O'Reilly vs. Palin on Tea Party

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Apparently certain elements of the Tea Party are too far right even for O'Reilly. In this transcript he debates with Palin, who has clearly benefited from her experience as an analyst and moved beyond the simplistic responses she gave during the political campaign. Just kidding, her response to every question is, "that's only what the mainstream media wants you to think." She also seems to think that the Tea Party movement is independent in nature, even though many of the core tenets she identifies mirror those of paleoconservatism (not that there's anything wrong with that, I like paleoconservatives much more than neoconservatives, and Paleocon much more than his evil twin Neocon). Most tellingly, she refuses to condemn the "birther" movement, instead touting the importance of the first amendment. As Legion so noted, she does say that she is not personally a part of that movement.

Then they get in to her moral outrage at people using the word " {ableist slur}" again, which I personally don't find all that interesting, or at least not as interesting as Palin defending a movement that O'Reilly calls extremist.

Dan Carlin made a statement on his latest podcast that politicians and pundits are making a serious mistake by selling Palin short. Not because he thinks she's an intelligent, excellent leader, but because he thinks people don't always vote for the right reasons.

2012 is going to be interesting.

So, is she trying to set herself up as an independant presidential candidate or something? She makes a couple of strong statements about the major parties that'll be hard to take back when she needs campaign funding. Must be some mavericky subtleties that I'm not seeing here.

*sigh* I miss Ross Perot.

Palin keeps glossing over the fact that she is the mainstream media now. She's getting paid for it.

GioClark wrote:

So, is she trying to set herself up as an independant presidential candidate or something?

I'm sure Obama will ask Santa for a Palin third(Tea) party run.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Most tellingly, she refuses to condemn the "birther" movement, instead touting the importance of the first amendment.

To be fair, O'Reilly asked point blank, "You don't believe in the birther thing do you, Governor?", and she immediately replied with "No".

I say that simply because the sentence of yours I quoted initially made me think she was avoiding that question, which may just be a function of me reading it wrong.

GioClark wrote:

So, is she trying to set herself up as an independant presidential candidate or something? She makes a couple of strong statements about the major parties that'll be hard to take back when she needs campaign funding. Must be some mavericky subtleties that I'm not seeing here.

*sigh* I miss Ross Perot.

The Tea Party in general has been posturing as an independent party, formed by rejection of the Bush administration and disillusionment with the Obama administration, neither of which I find at all unreasonable. There have been rumblings of the Neocons trying to infiltrate it and take over (and Palin becoming its figurehead is a pretty good example of that), so Palin may run as the next Republican candidate with backing from the right as well as the Tea Party. Or, she could hypothetically run as a third party (Moderate Republicans, Far-Right Republicans and Democrats?) and might actually win like that. It'd be interesting to shake up the system with a third-party president. Even if that third party is really just a false division from one of the other parties, and that president is possibly the last, destined to be overthrown by leather-clad ruffians fighting over patches of radioactive desert.

If she were to dig a rut for a viable third party and then step aside it could really help the country. That is, unfortunately, a very big "if."

Dirt wrote:

Palin keeps glossing over the fact that she is the mainstream media now. She's getting paid for it.

It's ironic and amusing but not inconsistent. She may believe she is part of the last bastion of good reporting or whatever. Whether you find that to be reasonable or laughably absurd, what matters is her opinion.

*Legion* wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Most tellingly, she refuses to condemn the "birther" movement, instead touting the importance of the first amendment.

To be fair, O'Reilly asked point blank, "You don't believe in the birther thing do you, Governor?", and she immediately replied with "No".

I say that simply because the sentence of yours I quoted initially made me think she was avoiding that question, which may just be a function of me reading it wrong.

That's fair. I'll edit to clarify.

