Sunday, April 25, 2010

Tea Party : Militant Faction of Republican Party

Newt Gingrich: Tea Party Will Become “Militant” Faction of Republican Party

Neocons hate the Tea Party almost as much as Democrats and liberals. And that is why the neocon and potential Republican presidential candidate New Gingrich called the Tea Party militant the other day.

The Tea Party movement, said Gingrich while speaking at an event in York County, Pennsylvania, is a “natural expression of frustration with Republicans and anger at Democrats,” which is “more likely to end up as the militant wing of the Republican Party” than a third party. ...

Darryl Herbertz, of Moorseville, Ind., displays his tattoo with the text of the Second Amendment, along with other images of protest during a Tea Party rally outside the Statehouse in Indianapolis April 15, 2010.

Darryl Herbertz, of Moorseville, Ind., displays his tattoo with the text of the Second Amendment, along with other images of protest during a Tea Party rally outside the Statehouse in Indianapolis April 15, 2010.




Oklahoma House passes bill outlawing militias and gang recruiting


Recruiting membership in an unauthorized militia or the Ku Klux Klan would be a crime if legislation approved Thursday by the House of Representatives becomes law.

"This is making unauthorized militias illegal,” said Rep. Mike Shelton, the amendment’s author.

Both groups were added in an amendment to Senate Bill 2018, which would increase the penalty for aiding or soliciting gang membership from one year in prison to five years in prison. It also would create a new crime for gang-related offenses as a condition of membership, with the penalty being five years in prison. ...

... Shelton’s amendment was filed about a week after news reports indicated some in Oklahoma tea party groups supported a volunteer militia to help defend the state’s sovereignty against federal government infringement. Several tea party leaders later said they had been talking about reinstituting a state guard, which would help with emergencies and would be under the direction of the governor and Legislature.

Shelton’s amendment defines an unauthorized militia as a group not recognized nor authorized by the commander-in-chief of the state’s militia.


Newt, the Tea Party Is Already the Militant Arm of the GOP

Newt Gingrich prophesies that the Tea Party will become the militant arm of the GOP. I've got news for Newt: it already is. Dick Armey saw the opportunity to exploit the brand of a moderate Libertarian political initiative and took it. The only thing heard from Libertarians since has been through the equivocal musings of Ron Paul about the fringe elements of the Tea Party. Congressman Paul, the fringe of which you speak is 50% of your number. It is also the most visible part, as no doubt intended by Dick Armey.

What does Dick Armey get from his investment in buses and websites and consultants? He gets a disposable brand name that can insulate the GOP from the excesses that a militant arm of a political party might undertake. He gets deniability and distance and expendability. You are expendable Tea Party. And Newt ought to keep his mouth shut.

The social conservatives that have expropriated the Tea Party give it, through their media visibility, the appearance of a racist, religio-capitalist and militaristic movement. The other half of the Tea Party are simply concerned about money, deficits and responsible government, as is their icon Ron Paul. The GOP base component, supporters of Sarah Palin as a political figurehead, exhibit the classic symptoms of GOP social conservative adherents. They are incapable of making any sense and don't care if they do. Libertarians, by contrast, are as sober and thoughtful as a county judge; they are persons you can have a conversation with and not feel the need to bring a firearm along to defend your point.

The GOP base is a lazy bunch with animal cunning, unwilling to do the real work of constructing and communicating a coherent economic or budgetary policy since Reagan. The fact that Reagan's policies were only semi coherent in detail and totally failed systemically, and spectacularly, has reduced the GOP political argument to "the gubmit sucks." Admittedly, it would be hard to construct a political argument that would loose the vastly wealthy to gorge on the public like hyenas on the sick and weak of a wildebeest herd. ...



Tea Party the new front in 'war on terror'

... For a long time, Tea Partiers were racists. Everybody knows that when you say "I'm becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending" that that's old Jim Crow code for "Let's get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson." Frank Rich of The New York Times attempted to diversify the Tea Party racism into homophobia by arguing that Obamacare opponents were uncomfortable with Barney Frank's sexuality. I yield to no one in my discomfort with Barney Frank's sexuality but, with the best will in the world, I find it hard to blame it for more than the first four or five trillion dollars of federal overspending. Eschewing such cheap slurs, Time's Joe Klein said opposition to Obama was "seditious," because nothing says sedition like citing the U.S. Constitution and quoting Thomas Jefferson. Unfortunately for Klein, thanks to "educator" William Ayers' education reforms, nobody knows what "seditious" means anymore.

So enough with all the punch-pulling about seditious racist homophobes. ...



Militia proponents don't understand law


Tea party leaders in Oklahoma and conservative members of the Oklahoma legislature are considering the creation of a state militia to fight federal initiatives imposed on their state (“Oklahoma tea party, legislators consider forming militia,” April 13).
These leaders have cited the Second Amendment as authorization for a militia.

It seems that their understanding of the Constitution in general, and the Second Amendment specifically, is very limited. Article II, section 2 of the Second Amendment states that the president is named commander in chief, not just of the Army and Navy, but also of the various states’ militias.

The Tennessee legislature is already embarking on efforts to challenge federal law. In the event Tennessee lawmakers think militias are a good idea, they should look up the definition of sedition, be careful what they wish for and actually read the Constitution before embarking on efforts that waste taxpayers’ money.



Gun-toting protesters voice violent thoughts peacefully

They came in camouflage and ammunition vests, carrying AK-47s slung over their shoulders and pistols in their hip holsters. They were in Northern Virginia, on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, to stand on federal land and to voice violent thoughts. ...

... The 19th of April has acquired a unique mythology of resistance and violence: the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, the sacking of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Now the date has a new significance as the moment when the militia movement went from the blogs and the backwoods, mustered across the river from the capital, and invited the world's media to come in and hear its warnings. ...

... And the participation was weak; by the time the rally moved from Fort Hunt to Gravelly Point Park near National Airport in the afternoon, the 75 gun carriers were easily outnumbered by a journalistic mob that included representatives from Switzerland, France and Ireland.

Springtime for Militia

Gun nuts from around the country converge upon the murder capital of the nation, Washington, D.C.

... They’ve come for one of two rallies to be held in and around the nation’s capital today, April 19, a date that has become emblematically explosive in American history. In addition to it being Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts — an honorarium for colonists who set off the Revolutionary War — it’s also become the September 11 of domestic terrorism. On that morning in 1993, following an FBI siege on his Waco, Texas, compound, cult leader David Koresh orchestrated the largest tandem suicide in US history. Exactly two years later, in cockeyed memoriam of that tragedy, Timothy McVeigh massacred 168 people in Oklahoma City. ...

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