How to Discreetly Feed The Beast

[paft.livejournal.com]

Recently, Eric Cantor provided a textbook example of how the GOP has been countenancing (and therefore encouraging) extremist rhetoric while pretending not to countenance (and therefore encourage) extremist rhetoric.

Right Wing Heritage Foundation Speech 5/4/10

Audience member at Heritage Foundation: My question is – and this is something I personally don’t understand…. in light of what Obama has done to leave us vulnerable, to cut defense spending, to make us vulnerable to our outside enemies, to slight our allies. How…what would he have to do differently to be defined as a domestic enemy?”

(Laughter and applause from audience.)



Eric Cantor (smiling, after waiting for the claps to die down) Listen, let me respond very forthright to that. No one thinks that the president is a domestic enemy. (boos) It is important, it is important, it is important for us to remember, we have the freedom of discourse in this country. And the president’s policies, the administration’s priorities, in my opinion, do not reflect the common sense conservative traditions on which the greatness of this country was built…

Here, Cantor makes a statement that’s been demonstrated to be untrue in the seconds before he made it, and is again demonstrated to be untrue by the audience reaction after he makes it.

“No one thinks the president is a domestic enemy.”

No one? Someone just said he did -- and a bunch of other people just applauded him for it.

A “forthright response” would be to say, “No, the president is not a domestic enemy merely because we disagree with his policies.”

But Cantor just couldn't say that. He knew being that "forthright" might have gotten him booed off the stage by those "no ones" who've been incited by the inflammatory rhetoric the GOP has been banking and encouraging for twenty years.

Comments

[paft.livejournal.com]

Yes, I talked to people.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

And? What was the extent of your conversation?

Here's a Democrat interviewed at a Tea Party event. Even he can see that some of the things the government is doing a wrong and at least he can be civil about it:

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

Ignore paft. That's what she does to pretty much anything that does not fit in her narrow worldview.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I spoke to several people.

One was a woman carrying a handful of signs urging everybody to read Ayn Rand and denouncing taxation as theft. (Interestingly enough, she'd come into the city by way of tax-supported BART.)

Another was a woman who, after I asked her what she thought people who can't afford life-saving treatments like dialysis should do, took a deep breath and launched into what seemed to be a memorized rant about the Declaration of Independence, and how it meant she didn't have to pay for deadbeats. The more she talked, the angrier she got at me, until finally she she denounced me as an "infiltrator" and marched away.

I approached a man and a woman who were holding a sign about Obama destroying the constitution. When I asked them about Bush's inroads into the constitution and whether they'd come out to demonstrate during his administration, the woman barked "I don't want to talk about that" and another woman who'd come with them sort of pushed me away by stepping in between us and nudging me hard with her shoulder. Since she seemed intent on escalating this into a shoving match, I left.

At the Ron Paul table I was told that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been a "fascist." Don't know whether I should count them as "tea partiers," though. Around them were standing several of the Tea Party security types holding up signs pointing at them, and denouncing them as "infiltrators."

Another guy wearing a shirt with Martin Luther King Jr. on it told me proudly that King had been a Republican. We got into a polite argument about this.

I watched the speeches. They were pretty much of a muchness, led off by one of our local nutcases, Melanie Morgan, an especially venomous right wing talk-radio star who's remembered mainly for talking about electrocuting the editors at the New York Time. The rest were pretty much the same, all about how we mustn't give up our guns, and Obama was intent on destroying the country. The only exception was one guy who tried to talk about the war an Afghanistan and his opposition to it. He was loudly booed, so it was hard to hear a lot of what he was saying.

So someone found a Democrat at a tea party? Sorry, not impressed. You can also find an African American or two, but that doesn't change the fact that Tea Partiers tend to be predominantly white. The fact is that the Tea Party movement is overwhelmingly white, right wing, and Republican.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Ayn Rand lady - It's not wrong to encourage people to read someone's work. Libs do it all the time with Al Gore. Taxation itself isn't so much the problem as over-taxation or taxes w/o just cause. People get especially pissed off (and rightfully so) when Presidents promise no new taxes or no taxes on people within a certain income bracket. It bit Bush Sr. in the behind ("Read my lips...") and it's gonna come back to haunt Obama come 2012.

