The NAACP and others have accused Tea Party supporters of racism. There is no doubt that some Tea Party members are racist. But the same can be said for some members of any large group, including the Party’s opponents. The important questions are whether Tea Party supporters are on average more racist than the general population, and whether that racism is an important driver of their political agenda. The available survey data doesn’t justify either charge.
Tea Party supporters cite Gallup data showing that Tea Party sympathizers are demographically similar to the general population. However, critics correctly point out that the crucial point at issue in the debate is the Tea Partiers’ attitudes, not their demographics.
I. The University of Washington WISER Survey.
The study most commonly cited by those claiming that Tea Party members are unusually likely to be racist is this recent survey of voters in seven states conducted by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER). It has gotten lots of coverage (e.g. – here, here, and here). The study authors don’t claim that white Tea Partiers have unusually high levels of racism as such, but they do argue that this group has more “racial resentment” than other whites. That charge, however, is poorly supported by the study’s actual data.
Some of that data simply shows that Tea Partiers hold more conservative views on racial policy issues than do opponents and moderates. For example, they are more likely to be hostile to affirmative action, and more likely to believe that historic racism and slavery are not the major causes of black socioeconomic disadvantages. The Tea Partiers may be wrong about some of this, but it doesn’t prove either racism or resentment towards blacks.
The strongest evidence of possible racism in the WISER study is the finding that only 35% of committed white Tea Party supporters describe blacks as “hardworking” (compared to 55% of strong opponents), only 45% see them as “intelligent” (compared to 59% of opponents and only 41% view them as “trustworthy” (compared to 57% of Tea Party opponents). The numbers for assessments of Latinos are similar, though slightly more favorable.
This data has limitations. It doesn’t prove that Tea Partiers are unusually likely to view blacks and Latinos negatively, believe that they should be discriminated against, or even that blacks have fewer positive traits than whites. Still, it’s at least plausible to believe that a person who refuses to describe a group as “hardworking,” “trustworthy,” or “intelligent” is prejudiced against them.
That conjecture breaks down, however, once we look at the survey’s data on white Tea Party supporters attitudes towards whites. Only 49% of strong Tea Party supporters describe whites as “hard working” (59% of opponents describe whites that way), 59% characterize whites as “intelligent” (compared to 69% of opponents) and 49% describe whites as “trustworthy” (compared to 72% of opponents).
If refusing to describe a group as “hard working,” “intelligent,” or “trustworthy” is an indication of prejudice or “resentment” against it, then about half of white Tea Party supporters seem to be strongly anti-white. Moreover, white Tea Party supporters would seem to be more anti-white by this measure than are white Tea Party opponents, who are far more likely to attribute the three positive characterizations to whites. It’s reasonable to note that white Tea Party supporters are more likely to ascribe the three positive attributes to whites than to blacks. But the same is also true of Tea Party opponents. For example, 72% of strong opponents describe whites as trustworthy, compared to 57% who describe blacks that way.
Interestingly, many more strong Tea Party supporters describe Asians as hardworking (64%) and intelligent (66%) than whites. Strong white Tea Party supporters are also slightly more likely to describe Latinos as “hardworking” (54%) than whites (49%).
It’s not impossible for people to be prejudiced against their own racial or ethnic group. Still, it seems highly unlikely that half of white Tea Party supporters (and about 40% of all whites) harbor strong prejudice or resentment towards their fellow whites.
If not racism or racial resentment, what explains the WISER findings on these three questions? It’s hard to know for sure. However, I conjecture that many respondents interpret these questions differently from what the authors intended. When people describe someone as “intelligent,” “trustworthy,” or “hardworking,” they could mean that the person in question meets some minimal threshold level of this quality. But they could also mean that he or she is more intelligent or hardworking than the general population. I suspect that the authors interpreted these questions the former way, while many survey respondents took the latter view. For example, most of the 51% of white Tea Party supporters who refused to describe whites as “hardworking” probably didn’t mean to suggest that whites are generally lazy. Rather, they just think that whites are not especially hardworking relative to other groups or relative to some other baseline.
Other explanations for the data are also possible. What is not plausible, however, is the claim that the data are strong evidence of racial prejudice or resentment.
In a recent Salon article, Christopher Parker, the lead author of the WISER study, briefly mentions some of these points, but fails to seriously consider the ways in which they undercut his thesis.
II. Racism and the Tea Party Agenda.
None of the above definitively proves that Tea Party supporters are not more likely to be racist than other members of the population. Further research might well show that they are. Even if racists do turn out to be overrepresented among Tea Party members, it does not follow that the majority of Tea Partiers are racists or that racial concerns are a major motivation for the group. Overrepresentation should not be confused with domination. Survey data overwhelmingly show that concerns about the size of government and other economic issues are the main focus of Tea Party members.
cboldt says:
The linked articles accusing racism, and the comments following them, are really a hoot. Melodrama is very much alive.
July 20, 2010, 9:25 pmToo many questions about and focus on race, to admit belief that the left endorses a “color-blind” society. It’s stoking that “racism fire,” but not getting any traction.
CDR D says:
Somin sez:
There is no doubt that some Tea Party members are racist.
I ask… what is a Tea Party “member”?
Is there an application? Is there a membership fee?
How does one become a member of the so-called Tea Party?
If I show up at a gathering of people who express opinions about the fiscal policies, or the immigration policies of the current administration, does that mean I should worry about being smeared as a racist?
July 20, 2010, 9:27 pmIlya Somin says:
Somin sez:
There is no doubt that some Tea Party members are racist.
I ask… what is a Tea Party “member”?
The usual measure used by researchers is self-identification as a supporter of the movement.
July 20, 2010, 9:33 pmBrian K says:
this sounds more like wishful thinking than anything else. it rests on the assumption that tea party members as a group interpret the question differently from other groups. if it is so easy to assume that tea partiers have a different understanding of the question than everyone else based on nothing why is so hard to assume that tea partiers, overall, hold more racist views than everyone else based on some evidence?
your defense that tea partiers also view whites more unfavorably than the general population is much weaker than you assume. this is obvious if phrase the numbers differently. 35% of tea partiers view blacks as hardworking while 49% of tea partiers view whites as hardworking. the numbers for opponents are 55% and 59%, respectively. there clearly is a difference there!
July 20, 2010, 9:34 pmDrew says:
If two-thirds of tea partiers endorse traditional stereotypes of asians as hard-working STEM automotons, it means they’re not racist?
July 20, 2010, 9:34 pmcboldt says:
– If I show up at a gathering of people who express opinions about the fiscal policies, or the immigration policies of the current administration, does that mean I should worry about being smeared as a racist? –
July 20, 2010, 9:36 pmI don’t know why you’d worry about it, but you’d be self-associating with a group that is in fact called racist. See the linked articles near the top of the OP.
PersonFromPorlock says:
Hmm… and Progressives would call someone who wasn’t bothered by the fact that a group he was associating with had been called ‘racist’, what?
My God, it’s the gift that keeps on giving!
July 20, 2010, 9:46 pmAllan Walstad says:
I don’t know all that much about the Tea Party movement other than they think the feds are taking too much of our money, and I certainly agree with them on that. What I have noticed consistently over the years, however, is the frequency with which left-liberals use the insinuation or outright accusation of racism as an all-purpose stick against opponents of their agenda. The most obvious and striking example of this in my direct experience has been in arguing about gun control, where this idea that supporters of RKBA generally, and the NRA specifically, want guns because they hate minorities comes up again and again — especially when opponents of RKBA find themselves losing the argument on its merits.
