Associated Press
We talked recently about the Republican Main Street Partnership, a Washington-based group that has promoted moderate GOP lawmakers and policies, engaging in some rebranding. After discovering that there aren't any Republicans left in the center, the group dropped the "R" word and became simply the Main Street Partnership.
They're not the only one feeling the need to undergo a name change (via Jillian Rayfield).
The South Florida Tea Party -- the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run -- is shedding the words "tea party" as it undergoes a name change.
"We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name 'tea party' and we can't control," said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.
As Tea Party groups go, the South Florida Tea Party was one of the bigger and better organized outfits. It not only propelled Marco Rubio, it also helped elect former Rep. Allen West. When Trump wanted to earn some credibility with right-wing activists, he spent some time in April 2011 with the South Florida Tea Party.
And yet, the group now realizes that the "Tea Party" label seems to do more harm than good.
That's consistent with the available polling evidence, which shows the Tea Party even less popular than Republicans.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked respondents about their attitudes towards various people and institutions, and the results for the Tea Party were abysmal. Just 9% have a "very positive" impression of the so-called movement -- an all-time low -- while 32% have a "very negative impression -- an all-time high. All told, the Tea Party's favorability rating is down to just 23%, which is even lower than the GOP's support and that of the NRA.
Politico added in a report last week, "Many activists have moved on, while others have turned their focus to local and state fights, or become absorbed into the Republican Party. Those that remain are as divided as ever about candidates and strategies. And they mostly lack the cash and the organization to mount serious primary challenges on their own."
If the "movement" still exists, it's gasping for air -- and relevance.
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Have you ever noticed when a Corporation is in trouble they rebrand?
We are raving irrational lunatics . Why don't people like us?
Yes, it's difficult going up against free stuff. Work, responsibility, and prudence don't sell well.
Probably because your spineless moraless jellyfish that care more about special rights for those that prefer deviant sex and providing a living off the backs of American taxpayers for the "employment challenged" and illegal immigrants than for creating American jobs and respecting the Principls of the Constitution and the vision of the founding Fathers?
Shooter you are a bitter old fraud and if you can't come up with anything constructive leave and go back to the latest discussion from the Ayn Rand book club
Speaking of that thought you might want to see this before the next time you decide to go "Galt"
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback?pg=1
Look Shooter and scott w/a bazillion numbers, over there, there, where all those other Americans are, you know, the mass, majority of us who aren't enamored with condemning otherness as undesirables with knee jerk, emotional issues blinding us to the American experience where your sentiments are anathema to a free and liberty-minded people who've signed on to a social compact guaranteeing rights for the individual - yes, even you to spew your intellectual vile!
Now, to address the post - No matter the label on that can of political crazy, once opened, it's still crazy! -Kevo
Right on the money Kevo. You were speaking about the liberals turned progressives weren't you.
WHAT is "progressive" about declaring a person who prefers sex with the same gender to be some kind of "minority"? Or for that matter what is "Progressive" about ignoring American immigration law? What is "Progressive" about raising peoples taxes to allow those who do not wish to work or have the desire to make their own way in life with Health care Bennies from the sweat of their neighbors who have no wish to pay for these deadbeats?
Crazy is Crazy Period and without Liberals and Progressives you wouldn't have one tenth of the things you enjoy everyday in this country. Labor rights, safe food, drink and even air, safe medicine I won't bother to go on, but the alternative to being a "Liberal" is being willfully ignorant of the facts of history, science, philosophy and culture then you can feel "free" to go squat in your dark cave and work on inventing Fire but I and a lot of other people won't be joining you.
Basically...you don't have a decent answer and will sidestep the meaningful questions to continue to support this radical.
My god Dragoon You can't possibly believe that stuff. Please tell me you don't believe that Al Gore invented the internet too.
My God, inspector. You can't possibly believe this stuff. Please tell me that you don't believe that Al Gore CLAIMED that he invented the Internet.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
Inspector
They have these things called "Books" find one and open it
Dragoon21b - you are a bit confused, but your perspective is accurate if you attach it to Liberalism, which is not the same as being liberal!
Progressivism is an early 20th century political movement that caught the imaginations of Democrat and Republican alike - trust busting, national conservation through national park programs Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican progressive as Federal Reserve/ income tax Democrat Woodrow Wilson was!
