Given all the press coverage the Tea Party received this year, you would have thought a revolution was in the works. The media, always desperate for something to fill the 24 hour news cycle, covered every little twitch, protest sign, and shout in anger of the Tea Party for over a year. Somehow the press was convinced that photos and videos of deranged white people were an audience magnet. Every day, the news looked more and more like the Jerry Springer Show.
And what happened to this revolution? Sharron Angle? Gone. Christine O'Donnell? Gone. Ken Buck? In a dead heat with 85 percent of the vote in a race that should have been a walk. Joe Miller? Kicked to the curb by a write in vote. So much for the revolution.
Had the Republicans put forth center-right candidates instead of Tea Party nutters, they would have won control of the Senate. The Tea Party hurt the Republicans this election. Despite all the hype and press, the Tea Party represents a fringe movement. It's very weak tea.
The screaming people at health care Town Halls and the Glenn Beck gathering on The Mall were a side show. This country remains on average, center-right in its politics. I know it doesn't make for exciting news that people want social services, like Medicare, as well as defense and low taxes, but they do. They also want jobs, which is why they voted for the "other guy" this election. The disconnect between the press hype about anger and right wing rage and the reality of how people actually voted was huge.
Will the press start to get responsible and change from Jerry Springer type coverage of angry white people to real news? Not unless the public says no to the titillation and instead demands to hear information of substance. Ultimately, we get the press we deserve.
Tea Party winners like Paul and Rubio spoke like they were gods in their victory speeches, men with a vision of the dramatic change Americans want. These people are crackpots. There has been no massive political shift in the American public. The public wants an economy that works. They aren't suddenly going to be buying millions of copies of Ayn Rand, demand that Social Security be privatized, and roll back civil rights laws from the 1960s.
If there is still high unemployment in 2012, the public will vote the Republicans they just elected out of office and probably vote out Obama as well. Tea Party, Shmee Party. Just like in every election, it's the economy stupid.
3 comments:
It's also the stupid stupid, since neither the likes of Rand Paul and Marco Rubio nor the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will do anything to fix the economy.
The California results were perhaps more constructive. I'm too far from the situation to assess the likely impact of Prop. 25, but it looks like possibly a step toward sanity.
Prop. 25 will be a big positive thing. That's the good news.
The bad news is I'm really starting to believe that we're looking at a lost decade for the US economy. The public needs to spend to fuel the economy, but their credit lines are already maxed out. Businesses are sitting on cash. The current mood is to cut Federal spending.
I'm not smart enough to see a way out of this hell and the voting public sure isn't helping matters by lurching one way and then the other.
Sadly, I agree - a lost decade or even more (Japan still isn't in good shape). I really can't fathom what was going on in the minds of people like Larry Summers who claimed a stimulus package of not even a trillion dollars would be enough.
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