July 20, 2010, 9:49 pmAllan Walstad says:
Bless that bottomless bucket of mud, eh?
July 20, 2010, 9:52 pmrobert says:
can we see the results for the poll of NAACP members?
July 20, 2010, 9:58 pmGreek Geek says:
I generally assume that everyone is dumb and lazy, regardless of race or ethnic background. I’m not a tea party guy, though, just someone with real world experience.
July 20, 2010, 10:08 pmRandy says:
Allan W: “What I have noticed consistently over the years, however, is the frequency with which left-liberals use the insinuation or outright accusation of racism as an all-purpose stick against opponents of their agenda.”
Yeah, I know. It’s sorta like how conservatives have consistently used the insinuation or outright accusation of elitism as an all-purpose stick against opponents of their agenda.
July 20, 2010, 10:09 pmArthur Kirkland says:
If I understand the data, at least 14 percent — one in seven — of Tea Partiers admit to believing that whites are “hardworking” and that blacks are not “hardworking.”
Anyone have an apt word to describe at least one in seven Tea Partiers?
Coupled with the fact that Tea Parties didn’t start marching, despite enormous deficits and huge government expansion under the previous administration, until Pres. Obama was elected — and some scattered but pointed anecdotal evidence — this generates a connect-the-dots exercise any Olin-Searle-Scaife-Bradley scholar could handle with aplomb, if so inclined.
July 20, 2010, 10:16 pmKevin! says:
There are other important questions that spring to mind. Even if Tea Party members are not racist on average, what is the group’s response when a member is racist? Are there mechanisms to prevent racists from obtaining positions of authority – or spokesmanship? Is group leadership more racist on average?
July 20, 2010, 10:19 pmdorit says:
If you think that all of the teabaggers who claim that Obama is a “Kenyan” aren’t racist, then you’re a deluded dumbass.
July 20, 2010, 10:22 pmAlex J says:
I would think that self identifying Tea Party member would be more likely to hold racist views than an average member of the broader population. Same with members of the NRA and the anti-illegal immigration movement. But it doesn’t make the groups as a whole, or their causes, racist.
July 20, 2010, 10:25 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Evidence suggests that no mechanisms are in place to prevent racists from obtaining positions of authority, but if outsiders raise a big enough stink with vivid evidence, a racist will be deposed — a point to the Tea Partiers’ credit.
July 20, 2010, 10:28 pmcboldt says:
– If you think that all of the teabaggers who claim that Obama is a “Kenyan” aren’t racist, then you’re a deluded dumbass. –
July 20, 2010, 10:30 pmObama self-describes as such, his father being a Kenyan, and he (Obama) being a dual-citizen at birth. Sheesh. What’s racist about that?
BerkeleyBeetle says:
I’m not sure how you would go about answering those questions, as there is no real “Tea Party” organization to make those judgments about. For the moment, at least, its nature is entirely defined through self-identification. Individuals or groups can call themselves “the Tea Party” and you can’t really argue about whether they are or aren’t members.
I think what the WISER study seems to show is that Tea Party folks have a lower opinion of people in general, at least in an abstract sense. This fits fairly well with a philosophy that they don’t want these people controlling them. (Presumably, they’re the exception to the rule)
July 20, 2010, 10:30 pmBartman says:
The Tea Party started because we elected a black president. If Hilary Clinton or Howard Dean had been elected and had the exact same set of policies, there would be no Tea Party. Who do you think they’re talking about when they bleat about “taking back the country”?
Many of them claim that they’re being taxed too much, but are not willing to give up what those taxes get them: social security, medicare and national defense. Those are the three gorillas, and if you erased every other dollar the feds spent, we’d still be left with about 80% of the expenditures. Until someone comes up with a credible plan to attack those three things, the TP’ers will remain, in my eyes, utterly unserious about actually addressing government sending.
Beside that point, the TP’ers strike me as politically naive. Many of them appear to think that the problems of government will be fixed if only we elected “good” politicians. They fail to notice that politicians from both parties face the same set of incentives, and respond to them in largely the same way.
July 20, 2010, 10:32 pmMQuinn says:
I believe that this post rests upon a misstatement of the NAACP’s allegations. As I understand it, the NAACP isn’t saying that Tea Partiers are racist, or even more likely to be racist than the average American. Instead, the NAACP is chastising the Tea Party for its failure to condemn racist demonstrations within its ranks (whether or not such demonstrations are more or less frequent within the Tea Party than in other, similar organizations). Link. So, I think that the attack levied by this post at the NAACP is misplaced.
July 20, 2010, 10:34 pmbyomtov says:
Brian K destroys your “question interpretation” rationale pretty thoroughly. Lots of polls have poorly worded questions, certainly, but to claim that Tea Party members systematically interpreted the question differently than others is more than dubious.
In any case, polls on racial attitudes are inherently troublesome. People lie a lot.
July 20, 2010, 10:39 pmSteve says:
If you think this is thoughtful commentary, I can only say:
Pot, meet Kettle.
July 20, 2010, 10:40 pmcboldt says:
See April 19 remarks at http://volokh.com/2010/04/19/the-clinton-terror-bill/#comment-805134, critical of the credibility of the press reports.
July 20, 2010, 10:43 pmI note the extent of the claim [15-repetitions in chant form], coupled with very jumbled reporting, and jumbled reporting that appears to come from three people: one reporter, plus Andre Carson and Brenda Jones.
I don’t know of a report of John Lewis claiming to hear a slur, let alone a 15-repetition chant.
James Clyburn and some media accompanied the Congressional Black Caucus on the walk, and he asserts he did NOT hear the slur even once.
Elliot says:
Can someone tell us what racists’ attitudes are towards size of government and deficit spending?
If a racist favors smaller government and balanced budgets like the Tea party, is the Tea Party then recist?
If a racist favors larger government and more deficit spending like the democrats, are the democrats then recists?
Are black supporters of the Tea Party racist? If not, why not?
July 20, 2010, 10:54 pmPerseus says:
No, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, there would still be a Tea Party, but the explanation would have been that the movement is full of sexists instead of racists. If Howard Dean had been elected, the explanation would have been that the movement is full of haters of Northeastern elitists (with odd screams). Of course, each of these explanations is absurd.
July 20, 2010, 11:01 pmElliot says:
How does anyone know what the NAACP resolved? Have they released the text of their resolution? If so, can someone point us to the exact text? If we don’t have the text, then we don’t know what they did.
July 20, 2010, 11:01 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Is the “tea party” actually advocating any “racist” policies? (There is more than one way to interpret this question, and I’d be willing to entertain any and all interpretations.)
I don’t know (I don’t follow them). But this seems like an (if not the) important question.
July 20, 2010, 11:04 pmNels says:
Not to oversimplify, but they just sound like typical old cranks who think the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
July 20, 2010, 11:09 pmArthur Kirkland says:
As is any claim that after seven years of government growth, deficits, constitutional violations and incompetence, the Tea Partiers were suddenly stirred by concerns about government size and abuses.
So what is the precipitate for Tea Parties? An accurate answer would be valuable.
July 20, 2010, 11:12 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Other than ridding the White House of the black guy with the Muslim name?
I’m not sure.