I am a conservative who will never dilute the importance of Liberalism, but I will not willynilly embrace the lunacy of my liberal friends just as I will not let stand the reactionary crazy of my loved ones! I am an American first, a Republican second, and never a begrudger of industrious others - though never a condemner of those less fortunate than me!
Liberalism is the foundation of a free and liberty-minded people and with it comes a political gambit in which we would do well to nurture moderation instead of extremism - whether it be from gun toting reactionaries or veggan communists! -Kevo
The problem with books is that they tend to follow the leanings of the author. I.E. the rewriting of government school history books ever since the first hippies started graduating from Berkeley.
The problem with conservatives is the lack word comprehension skills so the words in the books they can't understand they make up new meanings for those words which often has them looking rather stupid when they use words they don't understand in posts.
Kevo
You are of course right. I deliberately left out mention of TR and the progressives of that era in the interests of brevity.
I myself am what I think most people would consider a "Moderate" I have a background in Sociology and Public Policy (thanks GI Bill) and full well understand the pitfalls and shortcomings of extremes when it comes to governance (we will leave out economics that's a whole different kettle of fish).
As you said Crazy is Crazy no matter what you call it. I am just tired of intellectually myopic crypto-facists trying to highjack honest debate in order to give vent to their spleen. I feel the same way about the radical left and all the insanity that goes with it and I say that as a survivor of the peoples republic of Berkley
Will you people kindly stop feeding the goddamn trolls? Shooter, Scott, that inspector clown, they don't even believe the bull@!$%# they're shoveling. They're just trying to bait us into paying them attention, and you're giving it to them. If you don't have the willpower to not reply to them, just click the little exclamation point button on the bottom of their posts and put them on ignore.
Oops, looks like the scapegoats got out again. Wow, you
twothree have GOT to get some new memes quick. Nobody is buying your butter-churning bullshet! Let's see, all the old favorites are here; hippies, welfare recipients, sexual devients? Don't worry Scott, even if I am gay married I wouldn't touch you with you mother's dick!(; - )
Great...try sticking your fingers in your ears and humming...then maybe pointing out the insanity of the Liberal agenda...everything from declaring that having sex with the same gender provides "minority" status to you..or perhaps the road to bankruptcy that these social programs have this country facing...yet REFUSING to reform these programs... regardless of the effects on the country as a whole. Liberals.... *sheesh*
Trolls provide a service. Without them our arguments would become just as lazy and idiotic as theirs...My only regret is that we can't get a better quality of troll...I would suggest that maybe we should rent one but unfortunately thanks to FOX I wouldn't have any idea where to find one with the ability to think outside the bubble
^ It must be difficult living with such a massive persecution complex. I'm liberal but I must have missed the agenda. I guess your beef is with entitlements, or is it? Sounds like you have a problem with equal rights? I don't understand you other than you proclaiming homosexuals to be "sexual deviants". That's mighty white of you, still..
It takes the remarkable courage born of ignorance to post what you wrote.
It's hardly surprising that a thread like this would bring out the worst of the worst right-wingers.
Scott, are you willing to try a thought experiment? Use your power of creative thinking to imagine a world where heterosexuals were considered to be the "deviant" (to use your word) people, who were to be shunned, shamed, and legislated against. Unable to marry, vilified in the eyes of the church, treated as second-class citizens. Are you able to do that? If so, now you know what is has been like to be gay.
It should be obvious that Potty is quite sadistic and deliberately wants to cause LGBT people as much pain (figurative and literal) as he can.
Scott, Shooter and Inspector, being loyal Republicans, know they and their party are currently less popular than Gonorrhea (28-14) according to the PPP poll the other week.
TCinLA - you've misread the anathema poll. Gonorrhea is one thing the Republicans polled better than! -Kevo
Well I've posted this before but I guess I have to do it again.
I am not a republican
I don't care who you want to have sex with. (that is a private matter between your partner and yourself)
Sex either hetero,bi, or gay is not something that needs to be taught to elementary school children.
I beleive that laws should be written to solve problems rather than to make the writer's party "feel Better"
I will never be able to understand why the federal government should be able to spend our (and our grandkids) money on foolish programs and private businesses.
I'm not here to piss anybody off (with the exception of TCinLA just because he's a dork)
This blog is not named "People that Agree with Maddow and Benen Blog"
If that is what it is for then change the name
Whatever you call yourself, you are still a bigoted right-wing troll. I'll bet some of your best friends are "knee-grows".
