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Pictured: Tony Perkins is not a fan of teabagging.
My sense has always been that the Teabagger crowd is more glibertarian than fundie, but these comments from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins–one of the most important right-wing Christian leaders in the Bush/Rove coalition–betray a real hostility brewing.
There’s no centralized tea party organization, and anecdotes suggest that many tea party participants hold socially conservative views. But those views have been little in evidence at movement gatherings or in public statements, and are sometimes deliberately excluded from the political agenda. The groups coordinating them eschew social issues, and a new Contract From America, has become an article of concern on the social right.
The contract, sponsored by the grass-roots Tea Party Patriots as well as Washington groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Tax Reform, asks supporters to choose the 10 most important issues from a menu of 21 choices that makes no mention of socially conservative priorities such as gay marriage and abortion.
“They’re free to do it, but they can’t say [the contract] represents America,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a veteran of the Christian right. “If they do it they’re lying.”
Woah.
Tony Perkins, who had veto power over Bush’s SCOTUS picks, just called the Teabaggers a bunch of un-American liars, while pissing all over their oh-so-awesome Contract.
And how do we know this is a serious problem for the Teabaggers? Because wingnut bloggers are freaking out over this piece. For example, after failing to note the scathing remarks by Perkins and Mike Huckabee, Teabagger-in-Chief Glenn Reynolds rushes to assure everyone that everything’s just peachy.
I think they’re afraid of this movement, and since marginalizing it hasn’t worked, they’re trying to divide it.
Smells like fear to me.
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With no intention of disparaging the Tea Partiers (for now), they are an extremely alienated group of people. It might fairly be said they are at odds with everybody–certainly all organizations–andprobably with one another in many ways. These are very individualistic folks.
The essence of the Tea Party–if any generalization can be accurate–is extreme political alienation.
The Tea Partiers must be pretty sick of everyone commenting on them, but I make bold to do so because I live in Texas–and not only Texas, but wonderful, free-wheeling Austin, Texas. This means I see and hear a lot of tea-party stuff–so I have license to pay them back.
Buncha cranky honkies worried someone will get something they don’t.
ROFL
Exactly.
The T-B’s are lumpenproletariat. Whoever figures out how to combine them with the Fundies will be a dangerous person. So far, no one has figured out the mix, but it will come. The opportunities are just too great.
One of the huge failings of the Democrats of my generation (1965 to present) is that they lost the ability to tap into that population. Clinton did for a bit, and the threat was enough for the GOP to impeach him. But on the whole a party led by policy wonks and intellectuals rather than labour union leaders is not going to appeal to ordinary uneducated people. Howard Dean was right (as usual).
The Tea Party scares the hell out of the DC GOP.
The Tea Party is not a conservative movement, it is a movement that wants to destroy the current STATUS QUO.
Washington Republican fear there days are numbered.
It is kind of funny, the GOP use these Tea Party types for years to promote sending Jobs over seas, low taxes for the rich, etc. and now these people have woke up, and they are pissed off, broke, angry, and want their country back that the GOP elites sold to China and Saudia Arabia
The same fate awaits the Dems who have used their base.
Further evidence that the teabaggers are feckless and flaccid. They are simply paranoid goobers who are afraid of their own shadows and pissed off at seemingly everything and everyone. That the teabaggers think their tactics are warranted and effective is confirmation that they are morons. They are a diffuse tribe of disaffected losers who latch onto every batshit crazy conspiracy theory and are quick to run into the streets screaming at the top of their lungs, even if they have no idea why they are doing so.
Add to that the VERY constant specter of racism which permeates every gathering of two or more teabaggers and it should come as no surprise that many conservatives are beginning to back away from the teabaggers.
However, I’m sure the teabaggers will just see this as evidence of yet another batshit crazy conspiracy theory, this time involving socialists, Kenyans, and now Evangelicals.
Teabaggers are simply knuckle dragging cousin fucks who are too stupid by half to recognize their own imbecility.
This assumes that the rest of the country doesn’t hear tea-party stuff directly from conservatives and parroted at length in the cable and print media.
Is the infighting on the Right between Teabaggers, the Christian Right, and more traditional neocons and corporatists that different from the infighting between single payer advocates and public option supporters, or the splits between Democrats and progressives, as for example the recent attacks by Moulitsas on Kucinich?
