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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.
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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:
11-18-2009 03:04
JCE wrote:
I don't hate the NRA. I just don't like something good turned into a tool, and used by the enemies of our country, and our freedom, and that is what has happened with the NRA. They were caught by surprise, never knew what hit them, and they aren't at all what they were when they were a cause for good. Too much of anything can be a bad thing. It is our very freedom that has been turned against us, used to the oligarchs advantage, and to the peoples disadvantage. The taking away of rules and regulations on the huge businesses, especially the banks, and the insurance and credit companies, too much freedom for them, has cost us more than we can afford. One persons freedom ends where anothers begins. Only the very rich see no end to where there freedom extends, and so the common people see an end to their freedom. When you intentionally dumb down a nation, you then have a dumb nation, one with the right to free speech, guns, pornography, to make money, to vote, and yet, not enough sense to do any of it wisely, safely, or sensibly. I wish that our people had the sense to vote wisely, speak wisely, use guns wisely, handle their money wisely, and protect their country, but, they obviously don't know how. I would rather see emphasis put on teaching them and showing them the right way, than to just keep tying to give them more freedom. That seems to just be losing us our freedom.
11-17-2009 08:38
JK wrote:
JCE
The NRA that you love to hate has done more to promote gun safety than you ever will. Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program to educate kids on gun safety. Law Inforcement Firearms Instructor training are just two of the programs that come to mind. Why people want to blame an inanimate object for the actions of criminals I will never understand. If we were discusing the First Amendment I doubt you would be for any restrictions. But I believe the protection of porno and other garbage has done more damage than all the guns in America.
11-16-2009 22:07
JCE wrote:
It is a pretty well established fact that most Americans aren't taught gun safety, or responsibility. It is kind of like fatherhood. Most men think that all you have to do is get a woman pregnant, and you are not only a father, you are a man. And that is the head that they think with, more often as not. Same with a gun. Too many men think that just owning a gun makes up for a lot, makes them a man, a real macho John Wayne type. Well, John Wayne was a phony, an actor, a cowardly draft dodger, and he beat and cheated on his wife. Too many men, especially young men, think with the gun, and not the brain. So they get involved in situations that they have no business being in. Guns don't make up for any lack of intelligence. A gun just doesn't make it easy to kill someone, at least the first time when you know nothing of death, it makes it extremely easy to get killed. Kids aren't taught how to drive properly, to balance a checkbook, or be responsible in most areas, yet you give them a gun, and turn them loose on the world. Big and very often fatal mistake. The legalization of abortion brought the death and murder rate down dramatically, but it is still way to high. Not because of guns, but because of stupids with guns. They can't handle the vote, or money, and you want to give them weapons that can kill all kinds of innocent people in a heartbeat. Probably the biggest problem in America is the lack of respect for live, human and otherwise. It has become cheap, valueless to many, especially gun owners. Ghandi said you could tell the greatness of a country by how it treated its animals. You can predict how it will treat its people as well. And we treat animals as badly as any nation on earth. Total lack of respect and value for life. An extremely large % of the gun nuts demonstrate this. A thing is more important than life. And animals and people become things. I doubt JK and others will ever understand, but we can try. Life is far more important than they know.
11-16-2009 07:10
JK wrote:
old cowboy
OK, we can stop. The thing you seem not to understand is how well you shoot or how few rounds it takes you to fill your freezer has nothing to do with the it. Good luck this season hope you have to buy a second freezer.
11-14-2009 20:33
old cowboy wrote:
To JK
Should read any type of firearm. Man, I have to start proofing better.
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