Posts Tagged ‘Tea Party’
September 1st, 2010 by John Feehery
Glenn Beck is crazy. His fans, on the other hand, are not.
I have talked to several reporters about the Beck event on the mall over the weekend, and every one of them had nothing but complete disdain for Beck.
And yet, each one of them commented about how nice the crowd was.
The Beck fans were orderly. They didn’t carry wacky signs. They were very respectful of each other. As one reporter told me, “you would feel very comfortable with your kids running through this crowd.”
The Beck fans were immaculate. They cleaned up after themselves. In fact, the place looked cleaner after they were there then it did before they got there.
The problem the left has in attacking the Tea Party and in attacking Glenn Beck’s supporters is that they are attacking people who are actually very nice.
These folks are very concerned about what is happening to America. Yes, they are concerned about President Obama, but it isn’t his race that bothers them. It is his philosophy and his insouciance about America’s essential character. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Conservatives, Democrats, Glenn Beck, rally, Republicans, Tea Party
Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »
July 15th, 2010 by John Feehery
This reminds me of one of those old Japanese monster movies — – a death match brought to you by cable television.
The NAACP pass a resolution condemning racist elements of the Tea Party. Various spokesmen from various factions of the Tea Party (there is no one single Tea Party) gamely call the NAACP racist for calling them racist. Depending on which cable channel you are watching, you either have pictures of white people holding up offensive pictures of Barack Obama or pictures of black people saying really nasty things about white people flashing up on the background.
I understand why the NAACP would pass such a resolution. Let’s face it, this is a great way for the NAACP to get some press, which has been a pretty hard thing for them to do in the Obama era.
And I can see why the Tea Party folks would react the way they did. They not only get to say that they aren’t racist. They get to say it on cable television. How fun is that?
This is what passes for a civil racial dialogue in our country today.
Thank you, cable news networks. That is very helpful. Read more...
Tags: African-American, Barack Obama, bill ayers, Conservatives, Democrats, Muslim, NAACP, Republicans, Reverend Wright, Tea Party
Posted in Government, Politics | No Comments »
June 28th, 2010 by John Feehery
Taking my dog out for a walk in my neighborhood, I passed by two grand old houses that were clearly in a state of disrepair. I saw my friend Tony, who lives next to them, and asked what the back story was. He told me about a lady who owned several houses on Capitol Hill, where I live, who moved away but keeps ownership of the houses.
“It’s kind of a fetish thing with her. As soon as the DC government threatens to tear the houses down, she pays her back taxes and they back off,” Tony said.
The houses are eyesores. Their floors are crumbling in. Who knows what goes on inside of them?
Fetish or no, the owner’s actions are irresponsible, a threat to her neighbors’ property and a perfect reason for the government to move in and take action.
Government exists for a reason: To take collective action on behalf of the people when the general welfare requires it.
The story of the abandoned houses got me thinking about the nature of freedom in a multi-cultural society as big and as complex as the United States. The rise of the Tea Party movement has challenged the 20th century consensus for what is and what isn’t the appropriate role for government. Read more...
Tags: Ayn Rand, Capitol Hill, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Federal government, Government, Illinois, Indiana, Tea Party
Posted in Government, Politics | 1 Comment »
June 8th, 2010 by John Feehery
Nikki Haley, South Carolina gubernatorial election, 2010
I have a theory about the differences between a Republican primary and a general election. To win a Republican primary, you have to win a majority of white men. To win a general election, though, (and this is in Senate seats and in politically competitive House seats), you have to win a majority (or at least get fairly close) of white married women.
The gender gap has long been the bane of the GOP. Women in general have turned against the Republican Party, especially African American women, and younger single women. While the GOP has consistently done very well with white men, winning that demographic overwhelmingly for as long as I have been voting, the gender gap has kept the GOP from achieving the dominance that some have long predicted.
The soccer moms played a crucial role in propelling Bill Clinton to two triumphs in the 1990’s, just as the security moms played an equally crucial role in the two Bush victories in 2000 and 2004. White women proved to be the critical voting bloc for Barack Obama in 2008, as John McCain’s cowboy-themed maverick just didn’t click with the chicks. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Carly Fiorina, DeDe Scozzaffava, election, George W Bush, Government, John McCain, Meg Whitman, Nikki Haley, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Tea Party
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
May 27th, 2010 by John Feehery
Planet getting eaten (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)
I was watching television this morning and CNN was alternating between video of the great Gulf leak and a video from the Hubble telescope of a planet getting eaten by a bigger star.