I saw something similar to this earlier this morning (it was some sort of talking points thing) and quite honestly was surprised at the tenacity and intellectual vigor with which O'Reilly attacked and defended the Tea Party movement. That O'Reilly didn't give the Tea Party movement a blank check while supporting them was encouraging to me. He even went so far as to call out the parts of the Tea Party movement by name that I (and most of America) find revolting, like the birthers, the racists, and the violent revolutionaries.

Unlike Lobster, I'm finding Palin's continued insistence on the line between Immanuel's and Limbaugh's use of " {ableist slur}" to be extremely fascinating, especially given her reaction to Seth MacFarlane's portrayal of a Down's Syndrome person as a confident, self empowered person on Sunday.

Not to Godwin this up. But what we have here is much like the circumstances that created the Nazi party.

Currently we have just the mix to allow a radical party to get a lot of power.

Seth wrote:

Unlike Lobster, I'm finding Palin's continued insistence on the line between Immanuel's and Limbaugh's use of " {ableist slur}" to be extremely fascinating, especially given her reaction to Seth MacFarlane's portrayal of a Down's Syndrome person as a confident, self empowered person on Sunday.

I agree that there's a good discussion to be had there, too. I do think the subjects are different enough to keep separate, though. I can make another thread if you'd like (or you can ).

KingGorilla wrote:

Not to Godwin this up. But what we have here is much like the circumstances that created the Nazi party.

Currently we have just the mix to allow a radical party to get a lot of power.

You're right, but it's worth pointing out that the opportunity only allowed the Nazi party to rise to power. It did not make them genocidal. It is possible for a radical party to do good. After all, to tie in to the whole Founding Fathers thread, we started out as an insurgency.

KingGorilla wrote:

Radical Party

If they call it that they'll have my vote.
Tea parties are for sissies.

O'Reilly and other wealthy republicans are scared that Palin might whip the mob up into a populist frenzy that could backfire on them eventually. These tea party folks are there to vote for the republican ticket and push whatever the republican business-oriented leadership wants them to push.

Business-oriented republicans want lower taxes, some government subsidies and sweetheart deals, lax regulation of industry, and a direct line to Congress and the president to give them their instructions. They don't want to have to talk through Priscilla, Queen of the Angry White Mob. She's a loose cannon. Worse, in their eyes, than McCain.

I, personally, think any opportunity to jettison the tea baggers, birthers, and Alaskan crazies into a party of their own should be welcomed by every breathing member of the GOP with an IQ over 80.

If only. Unfortunately, I don't see the Tea Party as anything more than convenient litmus test for conservative GOP candidates. I don't its "members" are going anywhere.

I'm not sure I agree -- I think select members of the GOP are salivating at a chance to snag all those votes, but the Tea Party groups have genuinely surprised me in their reluctance to fall into lock step with Republican ideals. Their very splintered....ness....makes them different, I think, and altogether much more difficult for the GOP to be able to swallow whole.

More likely they will fizzle out due to a lack of strong, competent leadership. And I'm not speaking about Palin here -- she's little more than a fireworks display for the people to clap at. There's just no one at the head of that ship. And such is the future of most fragmented groups whose only real common ground is anger. I'd like to see them bleed out a fair portion of the GOP (specifically, the socially conservative part) so that somewhere there'd be a socially progressive, fiscally conservative party, but that's about as much pie in the sky thinking as the Green party getting traction anywhere.

Seth wrote:

the Tea Party groups have genuinely surprised me in their reluctance to fall into lock step with Republican ideals.

I get the feeling that the Tea Party is united by its anger. There isn't necessarily a monolithic doctrine like in the other parties, no matter how much the right wishes there was. Now, anger is a powerful and justifiable thing right now but without an actual platform that's all they have to offer. Can they win an election through an entirely negative campaign? Maybe. And maybe their lack of a unified platform could make them a real, neutral, "non-partisan" party. Only if they can divorce themselves from the far-right stuff, of course. I don't think they can do that while Palin is at the helm. There are three kinds of people who identify as independent: those who reject both parties, those who are too lazy or disinterested to even pick a team, and those who really want others to think they think they're independent thinkers. What we need is the first type. What Palin represents is the third.