What we are seeing, I think, on both the right and the left is a growing dissatisfaction with the two parties and the reaction to that by those parties and those associated with them. So you can laugh about a civil war on the right, but ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
Well said.
Nor sure that the baggers and the fundies will ever get together. The fundies know exactly what they want – complete control over your life and your religion. The baggers are disorganized with no leaders worth mentioning and are just generally angry but aren’t sure who they should be angry with. Have to say that the baggers are rather fun to watch but the fundies are scary.
Right on.
Arguably Perkins is right. The Tea Baggers need the fundi/crackpot religious orientation or they collapse into ordinary libertarianism. Huey Long understood this as does Sarah Palin as both used religion to underscore their fake socialism which otherwise is essentially a call for benign dictatorship.
That about says it, as far as it goes.
Then, if you add in the “self-policing” factor for the behavior, or “actions” of the elites, the legal profession, the ecclesiastical profession and the political class, where their personal “actions” NEVER contribute to any “consequences” … we have a lot to “look forward” to … especially as we are being assured that intended straight record-setting will record, maybe, that mistakes were made … little things like war, or torture.
And the truly wealthy … they don’t believe in any limits at all.
We most certainly live in interesting times.
DW
Isn’t this really a fight between Dick Armey and the Fundies. Armey has never had any use for the fundies and he is up to his armpits trying to manipulate the teabaggers. I can’t remember where I’ve seen it, but Armey has said some pretty rough things about the fundies going back to when he was still in Congress in the 90′s. Most of the teabaggers themselves are probably so disoriented they don’t know anything about the fighting that various factions of the Right are engaged in to try to control that not inconsequential block of unhappy people (I would say voters, but probably half of them aren’t registered voters.)
I think people are missing the point here.
Conservatives are a bunch of obedient bendovers who will surely fall in line on election day and vote Puke, no matter who the nominee is. I recall a lot of tough talk about McCain in 2008, for example.
This is true of the tea partiers was well as the snake handlers. They will all come together like sheep and vote Puke.
Forgive the OT but may I say:
GO BIG BLUE!
(That is all)
I think you’re dead on with that. The GOP have blatantly become corrupt. They have held to none of their stated ideals once they have been voted into office. The Tea Party is a push against this corruption. They are demanding results in line with their ideals, which are most closely aligned with libertarianism. As a libertarian, I am hoping this blows up the GOP.
I also think you’re right on this. Congress and the administration have not held to their mandate from the last election. If they had, I don’t think you would see a Tea Party right now. Instead we are on the edge of getting health care “reform” that is redistribution of wealth from poor to the wealthy (something for libertarians and progressives to hate!), and we’re still in the wars we were promised would end. It’s going to be a bloodbath for incumbents come November.
If this thing has any legs, there would be a third party come out of this. I think you would see libertarian leaning republicans and blue dog democrats merging as a major force in Congress.
This tension has been the issue all along, no?
Social conservative leaders had influence when Rove et al found ways to use their values to trick people into voting for Republicans. It had a good run, but it stopped working.
As far as I can tell, the Tea Party thing started as a collection of random reasons to hate Obama. Then they grabbed on to the economic/fiscal issues (taxation, government spending, etc) as a way to trick people into voting for Republicans.
Why is Perkins even remotely surprised by his loss of influence?
That’s interesting. I consider myself conservative/independant and on last election day I voted for Obama because he said the right things that McCain and Barr didnt.
You are right though. Whether I intended to or not, I did vote for Puke.
There’s a WHOLE lotta shakin’ goin’ on in the Right Wingisphere.
For example,Dobson,of Focus on the Family ,has very recently been “replaced” with a younger, more “politically correct” leader.
Dobson himself is beginning a new radio show,btw.
But, Dobson and Perkins are no doubt still on the same page.
Please note Perkins Louisiana allegiances to Woody Jenkins,David Vitter and Morton Blackwell, a Louisianian,head of the Leadership Institute.
An excellent site for a lot of background on Perkins, and his confederates, is Right WIng Watch.
There was a great deal of info on the EW teabugger threads ,a month or so ago about Perkins ,and his political background.
707!
If I am not mistaken, the Leadership Institute was one of the SPONSORS of the Tea Party Convention.