July 20, 2010, 11:13 pmAllan Walstad says:
Actually, as a libertarian, I notice what certainly appears to be a lot of elitism among statists, both left and right. It’s just a somewhat different mix of issues on which they demand we submit to the superior wisdom of pols and bureaucrats. But the racism thing comes from out of the blue. Argue that taxes and government spending are too high, next thing you know, here comes the race card. Argue that people have a right to possess effective weapons of self-defense, next thing you know, here comes the race card. It’s bullshit. If I do a finger-point about elitism, I accept the responsibility to show cause. (Which often isn’t hard.)
I’d also point out that racism and elitism are not in the same ballpark when it comes to the opprobrium with which they are generally viewed. In fact I think most of us would happily own up to a certain amount of elitism, in the sense of believing that some individuals really have achieved more than others, have done so on merit, and deserve our admiration and the fruits of their success; or that some individuals have demonstrated more wisdom in their conduct or are more expert on a given matter than others.
July 20, 2010, 11:24 pmcboldt says:
– How does anyone know what the NAACP resolved? Have they released the text of their resolution? If so, can someone point us to the exact text? –
July 20, 2010, 11:25 pmI hit the link on Mquinn’s post, and blockquoted from that. At this point, it is a proposed resolution – no vote until October.
Bartman says:
…they just sound like typical old cranks who think the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Yeah, I get that impression a lot, too.
Echoing Arthur Kirkland, these folks were nowhere to be seen when a proto-wasp was flushing the huge surpluses he inherited down the toilet while turning the nation into a surveillance state. What, exactly, was the trigger mechanism for their new-found enthusiasm in “talking back their country?”
July 20, 2010, 11:26 pmMalvolio says:
Wow, three fallacies at once. First, it’s tu quoque — arguing that someone else (in this case not even the person Randy is arguing with) has done the same thing. Second, it’s an irrelevancy, since we aren’t discussing who makes accusations but who is racist. Third, it’s an unfounded assertion (and, I would suggest, a wholly unsupportable one).
That’s just two fallacies, post hoc (since they started protesting after Obama was elected, they were protesting because Obama was elected) and non sequitor (if they were protesting because Obama was elected, they must be racist, as if Obama had no distinguishing characteristics except his race).
I don’t even know the name for the fallacy of the form “People who don’t agree with me are stupid”. Perhaps someone could supply it.
And Dorit is making a particularly particularly obscure point. First of all, Obama is Kenyan; his father Barak Obama, Sr. was born in Nyang’oma Kogelo, in what is now Kenya. Indeed, his supporter are generally the ones who are ecstatically announcing that Obama is the son of an African immigrant.
Is Barak the first US President whose father was born overseas? Augustine Washington, John Adams, Sr., Peter Jefferson, James Madison, Sr., and Spence Monroe were all American-born, as was Joe Kennedy.
Also, does it seem that a lot of US presidents were named after their fathers, even those (like Ford, Clinton, and Obama) who weren’t raised by their fathers?
July 20, 2010, 11:27 pmWow... you're serious... says:
Hey, can somebody get Lindgren to open up comments? His point #2 is just flatly, demonstrably wrong. Most law profs have no business doing empirical analyses…
July 20, 2010, 11:27 pmShelbyC says:
Well, how about the people who are now suddenly cool with such incompetence, abuses, and constitutional violations? Racists?
July 20, 2010, 11:28 pmKen Arromdee says:
They were suddenly stirred by concerns about government size and abuses that the existing protest groups refused to cover.
Of course, the existing protest groups were willing to cover abuses under Bush, but not abuses under Obama.
What exactly are you insinuating?
July 20, 2010, 11:28 pmAllan Walstad says:
Bartman
I think that one can, with some justification, oppose expanded government spending and debt while still demanding to be made whole, as it were, for all that you’ve paid in in the past. It’s not quite hypocritical to oppose new spending commitments, bailouts, and astronomical debt at least partly on the grounds that those new commitments threaten the ability or likelihood of the government to make good on its earlier commitments, for which older citizens particularly have already paid out in taxes the money that they might have used to make other arrangements.
July 20, 2010, 11:33 pmgeokstr says:
Bullsh*t. If you believe that then you really know nothing about Tea Parties except what Olbermann and Garofalo tell you to think. This movement has been growing for some time before anybody even knew what a Community Organizer was. Dissatisfaction of fiscal conservatives with out-of-control spending under Bush, and his amnesty proposals, was quite evident to anyone with his eyes, ears and mind open. If you recall, Hilary tried this same phony health care “reform” in 1993, and the same demographics who are now called the “Tea Party” gave the Democrats the bum rush for it the next year. If she had been elected in 2008, and did the same things Obama’s doing, there would be the same reaction as he is getting. In my opinion, the Tea Party opposition is more restrained than it would be with Hilary, precisely because of sensitivity to this phony “racist” charge they know will be hurled at them by the real racists.
You see, those on the right are not obsessed with, and obsessive over, race, like you leftists. We see a leftist trying to fundamentally transform this country to the far left, and you see a black man whose policies are being resisted, therefore the opposition must be fixated on his skin color, like you are. I think it’s called projection. Who is it who is more racist?
I’ll agree with you that those in the Tea Parties are no more able to propose solutions to these than the leftists. However, tripling down on massive deficits like Obama is doing is certainly not the answer. The Proglydites have gotten the population and the economhy addicted to their insane economic agenda decades ago, so there really is no easy or quick fix.
I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again. This can only end badly, with a massive convulsion that will make the Depression look like good times. Whatever arises out of the rubble will have to fundamentally redefine the role of government and its relationship to the governed. At least with the right, there is some possibility that liberty will survive, with the left, zero chance of that whatsoever.
Again, this is a crock.
In case you didn’t notice, the Tea Parties have not been exactly in love with the Republican Party either, and the reactions of country clubbers like Trent Lott, John Boehner, and others to the Parties has not always been friendly. We watched the 1994 batch of so-called fiscal conservatives get co-opted in a hurry by the political class, and it culminated in the democrat-lites Bush and McCain and others.
Given that there are NO fiscal conservatives in the Democratic Party, of course the Tea Parties will feel more at home with a party that at least gives lip service to fiscal sanity. But in case you didn’t notice, Bob Bennett is no longer a senator for the Republican Party, thanks to the Tea Parties.
Richard Nixon, one of your favorite Satans, identified this movement when it was in its infancy, and called it the “silent majority”. Too bad we hadn’t gotten it together back then, when it was still possible to curtail the addiction to pork like Social Security and Medicare.
Well, silence got us nowhere, so now we’re going to be loud. You don’t like it – tough sh*t. Maybe you can cower in the corner and scream “racists” at us or something.
July 20, 2010, 11:33 pmMalvolio says:
Just for the record, have you noticed Obama reversing any of Bush’s surveillance policies?
Wasn’t it Tom Wolfe who wrote, “The dark night of fascism is always falling over America, but it keeps landing in Europe”?
Well, it certainly couldn’t be the $787 billion wasted on the failed stimulus — that was less than a quarter of what WWII cost us. And I’d be surprised if it was his insistence of nationalizing a sixth of the economy — Americans love socialized medicine. It must be we just plain don’t like black people.
July 20, 2010, 11:35 pmAllan Walstad says:
Arthur Kirkland
My impression is it was the bailouts of Wall street fat cats, which started under Bush and got a lot of criticism from conservatives outside the beltway at that time. And weren’t Tea Partiers who were instrumental in dumping Sen. Bennett, a white Republican, precisely because he voted for the bailouts?