Endoscopyrules
Now who is the bigoted troll?
Why you are, of course, and you know it.
In a similar vein, in the 1930's the National Socialist German Worker's Party decided to "re-brand"- NAZI.
Says the pushover that is fine with a Liberal that has 4 years of economic failure and complete disregard for the Constitution....
Uhhh Scott... where were you between 01-07? Cause it obviously wasn't in this universe
Pre Fannie and Freddie? Telling Bawney Fwank that Fannie WAS NOT Sound, and to hand out loans to people that would/could NEVER pay it back would crash the world economy...and you?
Ahh you must have been the alternative dimension where Wall Street had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the financial crisis...
I was living in this reality where the greedy people who controlled the market were to busy buying unregulated securities and pawning them off on the world and giving themselves bonuses for it...
and I would just love for you to explain to me why if things were so screwed up under the Clinton administration that this "Had to Happen" why the Bush administration did nothing to avert it for 8 years?
By your logic they were either egregiously negligent or criminally incompetent
Pick one
All you have to do is google Fannie/Freddie and attempts WERE made to reform the program. It was a time bomb ready to explode and yet Anthony Weiner and Bawney fwank continued to push it and threaten the banks with lawsuits if they did NOT make these loans which now have made Fannie/Freddie the Second largest bailout recipient behind the banks in which they crashed.
Scott
Just give you a bit of education I suggest you watch this...there will be a test
PBS Frontline: Inside the Meltdown
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/
Those on the right disdain education because they have little or no use for objective reality.
The real question is what happens when "Objective Reality" no longer has any use for them...
There is a school of Greek philosophy that said that there were only so many "Real" people and that most of the others were created by the gods either as window dressing or as obstacles to be overcome...Sort of like The character of Rimmer from Red Dwarf...
I wonder if the Tea Party are really all just smegging holograms? It would explain a lot
They treat their Ideological Soundness/Theological Correctness as if it were objective reality.
Cheers, Entropy & Dragoon --
And so given their distain for objective reality that troll trio enhance our discussions how?
Their well-honed rhetorical skills sharpen our own in exactly what way?
Friends, trolls persist because we feed them. Think back to your last oral exam: were your questioners 2nd graders or professors?
Please, please ignore them and let them go away. You both are more than bright enough to pose pointed and intellectually valid counter-points to our occasionally tired liberal ideas. We don't need pop-gun, scot, and inspector to hone our skills and waste our time.
Peace, y'all.
Oh alright I suppose you're right...it is a bit like poking roadkill with a stick...interesting in a vaguely nauseating way but of no real value...
but I still dislike echo chambers and think they can be detrimental to critical thinking. I just can't or at least don't want to believe that there isn't a single conservative left who isn't either a flaming lunatic or illiterate reactionary.
I know from experience that trolls are bothered by derision, although they can hide it to some extent on the internet. I also know from experience that ignoring them allows them to flatter themselves that people are afraid of them. It is wishful thinking, at best, to believe that ignoring them is some sort of magical solution to the problem that they embody.
OK, Dragoon, Entropy -- your experience is one I can't have, sorta by defintion, so I must respect what you've drawn from it. Mine's just very different. There are a whole passle of smart and articulate folks in this group who disagree intelligently without being juvenile. Trolls seem to me to specialize in the juvenile part. My view is that our particular troll family adds little more than name-calling and fourth-generation talking points. Maybe I'm too old an ol' fart to see their better features, assuming they had any.
Sorry. That was a cheap shot.
And maybe I'm too conscious of the ticking clock to sit quietly by while extraordinarily clear thinkers waste their time (and mine, to some degree) with mental and emotional infants.
So I'll quit preaching and shut up and read, skipping sadly over all the comments addressed to trolls and ignoring the trolls themselves.
Thanks for your responses, guys, and for your continuing generosity to us who read you.
Peace, y'all.
Of course, it wouldn't be necessary to make decisions about trolls if the people who run this site cared whether or not trolls use the threads as a rhetorical toilet.
Hmmm. Entropy, are you suggesting the feather-light touch of our present moderator could be a bit more, um, robust? Judgmental? Authoritarian? Akin to the occasional blood-baths on DailyKos? Maybe I'm not clear what you mean.