I always said that once the teabaggers had served their purpose,i.e.,in brewing up some controversy, they would be squeezed and discarded.
???
Jim White has a fresh cross-post on the front page: Central Command: McChrystal Does Have Command Authority Over Detainee Operations Unit
707 = LOL so hard fell onto back
I find Tony Perkins’ comments and this post interesting. Some members of my rightwing fundie extremist family (as in family of origin, not “The Family,” although my biological family are also involed with them) have been participating in several teabagger rallies, town halls and protests, including the Glenn Beck/Fake “Nooz” sponsored 9/12 rally in Wash DC.
They seem to be able to be both a teabagger AND a fundie, and in fact, I’ve heard them muttering about being John Birch liberatarians (shudder).
So, this is an interesing nugget of news, and I’ll have to see what happens over time with my family members. I try to stay far away from politics with them, but things eventually filter through my one neice.
I find this interesting also, but Perkins is just beating on the faultlines that already existed within the TP. The greatest asset that the TP ever had was its decentralized, seemingly uncontrollable nature. Now that the rifts are becoming more visible, TPers will (should) choose their factions (9/12ers, Paulistas, ashamed GOPers, nativists and racists, others) and the monied interests will re-focus their efforts on smaller groups.
Watch for the groups that turn away the money. Assuming that common ground can be found, they will be the only groups worthy of progressive outreach.
Joseph A. Palermo: Erik Prince and the Council for National Policy …Oct 2, 2007 … Blackwater founder Erik Prince defended all of his company’s actions in Iraq to … Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Ralph Reed. …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/erik-prince-and-the-counc_b_66839.html – Cached
MediaMouse: Grand Rapids Progressive Left News Blog » Family …The Family Research Council’s current president, Tony Perkins, is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s … Erik Prince, the Holland-born founder of Blackwater USA, …
http://www.mediamouse.org › … › The Right in West Michigan › Organizations – Cached
Interestingly enough, most of the leadership at Blackwater is also Catholic, albeit a conservative wing of the church that is quite reactionary. Erik Prince is personally connected to conservative Catholic groups like Catholic Answer, Crisis magazine, and a Grand Rapids-based group, the Acton Institute. But Prince has not abandoned his Protestant/Evangelical roots and is a close friend of Watergate criminal turned believer Chuck Colson. According to Jeremy Scahill, Prince is aligning himself with a new Catholic/Evangelical alliance called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” The ECT manifesto states:
“The two communities in world Christianity that are most evangelistically assertive and most rapidly growing are Evangelicals and Catholics.”
From Blackwater to Xe, the Templar CrusadeJan 10, 2010 … From Blackwater to Xe, the Templar Crusade. Mercenary soldiers and security personnel for the US government. by Michael Carmichael …
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16878 – Cached
Note: Who needs the teabaggers when you have Blackwater and the Catholic Church?
Good catch, Peter.
Yep, the “fiscal” (Ron Paul) and “social” (Palin/Lieberman) conservatives don’t trust each other, and line up on the opposite sides of civil liberties, corporatism and interventionism. I can imagine the “socials” that can’t penetrate the the tea party “in crowd” are growing more bitter by the day.
People often make the mistake of lumping them all together. They’re not the same thing, and as you rightly say, those divisions are potentially fierce.
Peter?
Their are three major factions of the gop. The evangelicals, as represented by this tony perkins/Mike Huckabee. The neocons, as represented by Palin/Bachman/Dick Armey, and the Libertarians as represented by Ron Paul. They are all josling for control of the tea party. Neocons generally win because they are the funders. They funded the convention. It was started by the Libertarian wing, who are definately enemies of the neocon wing. Unfortunately its stated agenda was so vague and broad it could be easily coopted by the very people they oppose.
The fundies are ticked at the GOP for not banning teh gay and abortion–and they really never liked McCain. They love Palin, though, who doesn’t appear viable in the general.
Romney is the neocon/corporatist favorite, but since he
belongs to a cultisn’t an evangelical and flip-flopped on abortion, he’s not a fundie favorite.So again they have an imperfect candidate in 2012.
Chimpy really threaded the fundie-neocon-corporatist needle brilliantly.
Agreed. The Democrat/Republican political duopoly is well on it way to being universally despised by the citizens.