Subject: um. WOW!
Date: May 29, 2013 5:47:16 PM EDT
Jeff –
Um. WOW. We didn’t except so many of you to come out to celebrate the departure of Michele Bachmann from Congress.
If we can harness this momentum — and raise $200,000 by our FEC deadline in 48 hours — we really have a chance to kick the rest of Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party buddies out of Congress. Will you help us hit our goal [...]?
One Tea Partier down. A whole bunch to go. If we keep this kind of enthusiasm up, we can kick them all out.
Okay, so maybe I fibbed a bit. Maybe this little schoolgirly chortle of undeserved triumphalism came not from the RNC but rather from the DNCC.
But honestly, would it have shocked you to learn it did in fact come from the GOP establishment — or that, if not, they were at least kicking in to help the Democrats raise that $200K…?
A narrative is emerging that Bachmann and the House TEA Partiers didn’t do anything and in fact may have just been soaking up TEA Party money while secretly not giving much of a damn about issues important to the TEA Party. The lynchpin of this narrative is that the TEA Party caucus did nothing about the IRS scandal when they learned of it before the elections in 2012.
And yet conveniently bracketed from this spin on the historical facts is that the TEA Party caucus had to spend much of its time fighting off attacks from its own party, had to make concessions to the leadership in order to receive support for re-election, and were essentially always fighting for their political lives inside a House that was hostile to them from both party sides.
What Bachmann and others inside the TEA Party caucus long focused on was the repeal of ObamaCare, offering plan after to plan to deny funding for implementation, to forestall such implementation using procedural votes, and to do things that might actually prevent the now inevitable implementation of what will turn out to be the signature piece of legislation devised by the left in its efforts to overthrow a constitutional republic, eclipsing even the New Deal and the Great Society.
For its part, GOP leadership has been content to hold symbolic votes that they knew would amount to nothing, and yet refuse to use the power of the purse to create any kind of roadblock to socialized health care and the end of our private insurance industry.
That GOP establishment types are using the opportunity of Bachmann’s departure to suggest the impotence of the TEA Party movement is fortuitous; because what it really shows is that they are proud of their ability to rebuff a grass roots movement and the wishes of a large portion of their base by developing a bipartisan line of attack against conservatives and constitutionalists, one in which the TEA partiers are presented as right wing extremists, troublesome, rigid, True Believing Hobbits who can’t fathom the subtlety necessary to run a giant government, while internally the GOP conspires to find ways to promote incumbents and raise money to defeat TEA Party challengers — all while adopting the label of “conservative” in order to fool the rubes.
The only problem is, we aren’t fooled. And the TEA Party is only going to get stronger, with more representatives sent to Congress to problematize the perpetual push for ever bigger government favored by both major Party establishments.
Or, if you prefer your politics bumpersticker ready, We’re here, no fear, get used to it.
I think it’s cute that they think Bachmann’s departure has any deeper meaning at all. They just don’t seem to understand what a leaderless popular movement is all about.
For myself, Michele’s departure doesn’t leave me heartbroken. While I appreciate that she did a lot to support the movement, I sure don’t know anyone who elected her as “leader,” and I’m not sure she gave as much to the movement as she took from it. I also blame her for getting tangled up in a lot of distractions about God and gays, and taking the focus away from overspending and overreach. That move made it exponentially more difficult for me to recruit potential members, as they all became convinced (thanks, MSM!) that they’d get Jesus Cooties if they hung out with us.
Still, she made all the right enemies, so she can’t have been all bad.
I know what you’re saying about distractions confusing the easily distractable Squid, but for me it comes back to something Steyn wrote a number of years ago. The problem (to paraphrase) with all these big government social welfare programs isn’t that they’re unaffordable, it’s that they’re immoral. They’d still be wrong even if we did have the money to afford them.
People with Jesus Cooties get that more readily than people afraid of catching the Jesus Cooties by proximity.
Well, some of them, at any rate. Plenty of mainline liberal Protestants and social Justice Catholics equate government programs with Christian charity.
Oh quite:
Jesus Cooties — supernatural and very bad
Derrick Bell Ministrations — perfectly material (and material only!) moral qualifiers
I’ve often wondered (so to speak) whether Scarborough, one of the Gingrich Contract with America freshmen back in ’94 was always a crapweasel, or if he sold out in a fit of disillusionment.
The problem the GOP has is that their base really believes in cutting government. So it’s to be expected that a fair number of their elected represenetatives believe in it too. And then they get to D.C. and find out the GOP is only interested in containing government expansion, marginally so. It seems to me you either wind up cynical and embittered, or worn down.
Scarborough and Graham wound up cynical and embittered. Bachmann was worn down.
Or maybe Joe and Lindsey were always self-promoting crapweasels, and Michelle is batshit crazy. Who knows?
I wouldn’t draw that conclusion just yet. For all her visibility in the House, the truth is she’s been ineffective there. Could be she’s reloading with better ammo, not retreating.
I think she was worn down. It is what the Commiecrats do; it is what the Commiecrats are, as the phrase goes.
As for her “Godbothering”, just realize that even if she wasn’t vocal about it, they would hang that on her anyway. Race baiting, religion baiting, warmongering, all the usual Demunist duplicity.
Since worn down doesn’t have to mean worn out, let’s hope you’re right Pablo.
But something is seriously wrong when arguably the most serious presidential candidate (in terms of Real Issues™) was a third term member of the House.
Clearly the Real Issues™ arent “real issues” right now.
Of course they’re not Ernst. We’ve got a War on Women to fight, and also the fatcats which we seem to have forgotten…
It should be noted that Bachmann recently started running her first re-election ads on TV out here. I think the prospect of another drawn-out bare-knuckle war wasn’t appealing to her.