Ms. Vargas,
There are plenty of people who are obviously here to spread malicious misinformation, cause trouble, etc. It is also pretty obvious that there are people here who are banned people who have re-registered and/or who have more than one account. Both of those things are supposedly forbidden, but it certainly seems that the staff can hardly bring themselves to enforce those rules. As far as I'm concerned, the staff allows trolls to get away with far more than they should get away with. "Freedom of speech" is not absolute.
"We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name 'tea party' and we can't control,"
"Some of those guys are just too mainstream for us, we can't be lumped in with them" Seriously, how are we to differentiate between the crazy and the insane? The Right can poison a brand by proxy so fast that they're going to have to start making up new meanings for words to...ummm...nevermind.
Uh-oh. A branding iron leaves an indelible scar. Good luck with that.
What they don't understand is they may as well have been branded with an iron. At least to and for some of us.
They use to call themselves NeoCons. We called them Wing Nuts.
Then they banded together and branded themselves the Tea Party. We call them TeaPublicans, TeaBaggers, or whatever personal pejorative.
Now they want to call themselves something else. Well, good luck with that. The odor will remain.
The key paragraph here is the last one. It's not "rebranding" that counts. It's that national money and organization have been re-directed. The Koch Brothers and the other groups that formed the astroturf Tea Party are putting funds into state and local races in other ways. They no longer need large demonstrations like they did against Obamacare. They put funds into GOTV efforts and campaign contributions to ALEC-friendly state legislators and into re-districting for Republican state majorities.
Agreed, the Republicans are fighting at the state and local level. Democrats need to respond and I mean right now. We have to gin up for 2014. Candidates need to be identified and trained. State and local parties have to be reinvigorated. The next election is coming fast.
A good magician keeps your attention focused on one hand, while the other does the trick. So does a pickpocket.
On the one hand, we have the Teaparty. On the other, ALEC.
on one hand, we have a Economy with record welfare and unemployment, but VOILA...on the other we have "Gay rights,Gun grabs and benefits for illegals" you nailed it!
Actually, unemployment is considerably lower than Bush left, and is still improving. There are no gun grabs or benefits for illegals, that's right-wing paranoia about what they secretly hope the Democrats will try. As for Gay rights -- why are you on the Maddow Blog if you hate gays so much?
More Americans out of work NOW than when Bush left office..you are either uneducated or just plain lying. Any attempt to by-pass the Congress to change the second amendment is nothing short of a gun grab by a tyrannical despot. And when granting illegals backdoor amnesty, unintended consequences. And why is asking legitimate questions regarded as an insult? Because you have NO Legitimate answers...and just because you "feel" that you are right on your stance on the Homosexual agenda...you HAVE to have legitimate answers...get it?
Ladies and gentlemen : I present to you , Faux derangement syndrome in all it's glory .
Scott plus 7 must have Faux on the teevee and Rush on an earphone playing at the same time to amalgamate so much factually incorrect BS in one paragraph.
It isn't really derangement. That would mean that they are not responsible for what they do. They do what they do because they are aggressively malicious.
The guy holding the pole reminds me of Jack Benny. Cheap, cheap, cheap; good luck with that branding. However, Jack did a great job in the Wizard of Oz.
"Your assault weapon or your life"
...
"Well? Your assault weapon or your life!"
"I'm thinking it over!"
LOL, thanks for that. Good job!
There needs to be a scratch and sniff pad next to each candidates name. A turd by any other name would smell as bad.
I think the other name would be "Liberal"....
Says the rabidly homophobic Neo-Confederate. Hey Potty, were the nations that became the Confederate States of America justified in seceding?
Tsk, tsk...that should be "were the states that became"/
Gee, think the insanity amongst them had anything to do with their conversion to the light? Only time will tell how these groups "level out" (to moderate", or we've really just lost it)....
Um, okay, let's call ourselve the, uh, Pea Tarty. That'll fool 'em.
It matters little what they call themselves. What does matter is how the media covers their fake grass roots malarkey and phony populism.
Talking about Occupy...or what? Fake "Grass roots" at it's finest....
Potty must live in Bizarro World.
Hey little Scotty, just wanted to thank you for taking time from your busy schedule over in Wacko World, fornicating your sheep, to come over here with the daily demonstration of what a worthless piece of something I scrape off my shoe looks like.
