The Tea Party
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-07-12/tea-party
Diane hosts a conversation about the evolution of the Tea Party movement. We discuss it's goals, who belongs and how it’s shaking up the political establishment.
Guests
Kate Zernike
a national correspondent for The New York Times and member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Her book, "Boiling Mad -Inside Tea Party America" will be published in September.
Matt Kibbe
president and CEO of FreedomWorks and co-author with Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of the forthcoming book, "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto"
Diana Reimer
an organizer with Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots
Ryan Hecker
an attorney, a Houston Tea Party Society activist and an organizer of the Contract From America Project.
Comments
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The Tea Party movement amuses me-In Florida they are causing havoc. At a recent rally they were holding up posters that said 'keep governement out of our medicare & social security system'. I had to ask if they received the benefits & asked if they realized they were government programs. I got an evil look and proceeded to ask if they'd give up the benefits to help reduce the deficit. Some people do not have a sense of humor.
Dee Kieft
Fort Myers, FL
What I dislike most are the tactics of the Tea Party. For example....before healthcare reform was passed, they responded blindly to calls to "YELL-OUT" or "HONK-NO" ....anything to drown out serious discussion of serious issues. After witnessing this ugly behavior firsthand, the only conclusion I draw is that tea party members are very immature and uneducated people who are easily led. My advice -- as any parent or teacher of young children would know this phrase -- "Use your words!" (Then I'll listen.)
Garbage! The Tea Party people said not one word about deficits as Cheney laughed at deficits! It is nothing but racism hiding under a fake cause!
If the Tea party is only concerned with fiscal conservatism, then why is this not more associated with 'blue dog' democrats, which is closer to middle of the road mainstream America. In stead, Sarah Palin vents vitriol of the far right Conservative party, which is consumed with vigor by the attendants of the Tea Party rallies.
I once considered attending a Tea Party event in a nearby community. After reading a highly negative, mean-spirited letter from a Tea Party local leader in a community newspaper, I vowed to stay as far away from these people as possible. The hatred that some of these people have for our US president is abundantly clear. In contrast with the praise for our former president and VP who started an atrocious war in Iraq, the Tea Party makes it clear that racism is far more important to them than logic and truth.
Many tea party advocates talk about returning to the "basics" - but do they really have the fortitude to make that happen? The type of lifestyle their generation helped to create is now creating the problems they oppose. How ironic...
This is nothing more than a neoFacist movement. What freedoms have they lost? They can still speak, travel, work, live, go where they want. They care nothing for their fellow man and forget that we live in community. Dick Armey, a leader in this movement, was deeply involved in the exploitation of textile workers in th Marrianna's. Is he really a leader that people want to follow? I say these people epitomize what is the worst in our society. It is the loss of white priveledge that scares them. Thank you Diane, for letting them speak, getting rid of mold requires sunshine.
Susanne Jones
New Smyrna Beach, Fla
Since three of the four guests are Tea "Party" advocates, I hope Diane will ask the NYT reporter to discuss the funding of FreedomWorks, any connections to Fox, etc.
Maybe I'm memory-impaired, but I don't seem to recall any DR show about a political "movement" with such an unbalanced guest list. I don't think for a minute that Diane's a closet tea-partier, but the lopsidedness this hour really stands out.
I am presently working with a theatre company in DC for the Capital Fringe Festival on a multi-media production called "The Tea Party Project", which utilizes the party's own statements, platforms, and signage to explore what exactly they are saying and why. A few of the recurring questions that seem to come out of it are - Why do they associate themselves with the Boston Tea Party when that involved protesting Taxation without Representation? How do they reconcile the hypocrisy of demanding that the government stay away from universal services (such as health care) yet still provide Medicare and social security? Ultimately is the present Tea Party just a lot of angry people who are just frustrated with a war and a bad economy that have existed for years (before Obama), and not really based on any ideological points? If yes, then where were they during the Bush administration when he expanded the power the government and put our country in the red? Or is it only because we have a black president now?
Senator Russell Long of Louisiana once said “don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind that tree.” I mention this as the tea persons seem to want this or that government program, but do not want to pay for it. I suspect that the prime demographic element of the movement is composed of persons that believe themselves entitled and special and therefore not required to pay taxes.
