Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: Texas Tea Wrecks?

Tags:

Found on the Internets …



A series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of material

~

Tea Party Might Just Fizzle In Ted Cruz’s Texas

For Texas tea partiers, Tuesday’s primary might just be a grim day. Tea party candidates running in federal elections this cycle have struggled to get a foothold in the Lone Star state as the movement turns five.

The best example of the fizzle is one-time conservative favorite Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), who’s run such an incompetent campaign against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that even other tea party groups have turned against him.

Maybe arming fetuses is not as popular as Stockman thought it would be?

~

Rudderless Tea Party Searches For Meaning Five Years On

WASHINGTON: Several hundred die-hard Tea Party activists Thursday found themselves sandwiched between a much larger convention of chiropractors and the annual fly-in lobbying convention of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Held at a Washington Hyatt, the fifth anniversary event for the Tea Party Patriots was a far cry from the halcyon days of 2009 when tens of thousands of conservatives descended on Washington for a Tea Party rally.

But more than sheer numbers was missing from Thursday’s event: The day lacked either a single leader or issue to rally around. While Obamacare may have birthed the movement, it no longer motivates the Tea Party, if Thursday’s lineup was any evidence.[…]

Bachmann used her off the cuff speech to hit everything from the rise of China to the budget. Bachmann, who will retire at the end of this year, even warned the movement to not “take your marbles and go home” simply because of their 2012 electoral defeat.

Rep. Steve King, one of the early adopters of the Tea Party mantle, took a more philosophical approach, arguing the movement is about securing the fundamentals of Western culture like “liberty” and “free markets.” […]

Indeed, the only thread that ran through the day was the idea that the Tea Party can still wield power in the next election. At one point a Tea Party Patriots official took the stage to announce the group had raised more than $1.1 million over the last 10 days, announcing, “Let’s show those establishment people and the permanent political class we mean business and we don’t need their money, ’cause we gots our own!”

Bachmann’s calls for the gavel of Harry Reid got polite applause, but the biggest cheers – and the fact that Republicans should be most concerned about – came when Rep. Tim Huelskamp called for the forcible end to Speaker John Boehner’s leadership.

~

More …

~


5 Reasons Paul Ryan Is In A Budget Jam

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) muscled his signature budget blueprint through the House of Representatives for three straight years, basking in praise from the right and weathering criticism from the left for attempting to privatize Medicare and slash social programs.

This year, the budget chief faces a swath of competing pressures that give him little room to maneuver, and unprecedented divisions within his Republican conference that may leave him with no viable option but to ditch the project.

~

GOP finally goes too far on Obamacare: Why the 50th repeal vote is not the charm

And, yes, this week, House Republicans will again vote to delay the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate for a year – or, more specifically, to reduce its penalty in 2014 to $0.

But this slightly lazy shorthand obscures the significant fact that Republicans will decidedly not be voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act in toto this week, and probably never will again.

We saw this coming long, long before the initiation of the law’s core benefits. Prior to this year, voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act was a freebie. A statement without real meaning, but which nevertheless appeased wild-eyed reactionaries on the right. Now it comes with a cost. Now it’s a statement of intent to annul millions of people’s healthcare benefits.

~

Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 37 Comments

37 comments

  1. JanF

    But the fact that “repeal Obamacare” is not going to be able to be a rallying cry certainly took the wind out of their sails. Now they are left with “protecting Western values”:  code for “pushback against the Kenyan Usurper in the White House”.

    You can’t really build a national party that way.

  2. JanF

    Dems Fear Anti-Obamacare, Pro-Impeachment Candidate Could Win Nod For Senate Seat

    National Democrats are worried that a candidate who has called for Obama’s impeachment and to repeal Obamacare will win the party’s nomination to face Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the general election for Texas Senate.

    The Hill reported Monday that Democrats are “scrambling” to prevent Kesha Rogers, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche, from getting the nomination. The fear has some grounding.

    A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll last month found that Rogers has 35 percent support in the Democratic primary while dentist David Alameel gets 27 percent and attorney Maxey Scherr gets 15 percent. If no candidate can get more than 50 percent support there’s a runoff between the top two candidates in May.

    Apparently she also has taken to drawing Hitler mustaches on images of President Obama. Her entry in this race as a Democrat is surely and act of vandalism.

    I suppose she is running as a Democrat because there are already too many crazies on the right. But it is troubling that she is allowed to get on the Democratic Party primary ballot.  

  3. JanF

    Smartypants had a good post about how the national press and pundits are trying to tuck this into what they seem to know, the Cold War, when it does not really resemble that.

    The Cold War legacy of “leading from behind”

    I’m as caught up in the events unfolding in Ukraine as any other political junkie. But to be really honest, I think this is a terribly complex situation and I’m willing to embrace the fact that – on this one – there are things I simply don’t understand. So I’m going to avoid any predictions about what will happen or advice about what the President should/shouldn’t do.

    As folks seem intent on seeing the events in Ukraine as a resurgence of the Cold War, Tanehaus suggests that doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it does.

       

    That image of a chessboard – an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy – has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

    Tanehaus goes on to provide specific examples of presidential actions that were decried as “weak-willed” in their day, but which history has recorded as “farsighted, tactical brilliance.”

