minimum necessary to detect fraud in an electronic system. In half the states, we are not even close to the minimum needed. In the other half, we don't even bother--there is NO paper trail, or if there is one, it is NOT COUNTED AT ALL. 99% to 100% of the votes in this country are NOT COUNTED--ever, by anybody. ES&S tells you who won. And we have NO RIGHT TO QUESTION THEM--hold them to account, review their code. Until we change this, it is possible--in fact, it is EASY--for our corporate rulers to install Sarah Palin in the White House, or do anything they wish, including "playing the system" with combinations of Pukes and 'Blue Dogs' to give people the illusion of choice--and, for instance, permitting a vaguely progressive black man to be elected president, to continue Junior's wars and to start taking the blame for the Bush Junta's horrid crimes and vast lootings. I do believe that Obama was actually elected--by a bigger margin than we know--on the hopes and dreams of the American people for peace and justice--but it is just a belief, based on circumstantial evidence. It is NOT VERIFIABLE. It is still possible to change this. Control over voting systems still resides at the local/state level. But it will take a huge peoples' movement, in every state and county, to do so. I don't see that developing any time soon. One of the purposes of this contrived 'tea baggers' movement may be to head off--to pre-empt-- a REAL "Boston Tea Party," in which we throw their goddamn 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines back in their faces.)

In hindsight, it was clear that Obama was going to be allowed to win by the fact that the Corporate M$M, ever so briefly, interrupted their 24/7 anti-Democrats methodlogy.

Naturally, it was fully reinstated by Jan 2009 and has remained 24/7 Bushiganda and the fusion of the RW Lie Machine and Corporate M$M is stronger than ever.

Plausible Deniability for the Corproate Oligarchs. By letting Obama win (not that they didn't get to loot trillions from the economy in crashing it, which may STILL have been the only reason Obama could plausibly win) the Corporate Oligarchy insured that 99.99% of the American Subject Populace will NEVER AGAIN question the validity of our "voting" systems.

3:00 pm April 17, 2010, by Jim Galloway

Signs abounded at last week’s tea party in downtown Atlanta that the movement has peaked – at least in Georgia.

Despite the beautiful weather, the recent passage of the health care package in Washington, and the lure of a “young Elvis” impersonator, the crowd was roughly half the size of last year’s event.

Fox News, anchor of the larger Tax Day rallies here and elsewhere, seemed to anticipate the waning energy. Last year, the network dispatched its rock star, Sean Hannity, to capture the erupting anger in Atlanta. This year, Fox sent the efficient but less magnetic Neal Cavuto.

Last year’s Fox coverage was wall-to-wall, extending deep into the night. On Thursday evening, Bill O’Reilly’s attention was focused on that Russian kid whose adopted parents had given him a one-way ticket back to the Old Country.

“It’s time for the tea party people to move onto the next level,” said Erick Erickson of RedState.com, a Georgia-based political blog designed to keep conservatives across the country stirred up. After a year of shouting, he said, the movement needs to start showing measurable results.

Ask any divorce attorney – anger is a difficult emotion to keep stoked, day after day after day. And novelty, by definition, is a perishable commodity.

But there is another reason that the tea party movement may have trouble laying down long-term roots. Tea parties make Republicans in Georgia just as uncomfortable as Democrats in Washington.

For each of their two Tax Day rallies in Atlanta, tea party organizers have chosen the state Capitol as a venue. The building provides a dramatic backdrop for television, especially after sunset.

But last week, most of the people inside the Capitol declined to mix with the people outside. Gov. Sonny Perdue was elsewhere. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle was down in south Georgia for a barbecue. House Speaker David Ralston remained on the third floor, working.

Of 13 candidates for governor, only state Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton) attended the Atlanta rally. He remained behind the stage and did not speak.

Like any fresh movement, the tea party enthusiasts see things in black and white. Us versus them. But government is a gray thing, even when controlled by Republicans. Us and them are often thrown together in a jumbled heap, impossible to pull apart.

A day before the Atlanta tea party, a majority of the 236 lawmakers inside the Capitol approved a measure that patched together a $17.8 billion state budget. It contained a $216 million hospital bed tax, a $90 million increase in various fees charged by the state, and – for the benefit of GOP lawmakers — $387 million in tax cuts that will be delayed until better times.

Deferred tax cuts have become the Republican version of deficit spending in the Legislature. The matter of what state services are to be cut as a result will be left to future legislators.

The governor had condemned a previous attempt to attach a future tax cut to the hospital bed tax, but he was in on the creation of this one. The budget deal is the kind of sausage that is essential to government, but difficult to explain on the stump.

And so the only legislators eager to appear at the Atlanta tea party were those who voted against it.

“I stood up and said no, I don’t want to come down to Atlanta and raise taxes,” Preston Smith (R-Rome) told a cheering crowd. “As a result of that, my position as chairman of the senate judiciary committee was stripped away from me. And I say, so be it.”

Smith cited the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ It to the Street” as historic precedents.

Judson Hill (R-Marietta) also voted against the tax cut/tax hike package, but did not make an issue of his stand from the stage.

Before the crowd disappeared, the organizers of the Atlanta tea party set their own future measure of success. They endorsed a number of candidates for office.

Two tea party endorsements were made in Republican congressional races – Tom Graves of Ranger in the 9th District contest on May 11 replace Nathan Deal, and Clay Cox of Lilburn in the 7th District rush to fill the shoes of John Linder on July 20.

These will be the tests that could very well determine whether tea party activists intend to remain a force in Georgia, or will be judged a group of well-intentioned citizens who — once a year — know how to throw a lively bash.

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2010/04/17/judgment-day-looms-for-georgias-tea-party-movement/

I like his point that the Tea Party has probably peaked - and six months before the mid-term election. I've been thinking the same thing.

Galloway makes a good point here as well:

"Ask any divorce attorney – anger is a difficult emotion to keep stoked, day after day after day. And novelty, by definition, is a perishable commodity."

David Frum made the point that basing a movement on anger is self-defeating because anger leads to hopelessness and hopelessness leads to passivity. It is hope which gets 'em to the polls (see election 2008).

he accurately called the Republicans "The party of the South" after the 2006 elections and I think (not just hope) that he is right again.

I notice that he isn't allowed on "This Week" much anymore. He must be doing something right.

I was just about to post this :thumbsup:

Loved this paragraph:

In fact, both parties stand to lose if they accept the laughable notion that this media-created protest movement is the voice of true populism. Democrats will spend their time chasing votes that they will never win. Republicans will turn their party into an angry and narrow redoubt with no hope of building a durable majority.