IS THE "TEA PARTY" REALLY A POPULIST MOVEMENT?

dyslexia wrote:

let's be a little more honest here folks, Obama and the Dems are every bit as much in the pockets of "big money" as are the Repubs.

Oh, I think it's fair to say 'slightly less.' A simple examination of the money streams shows that they flow with far less impedance to Republican causes.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

dyslexia wrote:

let's be a little more honest here folks, Obama and the Dems are every bit as much in the pockets of "big money" as are the Repubs.

Oh, I think it's fair to say 'slightly less.' A simple examination of the money streams shows that they flow with far less impedance to Republican causes.

Cycloptichorn

this I guess is where we part ways Cyclo. myth = the dems represent the working class. myth = the repubs represent small business. both parties equally represent big money, from the AFL-CIO to Goldman Sachs are found the owners of our Congress.

An examination of the actual streams of money - actual amounts spent on political causes by either unions or so-called Big money - shows that Republicans are recipients of this to a far greater degree.

And you will note that I said 'slightly less.' It isn't as if I don't agree that the Dems are also beholden to business interests, of course they are. But not to the degree that the Republican party is.
Cycloptichorn

Besides, anyone who thinks o'donnell actually matriculated at Oxford deserves to have her as Senator.

A pretty weak response given the categorical nature of the charge.

Perhaps you would like to offer us some proof.

The Tea Party is an internet social network based political group

Despite all the heated rhetoric and intemperate accusations, you forgot to address the issue. Do you really assert that Dewmocrat campaign spending is significantly less than Republican in the current campaign?

In the last week, Republican-leaning groups outspent their Democratic counterparts on television by more than seven to one on Senate races and nearly four to one on House races across the country, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.

On the contrary, I made explicit reference to the many off the books ways of funding campaigns, and the difficulty in getting reliable comparative data. However, it was you, not me, who made the (still unproven) categorical assertion that the Republicans have more money at their disposal.

We are all waiting anxiously for your "proofs".

Hmmm... I thought Gore was a better choice. So did as many people as voted for Bush, maybe more. I honestly think we would have been better off with Gore. Bush II may not have been your choice, but he was your party's choice. I agree, fear had a lot to do with both elections.

As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy.

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Something else has changed, too: increasingly, Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O’Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there’s not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.

As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

snip

So think of those paychecks to Sarah Palin and others as smart investments. After all, if you’re a media mogul, it’s always good to have friends in high places. And the most reliable friends are the ones who know they owe it all to you. MORE

Fox is more successful than anyone else in the game, and the country is moving right.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven't changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.) The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense.

Experts say these laws represent the latest wave in the country’s gun debate, as the gun lobby seeks, state by state, to expand the realm of guns in everyday life.

The rulings, which overturned handgun bans in Washington and Chicago, have strengthened the stance of gun rights advocates nationwide. More than 250 lawsuits now challenge various gun laws, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, called for guns to be made legal on campuses after a shooting last week at the University of Texas, Austin, arguing that armed bystanders might have stopped the gunman.