The people who named the tea party think that they are going back to the founding ideals of our republic, which they see as a protest against taxes. If they would read their history they would find that the Boston Tea Party was not a protest against taxes per se but against the Navigatiion acts which stipulated that trade with the English colonies was to be carried on only in British ships as well as against a recent move on the part of the British crown that granted a tax break to a big corporation, The East India Company.
The colonists were protesting the fact that they had to buy tea on the British ships when there was a warehouse full of tea that had come on Dutch ships just down the road.
When the tea party republicans support special tax breaks for the big corporations in the name of so called free markets, they are not following our colonial ancestors.
The man in the picture who is dressed up in the uniform of the Continental Army needs to read his history.
In a time when America is facing record unemployment,Welfare and food stamps...Higher taxes and looming American bankruptcy due to the "Safety net" which is unsustainable...perhaps the Tea party is the last bastion of sanity...
We should cut anyone off SSI Medicare Medicaid if they have an income of over $250000. And All politicians pay for their own healthcare no more handouts! If a politician (works) for 6 years they get a pension! To me this is all wrong! ALL WRONG!
The highest rate of US unemployment for a single month is shared by November and December 1982. (10.8%)
The highest average unemployment for a year was also 1982. (9.7%)
Bingo. It wasn't for a sense of irony, but in the cynical hope of adding to the confusion, that a wealthy few designed, bought and named the astroturf (as opposed to grass roots) Taliban/Teaparty. The colonials rejected tyranny, the rule of the many by a privileged few, as a healthy form of government.
More smoke and mirrors to distract from the old snake oil salesman behind the curtain - "...record unemployment (inaccurate), welfare and food stamps" (because unregulated, unscrupulous individuals crashed our economy for short sighted personal gain), - "... higher taxes..." (as opposed to irresponsibly low revenue streams coupled with trillion dollar wars and corporate welfare).
The US was born of the idea that a burden shared is lighter, problems discussed openly more readily resolved. The idea of one man one vote, equality for all, is meant to insure that we profit from the best of each. You either believe in representative government or you don't.
So that makes your neighbor your keeper? SELF RELIANCE was the founding Fathers intent for this country..NOT Government.
The American Revolution was not about taxes or the tyranny of the few. It was revolt against the King George who steadily stripped the colonists of their rights as Englishmen. There were people in Parliament who were arguing for the colonies to have representation since they were British citizens. But those members of Parliament lost the argument and colonists were excluded from having a political voice. King George along with the support of the wealthy upper class kept taking the colonists rights away from having any voice not only in England, but in their own affairs in the colonies. The tea tax was merely the breaking point for the colonists. Read the litany of complaints in the Declaration of Independence and taxes are a very minor part of that list.
bflynch, thank you for stating this. I've always thought that the Tea Party was ill-named considering their agenda. I don't care for them at all, but find it sad that they could not take the time to remember American history or at least research it before taking that name.
Well, at least it jibes with the whole "the message is fine, we just need to change the way we present it" thing we've been hearing from the right since the election.
Republicans thought the Tea Party target was the Democratic party Oops! May as well just call them what they are now The Traitor Party. Why don't they have Benedict Arnold as their idol? Hang um high!
Imagine...trying to keep the U.S. from becoming a third world country and bankrupting this country with Liberals cradle to grave nanny state programs...The nerve!
Imagine a group of people so utterly out of touch with reality as well as being stupid that they cheer lead the destruction of the economy brought about by the stupidity of the GOP, they call themselves the tea party but reality also showed that to be a lie as they first called themselves tea baggers until they found out why they were being laughed at.
It isn't necessarily a good thing that the TP's are going down. Who will guarantee another Democratic win in the face of right wing stupidity by nominating people like Angle, O' Donnell, Mourdock and Akin? But then there is the takedown of reasonable republicans such as Lugar and Bennett that has caused a fair amount of disaster for the body politic. So it might be a wash that they are spinning down the drain.
Just because they don't call themselves the Tbaggers, doesn't mean they aren't still there and won't vote for the Angles, Akins and Moudocks.
It SHOULD be embarrassing to be a member of a massive tax protest over the lowest tax rates we've had in 60 years. It identifies one as a dimwit.
Well, it seems the "popularity" of the brand has collapsed and that the public is not receptive of their message... We could also say that the Occupy Movement has suffered the same fate... Let's wait for a generation of "Olof Palme Democrats" to rise and change the party when Obama gets out of the scene...