I just hope they get a better name than "Tea Party." Not that my manliness is challenged by tea, but because the only reason they called themselves the Tea Party is because their knowledge of that event ended at, "hey, that was a protest, right?"

I think Lobster is right on target. Groups that are formed out of anger, out of being "against" things, don't tend to last long. This group is amorphous and there's no real plan emerging out of all the talk, no real leadership, and little real action. This has lead to multiple co-option attempts by the neocon wing of the Republican Party, which have been partially resisted up to the this point; however, I believe it's only a matter of time.

Something may grow out of it. I'd like to believe that my party would attract the best of these people, but the fact is that most of them aren't interested at all in being socially liberal, only somewhat fiscally conservative, though even that is confused ("hands-off my Medicare!" "invade Afghanistan!"), along with protectionism, anti-immigration, and a light patina of racism. I think the best we can hope for, and the best the Democrats can hope for, is that the group siphons voters from and generates rifts and splits in the Republican Party to keep them from capitalizing on their current opportunities.

The Tea Party may be a sign of things to come. At least if we can take a step back from the content of their platform and think of them as a new way of doing politics. Communications technology have changed, and I think politics are starting to reflect this.

If you've read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, you'll see that I'm basically parroting his ideas here. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do. He explains why social media is different in a way that is perceptive. He gets both the social aspects and the technology aspects.

So, while I'm still taking a step back from their platform, the Tea Party may be a real threat to established political powers because we reached a new era for organizations. Established political parties are successful because of their organization. They have roots at the National, State, County, City, Ward, and neighborhood levels of society. In the past, mass movements needed this kind of structure to function. Without established local party organization, it was just not possible to get out the vote.

Today, it is possible to quickly build a consensus on a smaller issue or platform without first building an organization on the local level. People can galvanize over a single issue or small set of issues. They can come together, lobby congress or vote, and then dissipate. That wasn't possible when the cutting edge grass-roots tools were phone banks and direct mail.

So, if we back up and look at how fast the Tea Party turned from a bunch of pissed-off voters into a political entity, how they bypassed the traditional steps for political organizing, its fascinating. When we focus back in on their platform, they make me nervous.

Do they even have a platform? Other than the 'stop going into debt' idea, which is the fundamental draw of the party to begin with, the rest of their positions are nebulous and hard to pin down. On the occasions when you actually CAN figure out what they're talking about, it's mostly batsh*t insanity.

The 'stop going into debt' part, though, that I could get behind in a big way.

Malor wrote:

The 'stop going into debt' part, though, that I could get behind in a big way.

Didn't Palin have "tax cuts" scribbled on her hand? Then again I suppose in Tea bagger land you can reduce debt and cut taxes at the same time. I bet they have the prettiest Unicorns there.

Then again I suppose in Tea bagger land you can reduce debt and cut taxes at the same time

Of course you can; you just have to cut spending more than you reduce taxes. As long as you get back to balanced-budget territory (TRULY balanced, not the nonsense we were calling balanced in the 90s), the debt will gradually be reduced as the old bonds are repaid.

I think it'd probably be better to actively pay the debt down and THEN cut the taxes, but a balanced budget is enough.

That said, it would be an extremely painful proposition to cut spending that much; the government deficit alone was 10% of the entire economy, last year. Getting off that false stimulus will be exceptionally difficult.

Getting off that false stimulus will be exceptionally difficult.

Especially since that Biden just announced we got our money's worth from that stimulus, and it saved millions of jobs

Sigh

Subtlety, that's the Republican strong suite. That's going to piss off a lot of people, and it should, because it's a flat out lie.

Palin wrote:

Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken?

I'm going to go with C) None of the Above, Alex. No one can possibly believe the Republicans are for "smaller, smarter" government. Not after Bush.

Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken?

Is that her original sentence? She's just slapping words together like that?

The Teabaggers should really rename themselves the Know-Nothing Party.

They complain about unemployment, but want to reduce spending.

They complain about deficits, but want to reduce tax revenue.

They complain about budgets, but insist on spending billions on a border fence.

If there were a pair of brain cells between the lot of them to bang together, I'd be awfully surprised.

MikeMac wrote:
Malor wrote:

The 'stop going into debt' part, though, that I could get behind in a big way.

Didn't Palin have "tax cuts" scribbled on her hand? Then again I suppose in Tea bagger land you can reduce debt and cut taxes at the same time. I bet they have the prettiest Unicorns there.

Hey, maybe you'd like to pay higher taxes and not have debt, but me, I'd rather have LOWER taxes and not have debt. But also you'd better not cut any of the programs I enjoy. Except we need smaller government. And to fight the terrorists.

I want all of my groceries in one bag but I don't want it to be heavy.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:
Which party reflects how that smaller, smarter government steps to be taken?

Is that her original sentence? She's just slapping words together like that?

That's what mavericks do.

LobsterMobster wrote:

And to fight the terrorists.

Laughed out loud at the whole post, Lobster.

I don't want to rehash what Aetius was talking about in another thread, but the mentality of the Tea Party groups is probably representative of the vast majority of the country. Glancing through my local news I can see no less than three stories about parents screaming about local school closings, and two stories about parents screaming about tax hikes for education.

We are, and have been since our inception, the country of both Having and Eating Cake.

LobsterMobster wrote:
MikeMac wrote:
Malor wrote:

The 'stop going into debt' part, though, that I could get behind in a big way.

Didn't Palin have "tax cuts" scribbled on her hand? Then again I suppose in Tea bagger land you can reduce debt and cut taxes at the same time. I bet they have the prettiest Unicorns there.

Hey, maybe you'd like to pay higher taxes and not have debt, but me, I'd rather have LOWER taxes and not have debt.

You know, cutting taxes while concurrently increasing tax revenue isn't exactly unprecedented. They were cut dramatically in the early 1920s to get us out of a bad depression, and revenues increased over 50% (thank you, Warren G. Harding). Kennedy cut them, albeit less drastically, and they rose 33% adjusted for inflation. Reagan cut them heavily in 1983 and they rose 28% inflation-adjusted. It seems paradoxical at first glance, but you have to remember that higher taxes discourage economic growth, and there's going to be a point where those curves cross and one takes over the other.

Also note that all three of those took about six years to fully show their impact; nothing's immediate, and the same goes for tax increases (i.e. they can raise revenues for a few years, but drop them in the long run).

But also you'd better not cut any of the programs I enjoy. Except we need smaller government. And to fight the terrorists.

I want all of my groceries in one bag but I don't want it to be heavy.

Well, yeah, that's where it starts to get ridiculous. You have to cut everything, even your pet projects. And stop trying to legislate morality; it doesn't work.

Colorado Springs was in the news yesterday. Apparently, they have a major budget crisis due to the fact that they have state and local laws that make it impossible to raise taxes without a popular referendum. As a result, they have some of the lowest taxes in the country. They also have cut their paving budget to zero (not an exaggeration, but actually zero) in the middle of snowplow season, education, and public safety. They've even taken to dismantling street lights because they need to save on electricity. Even still, folks are complaining that no one is maintaining the dog parks.

The connection between tax cuts and economic growth is extremely controversial and hardly supported by evidence. It is worth noting that the greatest period of economic growth in American history also coincided with the highest marginal tax rates in American history.

There was an article about Colorado Springs on pandagon.net recently. Totally bizzare.

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as “Ferrari"-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

Subsistence servitude! Robber Baron-style capitalism is alive and well.

This article goes into the laughability of tax cuts creating more tax revenue.

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