The Return of the Inflation Tax

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

It's a grass-roots movement -- one you are keeping yourself carefully ignorant about, which is not the action of a man who believes in himself or his values -- there is no one leader. It's an umbrella group too, so again there is no one center to it, personality or otherwise. About the most dominant overall shared trend is the good-government one: that a good government lives inside its means and that there is practically nothing outside of fighting a war that a government does that is important enough to run a deficit to accomplish. Debt should be viewed with suspicion, many of us think, and chronic indebtedness with more yet. Trillion-dollar deficit spending by that same entity that prints the currency -- stop it at once.

In fact, it is more than one movement, with more than one agenda and more disparate interests than commonality.
Including the fact that they are funded by competing interests....the Tea Party Express, funded by "fighting a war" neo-cons...and the Tea Party Patriots funded by former congressman Dick Army's K Street corporate lobbyists.

And now they are fighting each other:

.....the tussle between Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Express, which got ugly when Tea Party Patriots organizer Amy Kremer hopped on the Express and was forced out of TPP. On Monday, Tea Party Patriots filed suit against Kremer; they’re also seeking a temporary restraining order in the wake of Kremer locking down Tea Party Patriots resources on her way out.
http://washingtonindependent.com/675...-party-express

Peel away the facade expressed at the grass roots level (and I agree it is sincere at that level) and you will find Washington insiders...but with ties to different extremes (neo-cons v social conservatives) of the Republican party.

Independent fiscal conservatives have and will continue to reject both extremes. But you are carefully ignorant about that because it detracts from what you may sincerely believe are grass roots movements.

It is simply a new face on the old battle on the right between conservative Republicans and true Libertarians.

As you will become, with age and experience. It puts one more nearly in touch with virtue and values. You find the former much more fun than you'd thought and real life, worth the living, much more possible with the latter.

I am old and white.

And experienced enough in politics, certainly far more than you, to know that movements w/o leaders and with such disparate underlying interests will ultimately turn on each other as these groups have.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

In fact, it is more than one movement, with more than one agenda and more disparate interests than commonality.
Including the fact that they are funded by competing interests....the Tea Party Express, funded by "fighting a war" neo-cons...and the Tea Party Patriots funded by former congressman Dick Army's K Street corporate lobbyists.

And now they are fighting each other:

.....the tussle between Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Express, which got ugly when Tea Party Patriots organizer Amy Kremer hopped on the Express and was forced out of TPP. On Monday, Tea Party Patriots filed suit against Kremer; they’re also seeking a temporary restraining order in the wake of Kremer locking down Tea Party Patriots resources on her way out.
http://washingtonindependent.com/675...-party-express

Peel away the facade expressed at the grass roots level (and I agree it is sincere at that level) and you will find Washington insiders...but with ties to different extremes (neo-cons v social conservatives) of the Republican party.

Independent fiscal conservatives have and will continue to reject both extremes. But you are carefully ignorant about that because it detracts from what you may sincerely believe are grass roots movements.

It is simply a new face on the old battle on the right between conservative Republicans and true Libertarians.



I am old and white.

And experienced enough in politics, certainly far more than you, to know that movements w/o leaders and with such disparate underlying interests will ultimately turn on each other as these groups have.

None of your points are truely valid. It is no different than when the Dems were out of power, they appeared leaderless and disjointed. Unlike other countries with multipul factions where they elect minority power heads, we do not have to form those coalitions in a two party system. The party in power with a leader is the one who has the White House or the majority in Congress. I recall that during all the protests when the Repubs were in power under Bush the Dems looked like a bunch of interfighting kids in a family that did not get along. Who did you have then Screaming Dean? Yea, a real unitier there. Not. How about Al "I invented the internet" Gore, what bore. The whole notion of Leaderless is a strawman argument. The Dems have repeatedly loss until Bush et. al. screwed it up enough to get the Repubs kicked out and until they found their Savior Obama. Get over yourself.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Unlike other countries with multipul factions where they elect minority power heads, we do not have to form those coalitions in a two party system.

I'm not sure if you meant multiple or multi-pull, but both work in the following example.

While it is true that we do not have to form coalitions of multiple parties, we do tend to form coalitions within the two dominant parties.

Depending on the strength of the party's whip and the tenor of the individual members, parties can be cohesive or fractured on individual issues, types of issues, etc.

While in the minority, one criticism made of the Democrats was their lack of cohesion. The current Republican minority, while cohesive in opposition to issues like health care, in other areas is almost schizophrenic.

The divisions among Democratic moderates and the extreme left wing are almost insignificant compared to the division between Republican moderates and the extreme right wing. This has been aggravated by the defection of a very large group of moderates, giving the impression that the only reliable voting bloc left in the Republican party is it's right wing.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

While in the minority, one criticism made of the Democrats was their lack of cohesion. The current Republican minority, while cohesive in opposition to issues like health care, in other areas is almost schizophrenic.

The divisions among Democratic moderates and the extreme left wing are almost insignificant compared to the division between Republican moderates and the extreme right wing. This has been aggravated by the defection of a very large group of moderates, giving the impression that the only reliable voting bloc left in the Republican party is it's right wing.

And when the dems were out of the White House that was the point. They were in the same level of turmoil and appeared to have no one in charge, no one to drive their ship. They looked like the protesters at the G-8. Everyone was there to protest, none of them for the same thing. When the party in power runs things, historically the party out of power looks disjointed and schizoprenic.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

And when the dems were out of the White House that was the point. They were in the same level of turmoil and appeared to have no one in charge, no one to drive their ship.

On the Merc truth scale....you failed!

The Democrats won 14 Senate seats and 56 House seats in 06 and 08 by seeking out and running moderate candidates not the most liberal candidates, for the most part. It was the national strategy guided by the DNC Chairman, Howard Dean.

As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the "50 State Strategy" that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as "solid red." The success of the strategy became apparent after the 2006 midterm elections, where Democrats took back the House and picked up seats in the Senate from normally Republican states such as Missouri and Montana. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama used "The 50 state strategy" as the backbone of his candidacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean

The Republican approach is to stick with a conservative ideological litmus test for candidates. Some of the leaders within the party know that this is a failed strategy, but are unable to convince the hard core social conservative base that now controls the party.

I would ask again...who is running the Republican party (or the Tea Parties)? Leaders who understand how to win elections or the extreme ideologues with a litmus test?

One party has become the big tent party. Objective political observers know which party that would be.

A Republican party with open arms that wants to be more inclusive and more appealing to moderates?....it ain't happening, dude.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

bla, bla, bla...

Well another report disagrees with your partisan assessment again.

Republicans, riven but resurgent

Nov 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Why conservative in-fighting may matter less than you might think

http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=14794768

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Well another report disagrees with your partisan assessment again.

Republicans, riven but resurgent


http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=14794768

Reasonable people can have different opinions on this issue.

What I took dispute with was your assessment of my opinion as "FAILED" when it is shared by many non-partisans (as well as some Republican leaders) and is simply one perspective.

In fact, on numerous opinion posts, you grade those posts with which you disagree as "FAILED"...a narrow-minded unwillngess to accept that other opinions, as opposed to facts, are valid as well.

You want to play that game....I'll get in the gutter with you and play as well.

What is most laughable is someone who describes the Speaker of the House as a Nazi and who does not know the difference between liberalism and socialism...grading others at all.