DoI lady - I don't agree with her. That attitude is cold and heartless. However, I don't think that hard-working people should be responsible for paying for the multiple ambulance rides that the drunk and homeless in NYC take for free just because they want a warm bed and a hot meal. There are shelters for that. I think that government entitlement programs should be a last resort and asking for help from charities should be the first thing that people do. There's nothing wrong with turning to charity when you need help. It's better than becoming a criminal or career welfare recipient.

Obama/Constitution folks - You telling people that their opinion is invalid because they weren't out to protest during other administrations is such bullshit! I could ask the same kind of questions of you. Since Liberals like to whine about this "unnecessary war", where were they when Clinton blew up a harmless Sudanese aspirin factory? Where were they when he was bombing innocent civilians in Kosovo? We can even go further back; where were all the Libs protesting corruption in government when the guy Carter put in charge of drug control policy resigned after it was proved that he'd been writing illegal prescriptions?

Ron Paul types - They may see all the other Presidents as "fascists" because a lot of Ron Paul types are hardcore Libertarians. Most of your Tea Party people are Conservative - Moderate Republicans (if some believe the latter exist). I don't know enough about the history of our Presidents to say what I believe on the subject.

MLK guy - He has his facts skewed. King Sr. was a lifelong registered Republican who endorsed Nixon. King Jr. never gave an endorsement for Nixon and campaigned mostly for Democrats. Could have been a failure in communication between the two of you.

The Tea Party may be comprised of mostly white, right wing types but that doesn't mean that the group isn't inclusive. There are people from all walks of life at events. Most of what you posted was negative and I honestly don't think you went to the event with an open mind. Maybe you should try that next time. Leave your one-sidedness at the door.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Whether or not you agree with these folks is beside the point. The point is that the Tea Party I attended was NOT non-partisan. Anyone who deviated from the rather narrow right wing viewpoint of these people got called out as an "infiltrator" or booed.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

The point is that the Tea Party I attended was NOT non-partisan.

So you're judging the entire group based on one event? Does that mean that the next time there's an anti-war protest with people calling the troops "war criminals", we can judge every Left-leaning person based on that? Super! Thanks for clarifying!

[paft.livejournal.com]

No. I'm judging the tea party movement from the tea parties I attended, along with the statements from tea party websites, comments from self-identified tea-partiers, youtube videos, and the signs I see waved at tea party protests.

You earlier claimed that I did not seem to have an interest in engaging with people who disagree with me. God knows what you based that on. I post my essays here for the very reason that I expect to get some level of push-back on them that I won't get on the liberal blog where they are first published. If I were not interested in debating people with differing political viewpoints, I'd spend all my time at Daily Kos or Democratic Underground.

The fact is, I do make a point of speaking with people who disagree with me, either offline or on. (Something which, as you may have noticed, bothers the H*ll out of people like Gunsinger.) That's why I went to both of the Tea Parties I've seen here in San Francisco -- to see or myself. That's why I read right wing blogs -- and sometimes comment on them, and frequently debate the people there.

So no, my view of the tea party movement, and the right wing in general, does not come from merely reading liberal websites or watching news coverage. It's from talking to people. People who disagree with me.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

You don't bother me. I laugh at you, that you think merely talking to someone who disagrees with you, when you don't absorb any of the information they present to you or even consider their disagreements to be valid.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Suuuuure, gunslinger. That's why you flutter around the threads I participate in, burping out meaningless phrases and waving your hands ineffectually.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

So, you talked only to the people who were obviously advertising themselves as being conservatives (or at least not left-leaning) and you couldn't find a Democrat. How surprising.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Well, pretty much every tea partier was carrying or wearing something to indicate they were conservative. The only people I saw carrying UNconservative signs were being denounced as "infiltrators."