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Before starting his popular political column for the New York Observer, Joe Conason worked as editor-at-large for Conde Nast's Details magazine. ...
Read more about Joe Conason.
Before starting his popular political column for the New York Observer, Joe Conason worked as editor-at-large for Conde Nast's Details magazine. ...
Read more about Joe Conason.
The GOP's Toxic Tea Party
Joe Conason
When Newt Gingrich warned Republicans that they were making a grave
"mistake" by driving out moderates and enforcing the angry orthodoxy
of the far right, the sober tone of his remarks was stunning.
This is a politician who is no stranger himself to the wilder shores of extremism, a populist and a purist who rose to great power against the GOP establishment, and a demagogue whose lexicon lacerated the "Democrat Party" as decadent, elitist, unpatriotic and immoral.
In his day, Gingrich channeled the same phobias and fury as the Tea Party activists whose growing influence in Republican ranks seems to have shaken him so badly. Why is Newt scared now?
Despite his habitual ranting against the Eastern elites, the former House speaker is a professional historian and an intellectual with wide-ranging interests -- making him a figure of potential suspicion to radio talkers without much formal education and the raving mobs that follow them.
Much as he exploited the prejudices of the religious right and fantasies of the conspiracy crowd, Gingrich has always affected a more sophisticated and urbane attitude. He may be troubled to realize that he suddenly ranks far lower than Sarah Palin, who can barely muster a coherent political thought, or Glenn Beck, who enthralls his audience with weird, weepy rants.
Leaving aside any lingering presidential ambitions, Gingrich understandably feels that brand of leadership will have a very limited appeal for most Americans -- and that the more voters see of it, the less they will like it.
Is it fair to stigmatize the tea-baggers and their leaders as a movement of the fringe? In New York's 23rd congressional district, Douglas Hoffman, the right-wing carpetbagger who drove out moderate local Republican Dede Scozzafava, apprenticed himself to Beck, obsequiously flattering the Fox News host as his "mentor."
Hoffman signed a pledge to uphold the "912 principles and values" endorsed by Beck -- a juvenile tract that demands honesty, thrift, humility and charity even as it complains that government forces citizens to "share" when they don't want to. (As far as Beck is concerned, all Democrats are "Marxist" and almost all Republicans are "Marxist lite.")
No doubt Hoffman is eagerly studying the collected writings of the late Cleon Skousen, the Beck-endorsed prophet whose speeches used to stir up meetings of the John Birch Society, mostly against Republicans of the Rockefeller and Kissinger variety. He has plenty of time for reading now, after losing the special election to Democrat Bill Owens.
If the revival of Birchite mania troubles Gingrich, then the Palin phenomenon, now breaking loose with the publication of her memoir, must be equally disturbing. The former Alaska governor has a long, Beck-like history of affiliation with bizarre causes and characters, including an Alaskan secessionist party and a Kenyan witch-hunting evangelist who conducted an exorcism rite in her Wasilla church. She will ignore or minimize those episodes in "Going Rogue," but putting extra lipstick on this pit bull may not help.
Most Americans don't know much yet about the idiosyncratic ideology of the Tea Party crowd, beyond their conviction that President Obama was born in Kenya (and that his birth announcement in the Hawaii newspapers is therefore part of a plot that dates back to the Kennedy era). But what they have seen so far, they don't seem to like: The more that Beck, Palin and kindred spirits appear to represent the Republican brand, the less appeal that brand possesses.
From the perspective of Gingrich and other veteran Republicans, there is deep irony in these untoward developments. Many of the Tea Party types actually hate Republican politicians, unless, like Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, they are already dead. They hate Democrats, too, of course -- and lots of other people -- but their invective against Republicans is suffused with special outrage.
If they have their way, every Republican who doesn't adhere to the Beck canon will be driven out at the end of a pitchfork, just like poor Dede Scozzafava.
Fifteen years ago, when Newt rode to power on the resentments of the religious right, the gun lobby and the economic royalists, he celebrated their extremism as the political style of "normal Americans." Today when he hears the violent rhetoric, the hateful threats and the fanatical intolerance, he knows they are talking about him, too.
========
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer (www.observer.com). To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.
This news arrived on: 11/05/2009
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Posted Comments:
11-07-2009 22:53
old cowboy wrote:
JCE, Goldenwren, Redneck
I will weigh in on the gun control issue. I am a hunter and gun owner but think there is a need for some gun control.
