The Tea Party is not new, or coherent. It's merely old whine in new bottles

[Violet_Crumble]

This incoherent group has no leaders, no policies, no headquarters. It is held together by Fox TV and big money

Gary Younge
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 7 November 2010 20.00 GMT

Lectures about fiscal responsibility from the occupants of a plush suite on the 20th floor of one of the fanciest hotels in Las Vegas stick in the craw like a slice of cantaloupe swallowed sideways. Appropriately, the Tea Party Express's open bar, trays of fruit and skyline view at the Aria hotel on election night smacked more of a corporate event than a political, let alone a populist, one.

At one stage I turned to a man standing next to me and asked if he was a Tea Party supporter. "No," he said. "I was hoping you were." He was a state department official who had brought some foreign journalists in the hope of meeting some real Tea Party supporters to interview. But they couldn't find any. There is a reason for that.

The "Tea Party" does not exist. It has no members, leaders, office bearers, headquarters, policies, participatory structures, budget or representatives. The Tea Party is shorthand for a broad, shallow sentiment about low taxes and small government shared by loosely affiliated, somewhat like-minded people. That doesn't mean the right isn't resurgent. It is. But the forces driving its political energy are not those that underpinned its recent electoral success.

The Tea Party is not a new phenomenon. It's simply a new name for an old phenomenon – the American hard right. Over the last two years the term has provided a rallying point for a coalition of disparate groups, most of which have been around for many years. Minutemen (anti-immigrant vigilantes), birthers (who deny that Obama was born in the US), Promise Keepers (Conservative Christian men), Oath Keepers (military and police, retired and current, who vow to resist unconstitutional government "by any means necessary"), Fox News watchers, Glenn Beck lovers and Rush Limbaugh listeners who had no unifying identity before.

Having a name helps. It has offered a political identity to a significant number of people who were either not active or might not have understood themselves to be in any way connected. That name has helped reorient the stated priorities of the right away from social issues and towards fiscal ones. But this is no more than the old whine in new bottles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/07/tea-party-old-whine-new-bottles

[The Magistrate]

1. Quite True, Ma'am

These people have been around for ages. It is just that now they are allowed out in the sun. The principal energizing factor is racism, pure and simple, though the totality of the mental disorder present goes a bit beyond that.

[C_U_L8R]

2. All tea and no kettle.

[Sal Minella]

3. "The Mad Haters' Tea Party" -- heh.

If one has enough money, one can lump all disgruntled citizens into one group and call the group whatever one likes, apparently.

How sad that the obscenely wealthy are not adequately taxed in this country, but instead are allowed to use their vast wealth to purchase congresspersons and manipulate politics and policies at will.

[FailureToCommunicate]

4. Surprised the article doesn't mention the financial backers of Teabaggers.

[Blue_Tires]

5. thank you

I've been trying to get others to realize that the TPers are just a myth from the start...