July 20, 2010, 11:39 pmArthur Kirkland says:
You actually think that is going to work? Anywhere in the entire grit-eating world?
You’d better be cooking with magic grits if you want that story to hold water.
July 20, 2010, 11:39 pmBartman says:
Malvolio, you’re drawing inferences that weren’t made by A. Kirkland. I guess you’re suspect to that whole “putting words in other peoples’ mouths” fallacy. Or are you claiming that the Tea Partiers were upset by Bush’s profligate spending and big-brotherism-in-the-name-of-security, but their marches and protests just weren’t covered by the left-wing media? Also, supercilious priggishness. But I suspect you’re proud of that.
July 20, 2010, 11:40 pmArthur Kirkland says:
This is a lot of lather over a fad that, I expect, will pass before the next Stones tour ends.
Let’s talk about something fun and important, such as: Should the Stones wait for Ronnie, or grab Mick Taylor and go?
I’m with Mick, making room for Ronnie (pedal steel, acoustic guitar, bass) if he ever resumes an earthly orbit.
July 20, 2010, 11:45 pmMark Field says:
The solution to people who don’t allow comments is simple: don’t read their posts. Trust me, you’ll be happier that way.
July 20, 2010, 11:57 pmBartman says:
Geok, I share the Cato Institute’s line of thinking on government size. I’d be happy to shrink the Federal government to 1/0th (or less) of its current size. I’m also a hardcore classical liberal on personal responsibility, property rights, unfettered voluntary trade and the rule of law. I’m just not dumb enough to think that the American public, at large, will ever broadly adopt my preferred set of policy prescriptions, so I argue about the world we have, not the ideal but unattainable one I’d like to have. I guess that makes me a leftist in your book.
Nonetheless, I still call bullshit on the TP. I think that most of the TPers are unserious, angry, economically illiterate loudmouths with no actual ideas about how to shrink government or transform the economy away from governmental support. Shouting down people at town meetings might give them a small power rush, but it doesn’t do anything to address the problem. And I guarantee you, if any of these folks are ever elected as GOPers, they’ll get corrupted by DC in no time flat, just like in 1992.
They should start an actual political party and develop a platform full of actual concrete policy positions. Tell us what you’re for, not what you’re against. This happened in Canada, and within 20 years the Reform Party grew to form a government.
July 21, 2010, 12:02 amIlya Somin says:
this sounds more like wishful thinking than anything else. it rests on the assumption that tea party members as a group interpret the question differently from other groups.
My analysis makes no such assumption. To the contrary, I think both Tea Partiers and many members of other groups in the poll probably interpreted saying that a group is not “hardworking,” etc., in a relatively nonpejorative way, which is why so many described their own groups that way.
your defense that tea partiers also view whites more unfavorably than the general population is much weaker than you assume. this is obvious if phrase the numbers differently. 35% of tea partiers view blacks as hardworking while 49% of tea partiers view whites as hardworking. the numbers for opponents are 55% and 59%, respectively.
The relative size of the gaps on the other 2 questions is much smaller (e.g. – 72% of TP opponents describe whites as “trustworthy,” while 57% describe blacks that way; this 15 point gap is actually considerably larger than the 8 point gap between the 49% of TPers who describe whites as “trustworthy” and the 41% who characterize blacks that way) . In any event, if refusing to describe a group as “hardworking” is not particularly pejorative, it isn’t very probative of racism to say that a particular group of people were more likely to characterize one group that way than another.
July 21, 2010, 12:04 amleo marvin says:
That.
The question is also confounded by the lopsided African American identification with liberal and Democratic politics. The pockets of hatred for African Americans at Tea Party rallies are obvious, but there’s even more hatred for liberals/Democrats generally. Is that because the animosity is primarily political, or because it’s more acceptable to base hatred on ideology than on race? Do Tea Partiers hate liberals/Democrats because they include African-Americans, or do they hate African-Americans because they’re liberals/Democrats? There’s no single answer, but my guess is that even accounting for those who censor the real targets of their animosity, this is more about politics and economics than it is about race.
July 21, 2010, 12:04 amjames lee james says:
there was a comment about SOME people being racist , that may well be true , i can only speak for myself and those that i know personally.
July 21, 2010, 12:13 ami was hoping for a president that sounded like obama , unfortunately the obama we got wasn’t the one advertised , he hasn’t kept ONE of his promises ( unless you count the “change” he promised )he hasn’t done ANYTHING but do his best to destroy this country , by financial bankruptcy , and divisive programs . no , i’m not prejudiced because he’s black , i’m mad as hell that he’s doing his best to tear out the first and second amendments of the constitution and using his executive powers in ways that are if not illegal at least immoral.
LarryA says:
At least the Tea Party movement doesn’t have a particular word in their lexicon, like “oreo,” to designate a black person who doesn’t fit their stereotype of “proper” blacks.
I always find it interesting that the Pink Pistols say they are treated much better at gun rights conferences than gay rights conferences. I suspect that black gun owners are much more welcome at the NRA annual meeting than at an NAACP convention.
July 21, 2010, 12:21 amPerseus says:
I’d expect that claim from you, but the growth of government spending and deficits that began with the financial meltdown at the end of the Bush Administration is really quite extraordinary by historical standards (as a percentage of GDP). Now if you want argue that such people were more indulgent of Republicans because they leaned right or that their ox wasn’t being gored previously or some such argument, that strikes me as plausible, but the movement was already coalescing with protests against the financial bailout created by Bush Administration.
July 21, 2010, 12:24 amElliot says:
I’d suggest Blacks and democrats are upset that the Tea Party ignores race. The Tea Partiers just don’t care about color, and haven’t paid it any attention. Money and size of government are more important to them as issues than race. That is deeply upsetting to all those folks who consider race to be the most important issue in society. Ignoring it is insulting.
When those black congressmen marched down the capitol steps through the Tea Partiers, nobody cared they were black. Keeping a buck in their pocket was more important than Cleaver’s skin. That was deeply insulting to people who have built their careers on being black. Their race was forgotten, cast aside, considered unimportant, and ignored. What could be worse for them?
July 21, 2010, 12:32 amBartman says:
i’m mad as hell that he’s doing his best to tear out the first and second amendments of the constitution and using his executive powers in ways that are if not illegal at least immoral.
Is it too much to ask for a “for instance”?
July 21, 2010, 12:39 amPeter Shalen says:
During the Iraq war, when I read arguments by people opposed to the war, some of them said it was an effort by “neo-cons” to help Israel. They spoke of Zionists whose aims were antithetical to the interests of the United States, in a way that was strongly reminiscent of the language of classical anti-Semitism. But I don’t recall anyone claiming that the anti-war movement was anti-Semitic, or calling on the leadership of the movement to condemn anti-Semites in their midst.
July 21, 2010, 12:40 amArthur Kirkland says:
That was easier before an upgrade apparently ended the ability to block certain posts.
July 21, 2010, 12:42 amArthur Kirkland says:
The Bush administration’s failures with respect to deficits began at the beginning of its term, not the end.
July 21, 2010, 12:47 amArthur Kirkland says:
A Republican administration turning surpluses into deficits is not extraordinary (let alone really or quite extraordinary) by historical standards.
Am I going to hit a statement that is accurate before I reach the end of this post?
