A self-proclaimed "Tea Party Group", also known as The Freedom Institute of Erie County is "preparing a Conservative voter guide" by asking candidates to fill out a short questionnaire: 1. The Right to Life is a Constitutional right, therefore innocent human beings should have legal protection from conception until natural death. If you hold any exceptions please state them. 2. The regulation of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere should be left to God and not government and I oppose all measures of Cap and Trade as well as the teaching of global warming theory in our schools. 3. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, any other type of Union is not marriage 4. Children should not be placed into foster homes where the parents are homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered. 5. Parental consent should be required for sex education that teaches more than direct abstinence. 6. The second Amendment to the Constitution should not be weakened in any way. 7. Only US Citizens should be allowed to vote and a photo ID should always be required to vote. (The Mexican government requires a photo ID and fingerprint). 8. I oppose Ohio’s State Income Tax. 9. I oppose the Obama Health Care Reform and would like to see more affordable healthcare through a competitive, open, and transparent system. 10. I oppose the don’t ask, don’t tell policy of the military and believe that all same sex partners should be banned from combat duty in the military because of the propensity to transmit blood borne diseases in the theater of battle. 11. I support a law that will allow the people to place on a ballot all collective bargaining agreements of all government associations, unions, and guilds, for their expressed approval. Defeat of such an agreement would mean government workers would not be immune from the free market system. 12. I oppose card check for voting to implement a Union as this could give Unions an unfair intimidation tactic to implement Unionization 13. I am not an economic Pacifist. I believe that we need to protect our economic borders in order to ensure free and fair trade. Tariffs should be used to stop the wealth and jobs of Americans from leaving her borders 14. The Federal Reserve as it is currently conceived needs to be abolished or at the very least audited. 15. I advocated moving our currency to a debt free supply-side labor based currency. Possible Answers A = Agree D = Disagree U = Undecided A* = Pro-life with exceptions of Rape or Incest * = Added comments NR = No Response CR = Incumbents Conservative Rating At least we know what the Sandusky, Ohio Tea Party is about. Are they an outlier, or does this represent the movement in general? ____________________ Notes: Morrow, Jon P. "Tea Party Voter Guide and Questionaire...get your candidates on it". August 24, 2010. SanduskyRegister.com. September 2, 2010. http://www.sanduskyregister.com/fil...file_attach/2010/August/TeaPartyQuestions.pdf
The Tea Party Movement is a large, loosely defined grass roots organization opposed to high taxes and big government. Other than those two things, I don't think you could create a list that all or even most Tea Party members/supporters would agree on. So, no, the above issue list is not representative of the Tea Party in general.
Chitty Chitty Death Bang That sounds, to be honest, like any number of cults I've known in my time. And it actually reminds me of "Chitty Chitty Death Bang" (Now if I can just find a midget with some gin, I'll be in business.): Cult Leader: My children, rejoice. The hour of transformation is at hand. Who're you? Jennifer: This is Meg, o wise one. Can she come with us? Cult Leader: Perhaps. Do you have a mind that seeks enlightenment and a heart that seeks purity? Meg: Well, not really. Cult Leader: Okay. Are you a confused adolescent desperately seeking acceptance from an undifferentiated ego mass that demands conformity? Meg: Wow. That sort of sounds more like me. Cult Leader: Great. Well, then, all you need is a dark blue jogging suit. Let me see what we have in stock. What are you, about a nine? Meg: Ha-ha-ha. No, a six. Cult Leader: Heh-heh-heh, right. Dispatch the refreshments. That is, fine, as long as we can use you, any old idea will do. Doesn't the idea of a Tea "Party", then, seem something of a misnomer? ____________________ Notes: Wikipedia. "Chitty Chitty Death Bang". Augst 27, 2010. Wikipedia.org. September 2, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitty_Chitty_Death_Bang
To echo Anthony, my problem with the Tea Party is precisely that I cannot figure out what the hell it stands for, despite people making claims to the contrary. Right now, as configured, it seems a rather a large, amorphous group, with a hodgepodge of Left and Right concerns under its "tent." That some people are intent on stereotyping it should not surprise, however.
Given that the original Tea Party was also set off by opposition to taxes, I'd say the name is appropriate. The last few months of the Bush administration and the entirity of the Obama administration have seen an increase in size and scope of government never before seen in the US. This has been accompanied by an increase in spending and debt that has scared the hell out of the majority of Americans. The Tea Party movement is a reaction to this. Since it is a reactionary movement it is organized around reversing most of what has happened since 2008 rather than any particular set of ideas.