Also, if and when the subject of deficit spending comes up, let us recall that when that great “tax and spend liberal,” President Carter, the national debt was, buy today’s standards, a trivial 990 billion, was raised to four trillion under Regan, held steady under the first President Bush, was declining at the end of the Clinton administration, and then ballooned to 14 trillion under the reign of George the Usurper Bush. Let us call the big government spenders who they really are!
Note how all of the Tea Partiers say they disliked the Bush Administration. Bush did not pas all the tax cuts and spending, it was the GOP members of Congress. Nearly all of the GOP in Congress today and are now new-born fiscal hawks are the ones that caused this mess, not Bush and certainly not Obama.
The tea party strikes me as blatantly ridiculous. The claim they want smaller government and less regulation. They completely ignore the fact that this is a big country with a big population and big businesses. it demands a big government to keep track of it all. Of course when something bad happens like Katrina or BP they scream why doesn't the government do something?
When President Bush was running up the national debt there was not a peep from them. After the banks, virtually unregulated, trashed the economy and President Obama took offfice all of a sudden it was why doesn't the government do something.
The real problem is not the size of the government but rather that our government has been bought by wealthy business interests. They are the ones who prevent the government from working in the peoples' interest.
The teapartiers profession of knowing what the founders intended(what some conservatist fear as a basis for thought crimes) reeks of hubris. Different founders had different ideas of what the constitution meant and it is the discussion of those ideas that have kept the country together.
The Tea Party is a tree-tops propaganda movement. Dick Armey is not exactly an ordinary citizen.
Also, most real economists (Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz) and scholars (Kevin Phillips) have said that without government spending we'll be in a permanent depression because the top 1% of Americans who happen to own the banks won't prime the pump to keep the economy going.
The government is us. As a people we have liberated Europe, launched the Hubble, and cleaned up the air and water.
By contrast, I have no influence on the corporations and the corporations are by law required to maximize near-term profit regardless of the effect on the people. We get Enron, BP, and Tyco.
The corporations where I work tell me how to dress, who I can date (often), when I work, when I might get time off, what kind of health care I get...
We need to organize ourselves into government to balance the power of the corporations and to do the great things we are capable of.
The Tea Party is just a tool of the powerful and cynically are getting the common people to turn against the one institution that can stand for them.
- Bob Schmidt
St Louis, MO
I've noticed that many tea party demonstrators are old enough for Medicare. And many of them are overweight and subject to health problems. Yet they wouldn't want that government program to be cut for them.
Also, don't they realize how much money is going for our wars? Where is their protest for that?
I am the director of the advising center at a small private college in Oklahoma. A significant percentage of our students are first generation college students.
What I see, over and over, is that students coming out of the public schools are unprepared for college, let alone for the 21st century. Too many of them can't read, write, or do math at a college level, let alone think critically. What they seem to know, overwhelmingly, is how to get around rules, how to get through school without learning, and that "athletes rule."
Although K-12 is local, what happens when it fails its students? Where is the difference between allowing local jurisdiction of education and a generation on the brink of the work force who can't cope with the 21st century challenges on the level of the rest of the world?
I think it is Mr. Kibbe who is using the word "unconstitutional" very loosely, for example referring to public schools as "unconstitutional." Apparently his reasoning is that if the U.S. Constitution doesn't specify a certain activity for government, then it is "unconstitutional" for the government to engage in that activity.
Any high school civics teacher will tell you that's not the case. I wish Diane would point this out and ask the guest to explain on what authority he uses the word so loosely.
Also, I second the earlier comment: "I hope Diane will ask the NYT reporter to discuss the funding of FreedomWorks, any connections to Fox, etc."
"Our representatives don't listen to us" is a juvenile complaint. We live in a democracy. If you representative isn't doing your bidding, he's probably doing the bidding of the people who voted for him. If you don't like that, vote him out.
Dear Bob, you are so-o-o right! May your comment be read and understood by hundreds of millions of voters!
The DRshow's first Tea Party caller Diana refered to President Obama as "Mr. Obama" -with a suspious tone.
Excellent comment.