Who needs a 5.something mm. semi-auto pistol with a 30 round clip or an AK47 with a bananan clip. Neither weapon is in any way used in hunting unless it is hunting people. If you need over 1 or possibly 2 shots for a deer, elk, bear, whatever you have no business hunting.
Who needs a 5.something mm. semi-auto pistol with a 30 round clip or an AK47 with a bananan clip. Neither weapon is in any way used in hunting unless it is hunting people. If you need over 1 or possibly 2 shots for a deer, elk, bear, whatever you have no business hunting.
11-07-2009 21:01
PER wrote:
JCE, you comented so lately, that I thought you might have been in some concern. Thanks for your, as usual, reasonable post. It boggles my mind that their are some people like RME that think they are real Americans and,(gasp!) actually conceive Sarah (plain-and-short) Palin as an ACTUAL representative of our American strength. ("By goodness: I can see those poor Russian kiddies eating their boiled potatoes from my kitchen. It makes me just heartsick that I can hardly eat my Eggs Benedict. Chef, chef!! Please help me! I need to get back to my (former) constituents.
11-07-2009 20:56
John W Smith III wrote:
Republicans said today that all Americans have healthcare,which is blatantly false.Conservatives Republicans are at this point synomymous with manufactured realities in which tax cuts cause unicorns to fart rainbows of money across the land and a decent public education is a gateway to Stalinism.
Only option the Conservatives have is go to the emergency room,hopefully get operated on,and then receive a bill for some outrageous figure that you will not be able to pay or wait until you turn 65 and get govt-run Medicare.
Only option the Conservatives have is go to the emergency room,hopefully get operated on,and then receive a bill for some outrageous figure that you will not be able to pay or wait until you turn 65 and get govt-run Medicare.
11-07-2009 20:16
John W Smith III wrote:
Joe you make a lot a sense but it's to late to save those uneducated teabaggers. They've gone to far to the right.Their hate get in the way of facts. One thing those teabaggers don't realize Beck and Palin family have good healthcare and you idiots don't.
11-07-2009 17:17
JCE wrote:
It is very American to take something good, like the right to keep and bear arms, and turn an organization into something evil, for power and political gain, and forget the purpose of the right itself. The republicans did this with not wanting to regulate the middle class, and in not regulating the big businesses, have nearly destroyed the middle class. But they won't separate the two types of business for legislation, because then they would be seen for what they are, representing the big business, and not small.
JDB Excellent post. Until the people take control of their local politics, and then their states, it is pretty well hopeless. For only state governments, combined, could stand up to the federal government, and the special interests.
RME KRNL The reason that there is so much disrespect for the teabaggers is that it is obvious, and becoming more so, that a large majority of them may be just good and honest concerned citizens, they are being used by the right wing propaganda machine. The internet makes it easy to track the organizers and see who they really are, and what their real goals are. And technology also shows them in reality, at the so called rallies, and it is easy to see the truth. Well meaning people being used for bad purposes are not doing us any good. Stay home, call your politicians, tell them what you want, and vote accordingly. But take care of your own local areas, get them under control, and then control your states. Right now, you are all just peeing into the wind.
Goldenwren I don't know if you have been following how easy it is to buy guns, and bypass the laws, especially at the gun shows. The Americans are far better at getting around laws than in enforcing them.
JDB Excellent post. Until the people take control of their local politics, and then their states, it is pretty well hopeless. For only state governments, combined, could stand up to the federal government, and the special interests.
RME KRNL The reason that there is so much disrespect for the teabaggers is that it is obvious, and becoming more so, that a large majority of them may be just good and honest concerned citizens, they are being used by the right wing propaganda machine. The internet makes it easy to track the organizers and see who they really are, and what their real goals are. And technology also shows them in reality, at the so called rallies, and it is easy to see the truth. Well meaning people being used for bad purposes are not doing us any good. Stay home, call your politicians, tell them what you want, and vote accordingly. But take care of your own local areas, get them under control, and then control your states. Right now, you are all just peeing into the wind.
Goldenwren I don't know if you have been following how easy it is to buy guns, and bypass the laws, especially at the gun shows. The Americans are far better at getting around laws than in enforcing them.
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