July 21, 2010, 12:50 amRicardo says:
My impression has also been that the Tea Party movement grew out of the anti-bailout wing of the conservative movement. Blame AIG, rather than the election of Obama, on the growth of the movement.
To a lesser extent, the Tea Party movement has probably recruited from among the anti-immigration wing of the conservative movement who grew disillusioned with Bush when he started proposing immigration reform. Now, not all or even most people who oppose immigration and amnesty are racists, but lots of racists are bound to be anti-immigration and that’s probably reflected in the racist fringe that dwells within the Tea Party.
Still, I agree that trying to tar the whole movement with the racist charge would be unfair.
July 21, 2010, 12:50 amArthur Kirkland says:
Not particularly persuasive (which might be attributable to the preceding flaws, but nothing that is flat-out wrong.
July 21, 2010, 12:52 amArthur Kirkland says:
True, true . . . except, apparently, when a Caucasian conservative is in the White House, turning surpluses into deficits and expanding government at a rate reminiscent of the Big Bang.
July 21, 2010, 12:54 amRicardo says:
I’ve certainly seen such comments in the conservative world. And two can certainly play at this game: David Duke praised Cindy Sheehan for accusing Bush of waging war on behalf of Israel and the “neo-con PNAC agenda.”
Both sides love guilt-by-association because it is so easy to do and takes so little effort. The broader point is that accusing one’s opponents of being racist or anti-Semitic gets to be a substitute for thinking.
There’s a lot I don’t like about the Tea Party movement but the racism charge would only apply to certain individuals who have demonstrated those proclivities, not to the entire movement.
July 21, 2010, 1:01 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Assessing the Survey Data on Tea Party … | The Daily Conservative says:
[...] from: The Volokh Conspiracy » Assessing the Survey Data on Tea Party … Share and [...]
July 21, 2010, 1:09 amPeter Shalen says:
Fair enough. It’s just that the analogy with anti-Semitism in the anti-war movement seems relevant to the discussion of racism in the Tea Party movement, and I haven’t heard anyone else call attention to it.
July 21, 2010, 1:26 amPerseus says:
Turning a budget surplus into a deficit is indeed extraordinary by historical standards since surpluses are a rare exception. But the size of federal budget deficits (as a percentage of GDP) that occurred during the Bush Administration were not extraordinarily high by historical standards, as the previous three decades saw deficits that were comparable or greater.
July 21, 2010, 1:28 amyankee says:
I’m not sure how “Tea Partiers endorse stereotypes about hardworking Asians and stupid, lazy black people to a considerably greater extent than the population at large” is a defense to allegations of racism. It looks like Plaintiff’s Exhibit 1 to me.
July 21, 2010, 1:30 amzuch says:
The data show that Tea Partiers are essentially indistinguishable from Republicans (as opposed to Democrats or independents) in pretty much every aspect of political ‘philosophy’.
“Just say ‘No!!!!’”
This is no surprise, as the Tea Party was cooked up by Republican lobbyists, activists, and rabble-rousers….
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 1:33 amleo marvin says:
I already agreed insofar as I generally assume “[m]oney and size of government are more important to [Tea Partiers] as issues than race.” But I’m dumbfounded by your implication that the disgusting sounds and images emerging from the Tea Party fringes are just figments of racial minority imaginations.
July 21, 2010, 1:35 amLya says:
What is this “race card” that the NAACP is supposed to be playing? If by “race card” what’s meant is they are bringing up race when it’s irrelevant as a way of derailing the argument, I have to say, it doesn’t seem to be working particularly well. There have been at least as many people calling out the NAACP for bringing up race as condemning the Tea Party for harboring racist elements. It’s somewhat troubling that we as a society are far more concerned with hapless individuals being “smeared” with the label of racist than the harm done to people who are, you know, actually the victims of racism.
July 21, 2010, 1:41 amzuch says:
Sean InsHannity assured his listeners today that he’s paid for, and received, a lifetime NAACP membership. I guess you might call it a “Get Out Of Jail Free!” card, eh?
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 1:41 amA. Zarkov says:
The WISER study does not provide us with enough information to answer the question: Are Tea Party members (self identification) more racist than the general population? It would also be nice to have a definition of the term “racist” as this word means different things to different people. Here are the problems with the WISE survey.
1. Coverage. The survey was not national in scope, but limited to voters six “battleground” states and California. How about the voters and non-voters in the rest of the country? Why should we think this block of states is representative of the U.S. since the Tea Party is national in scope?
2. Target population. The survey uses people who approve or disapprove of the Tea Party movement. People who approve is not the same as self identified Tea Party members. One could approve and not be a member.
3. Sampling frame not clearly described. Did they do a telephone survey or mail survey. How were the people in the survey chosen?
4. Response bias. Only 51% of the people surveyed responded. How do we know these people are representative of the people who did not respond? How did they deal with this? Follow up? Imputation?
5. Did they randomize the question order because we know asking some questions first can affect the answers to subsequent questions?
6. Did they do the survey from lists of registered voters?
Without more information it’s very hard to decide what this study tells us about the attitudes of Tea Party members.
July 21, 2010, 1:52 amporterhouse says:
We actually have evidence that racism is at most an insignificant factor in the Tea Party movement…the evidence is the South Carolina Republican primary. The SC Republican primary highlights what the movement is really about–getting rid of establishment Republicans and electing principled conservatives.
SC Republicans voted for Tim Scott (an African-American that will most likely be a US Congressman in November) and Nikki Haley (an American of Indian descent that is favored to become the governor). Haley defeated a Congressman that supported the Bush agenda, and Scott defeated Strom Thurmond’s son that was endorsed by every congressman/legacy in SC that represented the Washington/SC Republican establishment. Then you have Trey Gowdy who beat repeat Congressman Bob Inglis who also represented politics as usual. SC is ground zero for the Tea Party movement, and the voters enthusiastically supported Scott and Haley.
Also, most people describe Marco Rubio as one of the original Tea Party candidates…and he is Latino. Tea Party members support Rubio over Crist…Crist is the establishment Republican.
July 21, 2010, 2:06 amzuch says:
Are you saying that Tea Partiers are Republicans? Or that Republicans are Tea Partiers?
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 2:12 amyankee says:
Has anyone said the Tea Party movement is racist in so many words? Political figures* tend to be be very two-faced about calling their opponents racist: they make statements that very strongly imply their opponents are racist, but never come out and say it explicitly. That way, when they’re called on making absurd overgeneralizations, they can turn around and deny they ever said any such thing. David Bernstein’s posts on Israeli/Palestinian relations are a perfect example of the tactic.
I don’t have any cites on demands to denounce supposed anti-Semitism within the anti-war movement, but I remember no end of demands that anti-war organizations denounce the people who showed up to protest rallies with Bush = Hitler signs. The point of denunciation demands is to suggest that there’s a strong connection between the extremists and the movement at large; otherwise there would be no need to denounce them. That was true then and it’s true now.
Of course, the degree of connection between the more serious racists and the mainstream of the Tea Party movement is a subject of dispute and I say nothing about it this post. The function of the anti-Tea Party rhetoric is the same whether or not the suggestions of widespread racism in the Tea Party are accurate.
* I include political organizations and opinion leaders, not just politicians.
July 21, 2010, 2:18 amporterhouse says:
The Tea Party movement is a conservative movement, so members of the movement will generally vote for Republicans. That said, they might not vote for candidates the Republican establishment wants them to support.
