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The weirdnesses, contradictions and rifts are running rampant within the so-called "Tea Party" movement.
Here's the latest (but certainly not the largest) in a series of "clouds on the horizon" re the whole Tea Party circus. "Tea Parties Stir Evangellicals' Fears":
"'There’s a libertarian streak in the tea party movement that concerns me as a cultural conservative,' said Bryan Fischer, director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association. 'The tea party movement needs to insist that candidates believe in the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage.'"
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Nothing like a "cultural conservative" -- embracing a gov't being intimately acquainted with our bedrooms and bodies; advocate of America's kids being indoctrinated by the gov't re a 6,000-year-old earth and Jesus Horses -- fearing that "libertarian streak."
Not the only rift here. That's Exhibit A. Below are a couple more, Exhibits B and C
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Exhibit B
Witness Huntsville, Alabama, this past Tuesday (March 9). First, a little background. Vichy/Quisling first-term Democratic Congressman Parker Griffith announced in December that he was switching to the Republican Party. Not only did this really, really piss off North Alabama Democrats, but North Alabama Republicans/T'Party-types, loathe this cretin almost as much as the Dems. Nice to find common ground once in a while.
Well, in defiance of local, recent county GOP resolutions condemning Parker Griffith, this past Tuesday John Boehner came to town, to Huntsville, for a Griffith fundraiser. There to meet Griffith and Boenher at the Huntsville Marriot were throngs of Democratic, Liberal, T'Party and Republican demonstrators!
Check out this incredible Left in Alabama diary by country cat: Parker Griffith: Wake Up and Smell the Tea!.
Excerpt:
Temporary Alabama Congressman (and noted political adulterer) Parker Griffith has been telling the media that "liberals" were behind yesterday's protest at his poorly-attended, low-dollar fundraiser with Congressman John Boehner...
Perhaps if he hadn't chosen to huddle in the back of a vehicle and sneak into his own fundraiser, [Griffith] would have noticed the plethora of TEA party activists [along with supporters of GOP Primary challengers]. Surely, Congressman Boehner would liked to have seen the sign that - all things considered - asked him rather politely to leave town.
Heh, heh.
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Exhibit C
Tea Party Darling and astroturfer extraordinaire Dick Armey (yes! his real name!) was House GOP Majority Leader back in 1999 when the regulatory cuffs (such as they were) were taken off of Wall Street, allowing commercial and investment banks and insurance companies to play footsie like never before, with 100s of billions of unregulated dollars, leading in great part to the Great Recession of 2007-09.
This would be the same Wall Street that Tea Partiers loathe with a passion. See, e.g., "No Seat for Wall Street at Tea Parties":
"Indeed, anger over Wall Street bailouts was in many ways the spark that brought the tea-party movement to life. Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily, a Web site popular among tea-party adherents, said the financial-industry rescue plan launched in the closing days of President George W. Bush's term 'got this ball rolling. That's where the anger, where the frustration took root.'
"WSJ's Jerry Seib joins The News Hub to preview his piece looking at whether populist outrage at Washington could be turned toward Wall Street instead.
"Since then, he notes, the movement has gone off in multiple different directions, and anger has mostly focused instead at Democrats running Washington. Yet there's a long history of populist ire being directed at Wall Street and Washington simultaneously...."
Source
And yet, and yet, Dick Armey's "FreedomWorks" website has this to say about reining-in Wall Street's drunken orgy:
"The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act represents a major intrusion by government into this important sector of the economy. With new fees, regulations, and reporting requirements, the legislation threatens jobs, global competitiveness, and economic growth. At the same time, the legislation creates sweeping new powers for the federal government. Ultimately, consumers may bear the brunt of the legislation. For example, regulations released by a new consumer protection agency may have unintended consequences that reduce access to credit while raising the price of credit. . . ."
Source
Will any of the Tea Party'ers bother to read any of Armey's got-'em-coming-and-going rhetoric/background/contradictions? I don't know. But as infected with cognitive dissonance as the Tea Party'ers can certainly be, the "Libertarian" (read: paranoid) gene that seems to reside within them all makes Armey's whipping them up against "the powers that be", while taking-up for many of the same "powers that be," quite a stroll on very, very thin ice. Seems to me.
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And, of course, from New York to Arizona we know that the GOP is getting very nervous about the T'Party'ers. Good. Let 'em be nervous.
Anyway, any way you cut it, it'll be an interesting thing to watch. I suggest investing in popcorn stock over the coming 6 months.
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