I watched the Tea Party begin -- as yet not called "Tea Party" -- here in rural Texas. There may well have been as many Dems as Republicans in the original efforts. Where the movement went off the tracks early on came with the organizing efforts of both Freedom Works and Fox News. In came the shouters and out went all traces of a genuine and respected populist movement which spoke for many of us. The behaviors at Town Hall meetings, the aggressive language used on Fox and in public meetings, the threats, and the general nastiness have turned many off. One Tea Party neighbor and friend no longer attends meetings and she is not alone. The goons have taken over. It's a real pity.
I am trying to find out why many people think that Social Security, as one guest indicated, is where people put their money into all their lives only to question whether or not it will be there in the future.
In point of fact, Social Security is not a bank savings account. It is a transfer payment from existing workers to retired workers. There needs to be an education of the populace to secure this understanding.
The Tea Party representative on your program says that "all" his followers say they are new to political participation.
Which is to say, they are inexperienced and easily manipulated by oversimplified sloganeering propaganda.
How many of these Tea Party followers know that our national debt is the result of deliberate Republican "starve the beast" tactics to cut revenue (taxes) and increase defense spending so as to create deficits on purpose? How many of them know that the national debt more than quadrupled in the 12 years of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush? How many know that it increased by nearly 5 trillion (nearly doubling) in the 8 years of George W. Bush, with his tax cuts for the wealthy and unpaid-for wars and presecription-drug giveaway?
The Fox News aspect of this is huge. I have seen someone who approached me as a friend turn into a close-minded hateful person after watching Fox News for years. The person's biggest issue since the 2000 presidential election was ACORN. Fox News is a big backer of the Tea Party movement. Many people do not think for themselves, and when they let Fox News think for them, hatred grows.
I disagree that there is a strong racist motivation in the tea party. It is about politics. Presedent Obama is a strong Democrat and that is what the Tea Party has an issue with, not the color of his skin.
Karen
Madbury, NH
Where was the Tea Party when Democrats were standing behind fences blocks away from events they protested - far from the cameras - being denied their right to protest? Homeland Security is not government expansion? No protest over the trillions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention HUGE healthcare bills and possible unemployment for returning troops). Let the car companies and banks fail resulting in more unemployment and higher taxes to cover the FDIC insurance? No socialized medicine - but be sure to leave my Medicare alone they cry. Personally, I think it's simply sour grapes that they lost an election. They appeared a few weeks after Obama took office. In that space of time, there was nothing he passed or created that could have offended them. And I don't see how calling the President of the US Hitler has anything to do with freedom!
Mr. Kibbe,
It would be a good thing if the Tea Party were well informed, but your performance this morning on the show illustrates that Freedom Works and the other corporate support from Fox et. al. serves to misinform the movement which is worse than uninformed.
You talk about the government "running" car companies and banks. That is useful, well-tested, rhetoric, but it is demonstrably false and misleading in the worst sense of the word.
You carefully cultivate the religious zealotry over "the founders intentions" and the "original constitution" but you ignore basic evidence that the constitution is designed and intended to adapt to society. Not capriciously or easily, but certainly. Or do you think that owning slaves is still a good idea and that the three-fifths of a human is sufficient representation for the lucky ones?
I would also point out that the Tea Party ideas can also be well represented in the 2nd Amendment discussion... of course the irony that "amendment" means "a change or addition" is lost on the people looking to go back to the parchment.
You pretend that the Constitution is immutable truth while ignoring the nature of your favorite amendments, shying away from discussions of obvious and necessary changes (like slavery, prohibition, repeal of prohibition, ...) because that discussion is inconvenient. You shout about the appropriateness of "common defense" but mumble through the "general welfare" and hope it will go away in favor of some free market darwinism.
Your convenient revision of facts and selection of the convenient half-truths serves to ill-inform the public and that is worse than an un-informed public.
I am frustrated too. I am frustrated by people using terms like "patriot" as though they have exclusive love of country.
I am also frustrated by flippant use of phrases like "the founding fathers would..." or "it's unconstitutional". Which founding father? Surely not Hamilton or Madison. What Federalist Paper was read? What part of the Constitution is referred to? Surely more than the tenth amendment.
The guest referred to education as "traditionally" a local matter. Well tyhat hasn't been true since the early twentieth century. What tradition is he talking about. The Little Red Schoolhouse?