July 21, 2010, 2:24 amyankee says:
This is hardly a new phenomenon, and not limited to the Tea Party. Americans in general have a very bad idea of what the federal budget consists of: my favorite example is foreign aid. When people are polled about how much of the budget goes to foreign aid the median estimate is in the 15-20% range. When asked what would be an appropriate amount, they propose “cutting” foreign aid to 5-10% of the budget, which of course would be an enormous increase over the true figure of less than 1%.
The result of this sort of thing is that Americans have completely incoherent views about the budget: they consistently oppose “spending” and “deficits,” but because the vast majority of the federal budget is extremely popular any serious effort to cut spending is a political nonstarter. The result is that politicians keep promising free lunches, where huge savings will be realized by making government more “efficient” and eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
July 21, 2010, 2:37 amyankee says:
Yeah, so “Republicans nominated nonwhite candidate X” isn’t much of a refutation of charges of racism among the Tea Party movement. Did the rank-and-file Tea Partiers vote for X, or did they vote for X’s white opponent?
July 21, 2010, 2:40 amleo marvin says:
I admire your self-discipline.
July 21, 2010, 2:56 amJK says:
There’s some real oddities about that Gallup poll. I haven’t been to a tea party function, but is it possibly true that 12% of tea party supporters think the health care bill is a good thing? Maybe some people misunderstood “support” as simply support for peoples right to engage in tea party functions?
I will say that if it’s actually true that less than 80% of tea partyers are white the MSM really is giving the wrong impression.
July 21, 2010, 2:59 amJmaie says:
A Republican administration turning surpluses into deficits is not extraordinary (let alone really or quite extraordinary) by historical standards.
Quick google check, since 1930 we’ve had 13 years with surpluses.
We’ve gone from surplus to deficit six times:
1950 Truman (D)
1953 Truman (D)
1958 Eisenhower (R)
1961 Eisenhower (R)
1970 Nixon (R)
2002 Bush (R)
A score of two against four over an eighty year period is not persuasive. No doubt you were merely seeking to impugn Republicans, I suggest you try a different argument.
How about just taking credit for most surpluses being under Democratic administrations?
1947 Truman (D)
1948 Truman (D)
1949 Truman (D)
1951 Truman (D)
1952 Truman (D)
1956 Eisenhower (R)
1957 Eisenhower (R)
1960 Eisenhower (R)
1969 Nixon (R)
1998 Clinton (D)
1999 Clinton (D)
2000 Bush (R)
2001 Bush (R)
Now we’re at seven Democrats vs. six Republicans. Again, not too persuasive.
Care to try something else?
July 21, 2010, 3:00 amJmaie says:
By the way, I am not extolling the virtues of Republicans vis-a-vis economic performance. IMHO Presidents get far too much credit and blame for how the economy performs during their tenure. In 1998 if your stock portfolio was only gaining 25% per anum you were a chump. Was this due to Clinton’s brilliance or the tech bubble? How about in 2005, 20% – 30% yearly appreciation in home prices – Joe homeowner saw huge increases in personal wealth. Bush’s brilliance? How about 2008 – Bush’s stupidity? How would you know the difference, other than political affiliation?
July 21, 2010, 3:13 amjukeboxgrad says:
Did you know that Mitt Romney is Mexican? His father George W. Romney was born in Chihauhua Mexico.
Is it possible that the GOP is going to try to elect our first Mexican president? How historic. And I’m sure enthusiam for him among GOP voters will only be enhanced when they learn that Mitt is actually Mitt the Mexican. It’s about time they heard the good news.
July 21, 2010, 3:18 amJK says:
Sure, but deficits are different matter. Certainly there are aspects of deficits that are outside of the (short term) control of government, but there’s a lot they can control. Bush for example created deficits by cutting taxes, starting two wars, and implementing a major new entitlement program (among other things) those aren’t outside forces screwing over helpless GWB, thats just good old fashion borrowing money for current consumption.
July 21, 2010, 3:20 amporterhouse says:
The Tea Party movement is essentially a subset of the Republican party. The candidates I mentioned all won with over 65% in their final races…Gowdy (who is white) won with 70% (district 4), Haley won with 65% (statewide), and Scott won with 68% (district 1). Haley won with huge margins in the counties that Gowdy and Scott won…so it looks like Tea Party Gowdy supporters are also Tea Party Haley supporters. Haley supporters in the lowcountry supported Scott. The Tea Party members in SC supported Haley, Scott, and Gowdy. Some of the Republican establishment supported Barrett, Thurmond, and Inglis.
Thurmond’s campaign mostly consisted of ads touting his establishment endorsements…so in order for what you wrote to be true the Tea Party members would have had to support Thurmond, and the establishment support Scott, even though Thurmond’s campaign was directed at traditional Republicans that had voted for past Republican Congressmen and his father.
Rubio is the original Tea Party candidate…why cite polls when you can cite EVIDENCE.
July 21, 2010, 3:41 amRicardo says:
This also makes it very easy to demagogue about small items in the budget that are of almost no real consequence in the grand scheme of things. Both sides do this although the rhetoric does seem to get taken up a notch among conservatives: after all, when you’ve foreclosed the possibility of tax increases, you have no other choice. Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation has a webpage that boasts about how he slammed the Republicans for 14 billion whole dollars of pork barrel spending back in 2006. Then there were the quips about studies of fruit flies, bear DNA and vulcanology in 2008 from Republican politicians.
There’s never any tough talk on, say, Medicare, Social Security or military spending. The things that actually matter in dollar terms.
July 21, 2010, 5:27 amPerseus says:
If that constitutes a rate reminiscent of the Big Bang (and, no, I’m not claiming that the increases under Bush were small), then there needs to be a multiverse to describe the size and rate of growth of government deficits and spending that occurred over a single year (2008-9) when the federal deficit tripled (3.2% to 9.9% of GDP) and federal spending increased by nearly one-fifth (20.7% to 24.7% of GDP). It was the extraordinary size and rate of increase over such a short period of time ($700 billion for the financial bailout and then another $800 billion for the stimulus a few months later isn’t exactly boiling the frog slowly) on top of Bush’s overspending that caused a critical mass of people to finally say “enough is enough” and spark the Tea Party rebellion.
July 21, 2010, 6:08 amPerseus says:
Never is too strong. Speaker Gingrich sought to place a tighter cap on the rate of growth in Medicare/Medicaid spending, and, predictably, was crucified for trying. A similar fate met President Bush’s efforts to reform Social Security.
July 21, 2010, 6:31 amA. Zarkov says:
You’re absolutely right. I have told this to Republican candidates to their face getting a best a nervous smile in response. It a big problem with democracy: people want stuff and they don’t want to pay for it. People want to live out of other people’s pocket. Thus the best Republicans can do is promise to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, which is a wonderful thing to do. But it’s trying to bail out a sinking ship with a toy bucket. Thus we face two very unpleasant scenarios: (1) More and more debt, both public and private until we trigger a “Minsky Moment” that produces a dollar crisis; (2) one party becomes extinct leaving us with one-party state. The single-party scenario means the rulers can shove anything down our throat and lie about it. Obama is giving us a taste of that now.
The solution is less democracy. Americans don’t like to hear that, but the founders knew the problems you get with democracy and set up a system to cope with it. Now we have eroded our legacy and face a stark future.