A related topic is that if you’re a conservative who starts running ads early, it means that you know you’re losing and you’re desperate to try to capture some momentum. If you’re a conservative who doesn’t run ads until well into the campaign season, it’s because you’re cash-strapped and have no appeal with your constituents. And if you’re a conservative who runs ads early and late, it means you’re bankrolled by the Evil Koch Brothers(tm) and are a bought-and-paid-for shill for Big Business.
It should go without saying that none of these characterizations apply if you preach doubleplus goodthink.
I’m trying not to take her decision to retire from elective office as indicitive that realizing conservative/constitutional/classical-liberal (did I cover all my bases?) change through political institutions and processes has been downgraded from impracticable to impossible.
The smug, sanctimonious, priggish, lying, and utterly irredeemable Press are going to win every encounter where playing by their rules — simply appearing in their space almost always included — is forced into sole play.
Why is the right so stone deaf and perpetually a year late to the only game in town?
The best that can ever posibly be said about any elected official is that he or she is Not Yet Assimilated.
Any Tea Party caucus member who leaves office voluntarily is continuing service to the cause by not letting himself be turned. Hence (IMO) Bachmann.
. . social Justice Catholics equate government programs with Christian charity.
I see you have met my priest.
Government programs are neither Christian nor charitable. They are a pernicious commerce trading the liberty of citizens for the power of an ever fatter public purse.
Plenty of Proddies think the same way leigh.
Yeah, but the Christian social justice types get to feel good about themselves because they did something to help the poor without actually having to get down in the trenches and mingle with the smelly proles.
Cheap grace isn’t just for limousine liberals, you know.
Yeah, but Prods are all going to Hell anyway. We’re supposed to know better, being the OG Christians that we are.
Okay, streetwalker for the Whore of Babylon.
Love you, too.
Michele Bachman probably decided to give up when she realized she could be among a better class of people walking into a random bar in St. Paul versus working in Congress.
When it comes to the TEA Party, GOP = Brutus.
“Jesus Cooties ”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
“I also blame her for getting tangled up in a lot of distractions about God and gays”
Some aspects of life are similar to tennis; you answer the serve or lose the point.
She made me look away when she went on an anti-vaxxer rant with Rick Perry. Other than that, I like her and wish her well.
“feel good about themselves”
Without actually doing anything to feel good about.
Feel the same way, Leigh. But we’re all crazy about something. Just sucks that Obama gets to be floodlight crazy, while we only get to be lighted match crazy.
Some aspects of life are similar to tennis; you answer the serve or lose the point.
Have you been paying attention around here at all over the past few years? The game is fixed, such that no matter how you try to return serve, you’re just going to have the ball smashed down your throat. The answer isn’t to get better at returning serves in a fixed game; it’s to stop playing their game altogether!
Michele could easily have said, “A smaller, less intrusive, less expensive government will allow every family to take greater control over their own lives, allowing them to live as their principles dictate with a minimum of interference from Washington.” Sure, the Left would caterwaul about dog whistles and such, and try to paint us as knuckle-dragging godbotherers. But that campaign would have been much less effective if Michele & Co. hadn’t given them so much choice material to work with. And that would have made our recruiting and messaging efforts a hell of a lot easier and more successful.
Michele isn’t the enemy. She just wasn’t the ally I wish she’d been.
Michele proved she doesn’t have what it takes for the modern conservative political when she agreed to be on the cover of Newsweek.
They made her look crazy! Whaaaaaa.
It was dumb enough when they tricked Glenn Beck.
“The game is fixed”
That is the point.
“stop playing their game altogether!” Easy-peasey, lemon-squeesy. Distance always adds clarity.
“and try to paint us as knuckle-dragging godbotherers” If you are luckey, this is all that happens. ie Palin and familia.
“She just wasn’t the ally I wish she’d been.” Ya go with what ya got, not with what ya wish you had. A plan lasts until the enemy is well met and the battle begins.
“The game is fixed”
I meant to add, file that under NSS life isn’t fair. Politics, even less so.
Some smart dude above called it, rightly “the only game in town.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cWnubJ9CEw
Ya go with what ya got, not with what ya wish you had. A plan lasts until the enemy is well met and the battle begins
Ideally, yes. Michele was a butter-bar lieutenant when we needed either a sergeant major or Lt. Colonel. She had game, but she was too easily rattled.
Why is the right so stone deaf and perpetually a year late to the only game in town?
I’m coming around to swapping out “the stupid party” and replacing it with “the stupid like a fox” party.
They don’t articulate conservative principles because they don’t know or care what they are. They don’t take the clear shots at the Dems because they know they’ll end up implicating themselves. They don’t scream and holler and pitch fits when the Dems abuse power because they covet it.
“If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles… if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” ??;
S?n W?
Sun Tzu?
One more time, with feeling; Sun Tzu
Trying non-roman characters?
Not valid. Sorry.
Duly noted.
“An incessant change of means to attain unalterable ends is always going on; we must take care not to let these sundry means undo eminence in the perspective of our minds; for, since the beginning, there has been an unending cycle of them, and for each its advocates have claimed adoption as the sole solution of successful war.”
—George S. Patton, Jr.
I have the plant in your gavitar in our garden. Except the form is more narrow and the color is a deep purple.
Man is that true, Gulermo. Though for this age, I would add “Always assume your enemies are actually your enemies.”
I know I deal with that in my office. Punch of Pollyannas.
Well, I should say, I have both.
“Always assume your enemies are actually your enemies.”
You can expect them to act within the parameters of a consistant behavior. Friends, not so much.
“Punch of Pollyannas.”
Lead singers for RnR groups for 200, Alex.
It all comes down to cutting off the life-blood of politics. It ain’t the citizens united issue; it’s the taxes!
In fairness to Bachman, the HPV vaccine ought to be optional.
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