When referring to expansion of government, I suppose you mean excluding little things like WWII, the Civil War, Ronald Reagan, Bush II administration, Medicare, Social Security, etc. Because clearly Obama has not expanded government anywhere near what the aforementioned did. Let me remind you that it was george II who signed the 2009 budget and was responsible for the bank bailouts and the auto industry bailouts....minor details for those on the extreme right. Obama did sign the healthcare reform law, giving consumers a much better shake in the healthcare markets and the law according to the Congressional Budget Office is projected to save the government a trillion dollars over the course of the next 20 years.
At this point, I'm inclined to acknowledge that every president--save Clinton--had a disastrous effect on the size of government, Obama included. I have the unfortunate happenstance of knowing quite a few Tea Partiers, and not a single one is ignorant of the fact that the Republican party is as much to blame as the Democrats. ~String
You're not fooling anyone For some reason the phrase, "Taxation without representation", comes to mind. Except, it can't possibly be relevant, can it? Besides, it's curious that they waited until Obama was in office to start complaining about taxes: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! David Horsey, SeattlePI.com, April 17, 2009 The tax complaint has been bogus from the start. You're not fooling anyone, sir, except maybe yourself. It's been clear what the "Tea Party" is about from the outset.
So every one of them has bought into the current Republican/Fox spin? It's two Parties, and the one is a sort of mirror image of the other, both equivalently corrupt etc, each equivalently to blame for the current troubles. Sounds like what Fox is peddling these days, in the way of analysis. Or Beck, Limbaugh, etc, personally. Which more or less answers the question of what the Tea Party "stands for" in the arena of effective political power: Whatever and whoever the people who underwrite Fox News want them to.
As opposed to your brilliant spin? Correct. You get a cookie. Even a stopped watch is correct twice a day. The two parties are equally corrupt and equally destructive to our society. You seem to miss that fact in your usual rhetoric. Whatever Ice. If you'd like to contribute something other than leftist propaganda, let us know. ~String
actually the original tea party was do to a tax break. the British east india company was being unfairly exempted from certain taxes.
That's close, but not quite, I think. Bostonians, as I recollect, were being forced to buy East India's tea with a greatly exagerated price attached to it. No other teas were available. So it was more a case of a govt. created monopoly and then applying a tax to that monopoly that pissed people off.
It's the same problem we have today. People are the victims of well funded special interests that subvert representative government. The funny thing is, the Tea Party, by opposing government regulation, serve the interests of the same corporate masters that make us all slaves.
Agreed. It was not regulation that was the problem in the 1770s, merely that the regulation was unfairly aiding one party at the expense of the other. But even so, the main colonial gripe was not the tax, which was paying for the French-Indian War, but the fact the tax was levied without representation. This is the heart of why the Tea Party's metaphorical names fails. They have representation. They may not like it, but they have it.
No. As identification of the source of their beliefs and political stances - whether opposed to mine or not. It's no secret that the Tea Party is corporate funded and Fox promoted, is it? That it was and is a splinter faction of the Republican Party, picking up "Independents" and Dixiecrats the same way W&Co did in 2004? Is that supposed to be coincidence? The notion that "both Parties" or "both sides" or "everyone" are equally responsible for the past forty years of cynical degradation of the political State, or the recent confluence of consequences from that, is partisan spin from identifiable partisan sources - namely the corporate support of Fox News and the modern Republican Party as set up by Gingrich et al in the shadow of Reagan. Its purpose is to cover ass, hide from accountability, and allow perpetuation of the actually responsible policies and further entrenchment of their ideological support. All you have to notice, to see that, is who is promulgating that spin compared with what they were promulgating ten years ago - or even just notice that they are the same people.
Then why do they continue to support the Republican Party, its elected officials, ex-elected officials, and the organs of same (e.g. Fox News, Clear Channel, etc)...the very same people responsible for the flagrant spending they claim to be so upset about?
The tea party anti-tax stance makes no sense! The USA today has one of the lowest tax rates in its history, the peak of USA taxation was during the 1950's and 1960's when the USA had the highest growth and development of its history, then low taxes for the rich came in and the whole thing starts going downhill. If anything they should demand more taxes to start paying off our titanic debt and ward off total national bankruptcy!
