Then everything Rick said and talked about must be completely untrue and/or irrevelant.

You’ve had your “All Libruls are teh stoopid” vomit for the week Travis. Now go stick your head back in the sand.

If Liberals have one ability, it’s the ability to actually be the intellectual inferior of conservative while believing the opposite.

They are also very good at projecting flaws they possess onto the GOP and conservatives.

But most importantly, this arrogant attitude towards fellow citizens is one shared by the Democrat party leaders in DC. It’s a fatal flaw that is about to destroy the Democrat party in a way that it hasnt seen in a long time. The Titanic is going down.

#5 is the only sensible comment in this whole thread. The straw poll means squat.

I think the problem the Tea Party people have is a complete disconnect between what they say they want and what they really want. They claim to want lower taxes while most just got a tax cut and have not yet had taxes raised. A large number of them don’t pay taxes at all or pay taxes at low rates.

At the same time I’ve yet to hear that these folks are demanding cuts in their own entitlements or in defense. Are they yelling for Medicare cuts? No. How about Social Security? Not so much. Do they want their local base closed? No. Do they have a list of wars and military commitments they’d like to end? No.

It’s a Free Lunch movement: cut our taxes, don’t cut our benefits. So it’s not fundamentally different from the larger conservative movement which calls for less government except as it relates to them and to their constituencies.

The things that got them riled up to begin with are in the past — the various massive bailouts begun by the Republicans and carried forward by the Democrats. Well, that money is spent. Now we’re discussing the future. So what’s their plan for the future? Tax cuts and Medicare. Tax cuts and Social Security. Tax cuts and all the defense spending the Pentagon could ever want.

These people are Baby Boomers for the most part and they want exactly what my generation has always wanted, left, right or center: a free lunch.

That is only true if you accept an unstated assumption as true — that the Tea Partiers are actually trying to win elections.

If the goal is to win a majority of the electorate, then for all their whining the Tea Party is going to have to allign themselves with the GOP. There is no other viable port in this particular storm. That is true.
However, if the goal is ideological purity, then fatally crippling the GOP and remaining the purist whack-a-doodle club is a perfectly acceptable option. When they lose every race, they can dress up in their Revolutionary costumes and assure each other its simply because the Bilderbergs have poisoned the minds of the populace, and the only thing that will awaken the trapped masses is another costumed march thru the town. They get all the pleasure of loudly complaining about the government and feeling smug, without any of the complication that would attend actually trying to fix the damned thing. The Tea Party will just become a social club, one that has as an unstated goal the removal of votes from the GOP, a “I’m taking my ball and going home” sort of vibe.

The other big problem that the Tea Party has is the inherent dichotomy in its makeup. You have an avowed hatred of politics-as-usual trying to use politics-as-usual to change things. Those that can’t stomach getting their hands dirty simply stay in the background and complain, and those that are willing to play the game (suprise) do so for their own personal enrichment. Sub-parties splitting off, copyright battles, nebulous donation trees . . . why, its just how politics works, all right!

The Tea Party is alot like Communism: it’s a GREAT idea . . . on paper. Applying political theory to the real world is an intricate, complicated, messy job. The pure theory will NOT make it thru into this world unscathed. Great theories make bad, bad action plans sometimes. Theory should guide your actions, not define them. Unfortunately, the Tea Party, having been fed on “pure” slogans, is (IMO) going to find it impossible to step back from “ideal” to “practical”.

As CZ said above:

“Compromise is for quitters.”

Politics without compromise. You know what that’s called, CZ? A dictatorship. It’s a politically worthless statement . . . but boy, does it tickle my “Win One For The Gipper / Ruuuuudy! Ruuuuuudy! Ruuuuuudy!” gland.
You know what else compromise is for? Getting things done. Exactly as the founding fathers planned and intended. As they explicitly spelled out in the Debates and the Federalist Papers.
That must be one of those “inconvienent” parts of Original Intent that Rick was talking about. Better just ignore it then.

Ruuuudy! Ruuuuudy! Ruuuuuudy!

. . . yeah, that’s much better.

But there are hazards ahead. Steer to the left with legislation and whap! You’ll be out.

Thanks to the great awakening of the tea party people we may be entering a new era of accountability for all politicians. There are more of us than there are of them. And we’re watching every move.

Compromise is for quitters.

Well said, sir.