July 21, 2010, 7:27 amArthur Kirkland says:
The expansion of government under the most recent Republican administration was not merely economic; it also included the “Total Information Awareness” factor currently being highlighted in a polish-that-Pulitzer series in the Washington Post; the creation of a huge clustermuck involving Iraq, Afghanistan and about a half-dozen other countries; and expansion of the war on drugs, dirty books, profanity, etc.
In the 30 years I have been paying attention, deficits have increased sharply in Republican administrations and decreased (or transformed into surpluses) during Democratic administrations. The argument that Tea Partiers have been galvanized by concern about government size and spending (with Republican candidates as an antidote) therefore seems no stronger than an argument ascribing the movement to racism. Unless, of course, we have stumbled upon the answer: Tea Partiers aren’t racist, they’re just stupid and uninformed.
July 21, 2010, 8:11 amjukeboxgrad says:
Indeed. The tea party movement is a joke, because it’s made up of born-again budget hawks who sat on their hands while Reagan tripled the national debt, and while Dubya almost doubled it. After snoozing for thirty years, they suddenly had a miraculous awakening on 1/20/09. 77% of our national debt was accumulated under three presidents: Reagan, Bush and Bush. The debt is now 11 times higher than it was when Reagan took over. Tell me about the tea party movement that rose up when Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.” Tell me about the tea party movement that rose up when Bush passed an “unfunded drug benefit which added $15.5 trillion (in present value terms) to our nation’s indebtedness” (link). It takes a special kind of delusional (and/or racist) innumeracy to believe that Obama’s fiscal behavior is somehow fundamentally worse than what Reagan, Bush and Bush did.
The GOP strategy for 30 years has been to run up the debt when they’re in office, and then when they’re out of office they suddenly make a big deal about the debt. This is based on the Two Santa Claus Theory. The GOP figured out 30 years ago that if raising spending is a great way to buy votes, then an even better way to buy votes is to raise spending while cutting taxes. So that’s exactly what they’ve done, and the rubes are still falling for it.
An odd thing about the GOP is that it seems to have no problem with spending lots of money on nation-building, but only if the nation is someone else’s. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that colossal contract shenanigans are much easier to hide when they happen on the other side of the planet and are obscured by the fog of war.
Modern conservatives are definitely in favor of small government, except when they’re running the government.
July 21, 2010, 9:08 amPerseus says:
You need not repeat yet again your litany of other malevolent governmental intrusions you ascribe to the Bush Administration since you have managed to include it in virtually every other thread in which you’ve commented, and, more to the point, the Tea Party folks’ concerns are primarily economic (and they’re not claiming to be full-blown Libertarians in any event). If the members of the Tea Party aren’t serious about trying to enforce some economic orthodoxy, then, as others have mentioned, we would not see candidates identified with the Tea Party challenge–and in some cases defeat–more establishment figures who are heretics.
July 21, 2010, 9:20 amNorm says:
There once was an American Tea Party movement
July 21, 2010, 9:25 amfighting for our in-the-black fiscal improvement
But the press, Dems and NAACP
tagged it “color prejudiced” because its recipe
would stop red ink spending and pink gov behoovement.
P.J. O. says:
there are some pros here.
jukeboxgrad, why do you and “others” here resort to invoking pre-Obama history, when this administration, in concert with its Party’s Congress, have taken spending and deficits to unprecedented, unsustainable levels to exert Big Government control over swaths of the economy (and voters) and without having had a recent and catastrophic 9/11 with which to deal and while Europe and much of the world is experiencing a structural economic crisis and contraction?
July 21, 2010, 9:38 amShelbyC says:
Dude, you know that’s just flat wrong. There’s only been one administration of either party that decreased the deficit (they ran a surplus, which is as bad). The other democratic administration during your 30 years increased the deficit worse that anybody. Why shouldn’t I call you out for a flat-ass lie?
July 21, 2010, 9:39 amslimslowslider says:
Great to see you as always, Jukeboxgrad. You have been missed.
July 21, 2010, 9:54 amSuperSkeptic says:
How is this:
any different than this:
in practice?
July 21, 2010, 10:04 amRicardo says:
Fair enough on Gingrich. But that was fifteen years ago. Gingrich’s same party voted for a significant expansion of Medicare eight years after this article was written. Obama has taken his share of flack from many for the planned cuts to Medicare that went into the health care reform bill.
As for Bush’s Social Security proposal, the biggest problem was that it did not actually do what it was supposed to and address the gap between benefits and contributions over the next 75 years. A good analysis is here. According to this analysis, the proposal had a twenty-year cost of $4.9 trillion and would have caused increases in the federal budget deficit through 2055. Only in the very long run — 50 to 100 years after the proposal would have been enacted — would it actually start to have had a measurable impact on the deficit and on the government’s liabilities.
Call that extremely forward thinking if you want but there are frankly much better ways to reduce the deficit that do not require the federal government to borrow trillions of dollars in the meantime.
The point here is that people who genuinely worry about the growth of the government’s debt right now could not in good faith support the Bush proposal. That group would include almost every member of the current Tea Party movement. The Tea Partiers need a better plan if they want to be taken seriously.
July 21, 2010, 10:21 amjukeboxgrad says:
slim, thanks for the kind words.
Because it’s appropriate, relevant and helpful to evaluate the sincerity of the people I’m dealing with. People who slept for thirty years and then had a convenient awakening on 1/20/09 are obviously not sincere.
When Obama triples the national debt like Reagan did your use of the word “unprecedented” will become something other than a perfect example of the innumeracy of which I spoke.
Ditto. Your “worse than anybody” is just as hollow as his “unprecedented.”
July 21, 2010, 10:29 amMark Field says:
True, but I just scroll over them.
I’d like to take credit for it that way, but it’s really a case of internet longa, vita brevis.
This is a very weird question. Let’s break it down. First, the vast majority of the deficit is, even today and for the next 10 years, the result of Bush Administration policies (Medicare Part D, tax cuts, wars). Obama’s contribution to future deficits is pretty slight. Second, the argument for deficit spending is that it can be appropriate in the short term when the economy is in recession. Obama inherited a recession (a very big one, in fact), so short term deficits are the correct remedy.
July 21, 2010, 10:33 amRicardo says:
Say what? If it were the case that we never expected to run a deficit again, then surpluses are bad. But that has to rank as a purely theoretical objection. In the real world, we can always expect to run deficits at some point. And that means we need the surpluses to keep the debt under control.
Unless, that is, you want debt to go out of control so that you can then “starve the beast.” But we’ve seen how well that works out in practice.
July 21, 2010, 10:34 amKen Arromdee says:
One nice thing about insinuations is that they give you plausible deniability to claim that you didn’t say what you just tried to say. Would you mind spelling out what you’re trying to say instead of making sarcastic comments?
July 21, 2010, 10:42 amP.J. O. says:
I call diversion, distraction and disinformation on the part of some “arguing” here on a thread about whether Tea Partiers are racist and what do they really stand for.
All together now, “Blame it on Reagan, Bush, Gingrich and Bush!”
Obama is half-black and the Tea Party, incipient under Bush, gained more steam after Obama’s bait and switch election from a “moderate” to transformative liberal president, so therefore we should
de-legitimize legitimate protestconclude the Tea Party is racist.Remember, Reagan, Bush I, Gingrich and Bush were much much worse at spending (not) when they had mostly Democratic Congresses to “work with”, and a Cold War, 9/11, etc.
