The "Tea Party" Movement is Fed Up With Both Parties

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly has written an article called "Creating a Monster"  (see discussion at Memeorandum).  Benen notes that the Tea Party movement is conservative, anti-Obama and anti-Democrat (duh), but that they are also not so pleased with the Republican Party either.  This rogue mob of right-wing zealots are actually planning to take on Republican candidates with whom they disagree.

Hooray for that.  Count me in.  I am fed up with RINO Republicans who sell out at every opportunity and whose only principles are their own political longevity.  Lindsay Graham comes to mind.

Benin sounds like a partisan liberal hack when he writes:

Now, the notion of hostilities between right-wing activists and really right-wing activists is, to a certain extent, entertaining. State and local Republican parties are already pretty unhinged -- pick a state GOP platform at random and read it -- but that's apparently insufficient.

But the part of this that's really remarkable to me is the notion that the Republican Party of 2009 is just too darn reasonable and open to compromise with those sneaky Democrats, as far as this crowd is concerned.

Yes, the recovery-opposing, nominee-blocking, ACORN-hunting, Fox News-following, health care-rejecting, gay bashing, global warming-denying, scorched earth-raging Republican Party isn't far enough to the right for the Teabggers.

This isn't to say the activists don't have the right to try to take over their party, and drive it over the right-wing cliff. It's their call -- political parties should reflect the values and priorities of their members. But the road to recovery for the Republican Party is to move back towards the American mainstream. The activist base seems to have a far different agenda in mind.

Benen's upset because we don't want to make the GOP into a slightly different version of the Democratic Party.  He considers the "Tea Partiers" to be some kind of extremists who are not part of the "mainstream," but never gives any specific examples of what the TP's believe, why it is extreme or why it will "drive the party over a right-wing cliff."  His comments about the Republican Party in general are just plain lies:  we are not "recovery-opposing" we are "huge deficits-bailouts opposing," which is not the same thing at all.  We aren't "gay-bashing," that's just another gratuitous insult by a man with no real arguments.  Yes, we do deny manmade global warming because it is a crock that is unsupported by actual evidence and whose "cures" will prove utterly devastating to our economy.

As for the GOP driving over a cliff, it is far more accurate to say that Obama has driven the Democrats "over a left-wing cliff."  Obama and his party are not "mainstream" by any means, but the most radically leftist administration in American history.  They are responsible for the rapid rebirth of the Republican Party as more and more Americans reject record deficits, ACORN corruption, government owned industries, appeasement of tyrants, socialized medicine, and higher taxes and energy costs.

We didn't lose the 2008 presidential election because our candidate wasn't liberal enough.  John McCain was very "mainstream" (read:  liberal) on illegal immigration, global warming and the TARP bailouts.  If anything, we lost the election because our base stayed home, not seeing much difference between Tweedle-Dee-McCain and Tweedle-Dum-Obama.

Taking political advice from a dogmatic Democrat like Steve Benen hardly seems a good idea to me.  And I don't consider him or his party to be "mainstream."  I'll stick with the Tea Partiers.