Monday, October 18, 2010

The truth about the Tea Party

Liberal arguments these days have been reduced to maligning the other side. They respond to the growth of the Tea Party, not with logic but invective. And this from people who claim it is their side that respects the scientific method. 

How do you rationally characterize a political movement? Well, you conduct a study and summarize your results. We can't rely on professional liberal analysts to do this:
 
Emily Ekins, a graduate student at UCLA, conducted the survey at the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington last month by scouring the crowd, row by row and hour by hour, and taking a picture of every sign she passed.

Ekins photographed about 250 signs, and more than half of those she saw reflected a "limited government ethos," she found - touching on such topics as the role of government, liberty, taxes, spending, deficit and concern about socialism. Examples ranged from the simple message "$top the $pending" scrawled in black-marker block letters to more elaborate drawings of bar charts, stop signs and one poster with the slogan "Socialism is Legal Theft" and a stick-figure socialist pointing a gun at the head of a taxpayer.

There were uglier messages, too - including "Obama Bin Lyin' - Impeach Now" and "Somewhere in Kenya a Village is Missing its Idiot." But Ekins's analysis showed that only about a quarter of all signs reflected direct anger with Obama. Only 5 percent of the total mentioned the president's race or religion, and slightly more than 1 percent questioned his American citizenship.
These numbers indicate that the Tea Party does not have more insensitive people than any other random group. They might have fewer. Once again, we see that liberals have little grip on reality--or they do but feel they have to lie because their arguments are so weak.


UPDATE: I retract my statement. The NAACP is going to release a "study" of rampant Tea Party racism one week before the election.  

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:38 AM

    The Tea Party really took off when each night on television average Americans witnessed those horrid displays of arrogance by their reps at the town halls followed by an inexorable march to pass that damn thing by those who figured the President was so beloved, so powerful, they dared not vote against it. Thus, arrogance and cowardice were on full display.

    To those town halls came ordinary people with questions about the health care proposals, the size of government, the process itself. They were greeted with non-answers, with derision at their having deigned to ask questions, with evasion, and many times with outright insults.

    What they saw enraged them and that rage persists to this day, thankfully.

    Most Americans have never read even one of the Federalist Papers; most have never attended a political rally; most have not corresponded with their Washington reps.

    However, every American has in his soul a revulsion at the idea of a monarchy. Many suddenly realized that returning the same people to WA over and over smacked of the divine right to rule and they realized their own complicity in that they had failed to keep tabs on their reps and had, out of apathy, returned the same people over and over until those people grew to think themselves royalty.

    Adding to the shock was the public's realization that this was not the rule of a "benevolent" royalty.

    The march up the Capitol steps by Pelosi and her sycophants that Sunday with huge gavel in hand, all this in spite of the public's persistance cries of "Stop and listen to us" is an image burned in their brains.

    One needn't have attended any Tea Party event to be, at heart, a Tea Partier.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10:44 AM

    Shave a few percentage points off the unemployment rate and the Tea Party movement will vanish overnight.

    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:10 PM

    Shaving a *few* points off the unemployment rate will not offset the ire the public will feel when the new health care stuff hits after the new year. For every good thing, will be several bad things.

    And the failure to keep the Bush tax cuts as is will probably drive the unemployment numbers higher or keep them as is. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Saint Louis5:02 PM

    "However, every American has in his soul a revulsion at the idea of a monarchy."

    EVERY American? Speak for yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sgt. Joe Friday7:26 AM

    "Shave a few percentage points off the unemployment rate and the Tea Party movement will vanish overnight."

    Except the unemployment rate isn't coming down anytime soon. There are many reasons for this, but if Obama were serious about reducing unemployment, he would:

    1. Leave the tax rates on income where they are, even if that means some people making over $250K pay a 35% tax rate on the last dollar they earn, rather than 40%.

    2. Tone down the anti-business rhetoric. When businesses are made to feel as if they've got a bullseye on their back, they hunker down and do whatever they can to preserve capital. Hiring? Forget it.

    3. Enforce the border more assertively, round up illegals and send them home. Along with that, reduce legal immigration. Right now, there is a surplus of labor and a deficit of jobs. Reduce the labor surplus, unemployment goes down.

    4. Leave the capital gains tax rate where it is, or better yet lower it to 10%. This will encourage more economic activity, even if it's not "fair."

    ReplyDelete

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