  4. Diana in NoVa

    That Paul Ryan creature’s photo was in the WaPo this morning along with an article about his “bludgeon”–oh, wait, I mean “budget.”

    Dear GODDESS, that man is a creep!  I hope his “budget” goes nowhere fast.

    As for the Tea Party, I resent their appropriation of that once-delightful phrase, “tea party.” I am training my little granddaughter and great-nephew in the proper way to take tea. Miss Pink Cheeks has her own tiny teapot, cup, and saucer.

    If Cruz “cruzes” to defeat this icy Tuesday in Texas, that will be a huge reason to celebrate the demise of the Tea Party. Perhaps even the Mad Hetters will be vanquished! We don’t need any more anti-GLBT people cluttering up the scenery.

                                                                                                                                                                                     

  6. Portlaw

    Only 18% say that the US has any responsibility to protect Ukraine, while 46% say that the US does not. Support for helping to protect Ukraine is higher among Republicans (26%) than among Democrats (13%) but just under half of both groups say that the US has no responsibility to defend Ukraine

    .

    http://today.yougov.com/news/2…

  9. JanF

    DeMint: ‘I’ve Never Been A Part Of A Tea Party In My Life’

    Heritage Foundation chief Jim DeMint, often considered the face of the Tea Party, on Tuesday distanced himself from the movement.

    “I’m really not involved with it at all, and I’m not involved with Senate elections,” DeMint told Wall Street Journal Live’s Mary Kissel when she asked why Tea Party candidates were behind in primary races. “What we’re doing is trying to cultivate the right ideas.”

    HAHAHAHAHA!!  

  10. JanF

    North Carolina’s Toxic Future

    A dystopian nightmare is unfolding in North Carolina. It is what the whole country would look like if you were to marry David Koch to Ted Cruz, with a prenup by ALEC, the outside agitator also known as the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is the group that writes regressive laws, saving right-wingers the trouble of having to do it themselves.

    Republicans in North Carolina took over both houses of the legislature with the election of Governor Pat McCrory in 2012, the first time the party has had complete control of state government in more than 100 years.

    They went straight to work. If the Republicans were to inscribe their philosophy above the statehouse door it would read: “Let us seek to deregulate business and regulate everyone else.”

    This is the part that should make everyone pause … and then redouble efforts to hold lawmakers accountable:

    In the meantime, McCrory was doing what he could to remove regulations on business so they could do pretty much what they wanted. It usually takes a while to see what happens when business are allowed to conduct unfettered business, but not in North Carolina.

    According to the New York Times, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources was ordered in June to focus on customer service — expediting environmental permits for businesses.

    The results were quickly apparent. In February, as many as 27 million gallons of water and 82,000 tons of coal ash spewed into the Dan River after a storm drainage pipe ruptured under a containment pond at a shuttered coal plant owned by Duke Energy Corp.

    Last year, operating under their new business-friendly mandate, state environmental regulators forged a deal with Duke over pollution from its coal ash ponds, which were known to be leaky and unlined. Critics said the deal was overly favorable to Duke, where McCrory worked for 28 years until he ran for governor in 2008. Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the spill that will look at the company’s possible ties to the state regulator.

  11. JanF

    Ukraine: From Breadbasket To Basket Case

    On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry strolled through the Kiev square where protesters recently ousted Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych. Kerry promised $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. The International Monetary Fund is also contemplating a loan package.

    Why are so many offering so much to Ukraine, a land that’s struggled economically, is dominated by a handful of oligarchs and is notorious for corruption?

    As one of the largest countries in Europe, Ukraine’s size and its geography mean an economic collapse could inflict pain throughout the broader region and beyond. World markets got a taste Monday when they abruptly turned south, though many rallied Tuesday.

    ~

    Putin’s Press Conference Proved Merkel Right: He’s Lost His Mind

    In Sunday’s New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: He served in the KGB in East Germany, where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

       

    Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.

    If you weren’t sure of the veracity of that little reportorial nugget, all doubt should’ve vanished after Putin’s press conference today.

    ~

    Why Much Of What You’ve Read About Ukraine Isn’t Quite Right, As Explained By Ukrainians

    Though protests had been raging in the capital city of Kyiv and cities across Ukraine since November, the eyes of the world turned sharply toward the former Soviet republic at the end of February when then-president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin decided to directly insert himself in his neighbor’s internal turmoil. Citing an imminent danger to Russians living in the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea, Putin sought permission from Russia’s parliament to send military forces into Ukraine. As of Monday, Ukrainian officials said 16,000 Russian troops were in Ukraine and in a Tuesday press conference from his Moscow home, Putin said they “reserve the right to use all means to protect” Russian citizens in Ukraine, but denied having sent Russian forces there.

    With all of the speculation regarding Russia’s motives and endless posturing over what’s in Ukraine’s best interest, the perspectives of those that matter most, actual Ukrainians, seem to get lost along the way. “The radical voices are always the loudest,” said Olga, a native of Sevastopol, Crimea who moved to the U.S. in 2007. “I wish there were some moderate voices in between that would be heard.”

Comments are closed.