So, the message is if we don’t all kill ourselves, well, then a big star is going to eat us all any way.
On that cheery note, let me add another.
America is doomed. At least, that is the message that we get all too often from both the left and the right.
We are going broke. Our workforce isn’t competitive. People in the rest of the world hate us. We can’t plug the damn hole. We have too many immigrants coming into this country. Crime is too high. Our military is stretched too far. We are too fat. We are too old. We are too young.
And of course, we better all start speaking Chinese soon, because the Chinese are so rich, they work so hard, they are so smart, and there are so many of them, that we really can’t compete. America is doomed.
Really? Put me down as an America-is-doomed skeptic. Read more...
Tags: Al Gore, Barack Obama, Brazil, china, Chinese, Christian right, Conservatives, Economy, Europe, India, Politics, poor, Tea Party, Tom Friedman, USA, WASP-12b
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory | 2 Comments »
May 24th, 2010 by John Feehery
Tags: Arlen Specter, business as usual, illegal, Joe Sestak, Politics, Primary elections, Tea Party, Washington, White House
Posted in Government, Media, Politics, corruption, election | No Comments »
May 20th, 2010 by John Feehery
“We got them just where we want them.”
That was my initial sardonic reaction to the fact that Republicans lost a not very close race in the 12th District of Pennsylvania.
It is hard to spin this loss as anything more than a set-back for the GOP.
The only thing I can really come up with is that it may make the Democrats over-confident about their prospects in November. And there is some evidence that the Majority Party is letting their guard down a bit.
For Republican Congressional leaders, this election was a wake-up call. Something is not right in the way the GOP is contesting special elections. I say that because Republicans haven’t won a special election in a long time. And special elections usually give you a pretty good sense of how things are going to go in the general election.
Perhaps the message was all wrong in a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Instead of making fun of Nancy Pelosi, a close friend of John Murtha, an older woman of Italian descent, and a Catholic, maybe the Republicans should have made this election a referendum on Barack Obama. After all, Obama got beat pretty soundly in this district by both Hillary Clinton and by John McCain. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Conservatives, Democrats, election, GOP, Majority party, Nancy Pelosi, Pennsylvania, Rand Paul, Republicans, Tea Party, voters
Posted in GOP, Politics, Theory | 1 Comment »
May 19th, 2010 by John Feehery
Tags: Arlen Specter, Blanche Lincoln, Conservatives, Kentucky, Libertarian, neo-conservative, Rand Paul, social conservatives, Tea Party, Trey Grayson
Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
March 25th, 2010 by John Feehery
Put away those Confederate Uniforms.
As it turns out, we don’t have to re-enact the Civil War. The Health Care law is so bad, we don’t have to stretch back to the 18th or 19th centuries (or the 20th century for that matter) to come up with analogies to fight it.
We don’t have to channel our inner-John C. Calhoun and come up with a nullification theory about this law.
We don’t have to compare this to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which helped lead to the Civil War.
We really don’t have to compare this bill to the Boston Tea Party either. Sorry, tea-partiers.
Newt Gingrich made the unfortunate comparison of this bill to the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. Hey, Newt, I hate to remind you, it is awfully hard to defend Jim Crow these days. Well, it was awfully hard to defend Jim Crow at any time. And it was altogether appropriate and fitting to protect African-Americans as they exercised their God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But this health care bill has nothing to do with the civil rights fights of the 1960’s. Read more...
Tags: Civil War, health care, Newt Gingrich, socialist, Tea Party
Posted in Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Theory, health care | 2 Comments »
March 24th, 2010 by John Feehery
Let’s rewind the tape and imagine how this all could have played out better for President Obama.
Let’s imagine that instead of telling Congressional leaders that he wanted to jam through a stimulus package the week he was sworn in, he decided to actually work with Republicans to pass a bill.
Let’s imagine that he listened to the Republicans and that he proposed a simple two-step stimulus package. The first half would have been a dramatic lowering of the corporate tax rate to say 10%, which would have instantly led to a quick burst of economic activity. The second half would have been focused on transportation projects, not only including shovel ready projects, but other longer-term projects that would have insured sustainable growth for the future.
Imagine if as part of this stimulus plan he gave every family who made less than $50,000 a $10,000 dollar check and every family who made less than $100,000 a $5000 check. I bet you that would have stimulated the economy.
Republicans and Democrats would have had no choice but to vote for that bill. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, health care, Tea Party
Posted in Government, Theory, health care | 3 Comments »
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