Just Not That Into You - The Radical Left Studies the Tea Party Movement

The progressive left got together last week to "make sense" of the Tea Party movement.  The conference took place last week at Berkley.  Fractures, Alliances, and Mobilizations: Emerging Analyses of the Tea Party Movement was conducted by an academic group from The Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements.  The group performing this study included one of the authors of the NAACP's report on racism within The Tea Party movement, David Weigel, the "conservative" disgraced blogger who was fired from The Washington Post, a reporter from the left leaning San Francisco Chronicle, and lefty academics. 


Wow, I am sure that this was a fair and balanced view of the movement.  Within the audience they had about four or five people that actually have been to a tea party.  So, they get a bunch of people together in a room to talk about a movement that they couldn't be bothered to show up at to discuss the causes of the movement.  That seems like a very scholarly way to go about understanding it doesn't it? 


The meme was about was expected; RAAACISM with a dose of fear thrown in for good measure.  Some didn't understand why the Tea Partiers understood Alinsky's Rules for Radicals better than many on the left did.  Hmm, that is a simple answer; we are doing our research.  The left simply cannot accept the fact that we are not just a bunch of hicks that can't stand the black man in The White House.  They were throwing out quotes from Newt Gingrich to show that this movement needs to be stopped.  Well, I have news for you, The Tea Party isn't exactly enamored with Newt and his party before principle stances he takes in many instances, so that was a waste of time. 


One of the reasons that the left is having such a hard time understanding this movement is due to the belief that they are the only ones who have principles.  It is an arrogance that is keeping them from seeing anything other anger and racism as the answers to why people have joined this movement in droves.  While I will agree that there is fear involved, but the fear that we feel is based on what is being done to our children's ability to reach "The American Dream".  I will also concede that we are angry, but again that anger is misrepresented.  We are angry that the government is over-reaching and trying to control our personal lives and limit the choices that we can make for ourselves and our families. 


They spent time over-reaching the meaning of a poll that shows:

"If you look across the board here, true skeptics of the Tea Party, 49 percent agreed with the proposition that blacks ought to work their way up without any special favors," says Parker. "But if you look at the true believers, that goes to 92 percent. This is another indicator of racism, right: Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. Forty-five percent of true skeptics disagree with this; almost 80 percent of true believers disagree with this."

The problem with this data is the fact that you are polling polar opposites only.  There are plenty of people that are in the middle; people that agree with certain aspects of the Tea Party principles and disagree with others.  It also is looking at questions based on race, the Tea Party looks at the issues for all Americans, not just race based questions.  While I certainly can't speak for the entire Tea Party, but as for myself, I don't think that we should be giving "special favors" to anyone.  We should be giving equal opportunities to everyone, and the individual will make the choice about what they are going to do with that opportunity.  The need for affirmative action was necessary forty years ago, the playing field was so uneven that we needed to try and level it.  All these decades later we have done that, the best that we can; a woman is third in line to the Presidency of the United States, and we have a black man as President of the United States.  We need to judge people based on character.  The right understands what the left never will; life is not fair and the government can't make it so, we have to deal with the good and the bad that life throws at us and do the best that we can.  When life knocks you down, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on.  That's life. 

The biggest problem is that the radical left doesn't know what to do with a mobilized right.  They actually discussed having the tea party jailed.  The right has spent far too much time preaching to the choir and not enough time making their voices heard.  So now that we have, the panic is setting in.  They are setting up centers to "study" us.  Well, study all you like, you have never gotten it and never will.  We believe in individualism, something that the left will never understand.  They continue to blame to the Tea Party  for their radical agenda not being passed.  What they don't understand is that their belief system is not what the American people want.  We are a center right country, we always have been and that will not be changing anytime soon.  They can study all they like, it won't change the fact that they just don't get it; The American people are just not that into you.