For heaven’s sake, don’t forget the profligate evil Nixon, (who had Johnson’s Nam), in your calculus of how OK is Obama by comparison and racist the anti-spending Tea Partiers are.
July 21, 2010, 10:44 amP.J. O. says:
Mark Field: “Obama’s contribution to future deficits is pretty slight”
Is your definition of slight in the OED?
July 21, 2010, 10:51 amA. Criminal says:
The NAACP and others have accused Tea Party supporters of racism.
I think it’s hilarious – and pitiful – that so many people let the Marxists – including orgs like the NAACP, who advertise their blatant racism in their goofy name – frame the argument as: you’re either a Marxist-blank-slate-anti-science-egalitarian; or you’re a racist. What a load of garbage.
“The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.” — Sowell
July 21, 2010, 10:52 amjukeboxgrad says:
Here’s the English translation of your “gained more steam:” went from non-existence to existence. The Tea Party had this much “steam” under Bush: none. There were this many Tea Party demonstrations under Bush: none. Your “incipient” is a self-serving revisionist fantasy.
And Obama’s contribution to future deficits is indeed slight, by comparison to what was done by Reagan, Bush and Bush. But those who just woke up from their thirty-year nap obviously know nothing about this.
July 21, 2010, 10:56 amL says:
This got lost in all the arguing.
I’ll trust you on the first five.
If Wiki is to be believed…
Andrew Jackson’s father, and apparently his mother as well, were Irish. Two years off the boat when Jackson was born. James Buchanan, Sr., immigrated from Ireland eight years before President Buchanan was born. Jacob Johnson was either born in Newcastle, England, or Raleigh, NC, depending on which source is to be believed. William Arthur was born in Ireland, and was an Irishman (Irish subject of the UK) living in the US when Chester Alan was born.
Which would make Obama the 4th or 5th president whose father was born overseas, and at least the second whose father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth (not counting those presidents who were born before there was such a thing as a “US citizen”).
July 21, 2010, 11:03 amP.J. O. says:
Correction: “and the Tea Party-like movement, incipient under Bush”
Better now, jukeboxgrad? You know it’s true, despite your changing the subject from charges of racism to charges of “Republican President history” you’re now levying against current protestors of this administration’s and Congress’s spending and government overreach.
July 21, 2010, 11:04 amMark Field says:
Here is a breakdown of the causes of the deficit over the next 10 years. Yes, slight.
July 21, 2010, 11:06 amP.J. O. says:
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a liberal biased org that works with Brookings and other Democrat(ic?)-beholden non-profits.
Their accounting, self-serving sleight of hand.
But, again, what about the so-called racism of Bloated Government protesters?
July 21, 2010, 11:20 amJoe says:
that so many people let the Marxists — including orgs like the NAACP, who advertise their blatant racism in their goofy name
well, you should know “goofy” … actually, when it was founded, “colored” was much less goofy. In fact, as with “Negro,” older black people at times (even more so not too long ago) don’t like the new terms used. I do agree, to be fair, that the name is pretty anachronistic by this point.
July 21, 2010, 11:24 amzuch says:
Has anyone in the Tea Party movement expressed racist sentiments in so many words? Political figures tend to be be very two-faced about being racist: they make statements that very strongly imply they are racist [e.g., "dog whistles"], but never come out and say it explicitly.
But then again, there’s the ones not too clever by half, who haven’t much of a clue as to what racism is (or much of why it is wrong) and who don’t have experienced speech-writers, and just go and spout off.
Racism is pretty much universally condemned (although there is a small but significant population that is unrepentantly and unabashedly racist). But what constitutes racism is a more slippery subject, and people have learned, whatever their proclivities, to tread carefully around the edges … and insist they’re being purely rational and haven’t stepped over the lines they drew in their own mind.
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 11:27 amRicardo says:
So then it should be easy for you to point out the many flaws in the analysis.
But you face an uphill battle. For instance, from footnote 10: “The White House claims its ‘reform would solve 70 percent of the funding problems facing Social Security’ (see White House Fact Sheet, April 28, 2005). But the White House has subsequently acknowledged that this statement refers to the deficit in the 75th year — 2079 — not to the cumulative deficit over the next 75 years.”
July 21, 2010, 11:33 amGerard Harbison says:
Actually, Parker either misunderstands or misrepresents Cathy Young’s criticism. He claims Young argued that tea-partiers are no different from anti-tea-partiers in how they see blacks. That’s not what Young said. She said that tea-partiers, compared with all whites, view blacks no more negatively than they view whites. It took me about two minutes looking at the raw data to come to the same conclusion. Tea-partiers, in so much as they are different from the average whites in their assessment of trustworthiness, intelligence and hard-workingness, are misanthropes, not racists.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course :-)
Given his history of misrepresentation of his own results, his snotty little “I’m a social scientist, and she isn’t” is particularly silly. He needs to ponder the meaning of the word ‘tendentious’.
July 21, 2010, 11:33 amzuch says:
Oh, I agree. But isn’t the Republican party (at base, so to speak) the voters? Or do they simply think what the party elite and strategerists tell them to think (apparently not)?
As the WISER multivariate results show, there’s just “the side of the road” between “conservatives” and Tea Partiers (which is a good thing to make plain). There’s a broader shoulder between Tea Partiers and “Republicans”, and a big huge ditch between Tea Partiers and “Democrats” or “independents”. Tea Partiers are conservative Republicans, no matter how you slice it. And what we’re seeing is an internal fight in the Republican party between the conservative “base” and the more liberal (and sane) moderates and strategeric leadership…. It’s fun to watch, but my popcorn budget has been blown to hell.
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 11:35 amjukeboxgrad says:
No, it’s not better now. Because the amount of evidence you’ve offered to support this statement is exactly equal to the amount of evidence you’ve offered to support your prior statement. That is, none. Where is your evidence that there was a “Tea Party–like movement, incipient under Bush?”
July 21, 2010, 11:42 amRicardo says:
I should clarify that my reference to “footnote 10″ in the previous comment is from Jason Furman’s analysis of Bush’s 2005 SS proposal.
As far as the deficit is concerned, CBPP doesn’t appear to be doing any original analysis here at all. Their numbers come literally straight from the Congressional Budget Office which had to make 10-year projections right as Obama came into office in January 2009.
July 21, 2010, 11:43 amNorm says:
There once was a Journolist Prog Fourth Estate
July 21, 2010, 11:45 amopposed to any small government candidate
so they call him a Randian, racist or rube
sometimes a Christianist gun-toting boob
soon it’ll be “homophobe” for being against man(-)dates.
Mark Field says:
Well, I’d use a Confederate (Republican?) Party source, but it’s well known that facts have a liberal bias.
Perhaps you can also explain why the tea partiers oppose the health care reform act, since it reduces the deficits by over a trillion dollars after 2020.
July 21, 2010, 11:57 amjukeboxgrad says:
Bruce Bartlett “was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and was a Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush.” Does he fit your profile of “liberal biased?” According to Bartlett, Bush’s Medicare drug benefit “added $15.5 trillion (in present value terms) to our nation’s indebtedness” (link).
Let me know when Obama writes a check for thirteen trillion. As I said, your innumeracy is spectacular.
And don’t forget to tell me about all the Tea Party demonstrations the day Bush wrote that check.
Speaking of Bartlett, he has pointed out the rampant ignorance of the tea-party crowd, who think that “taxes are higher today” (post-Obama), even though “federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president.”
July 21, 2010, 11:58 amElliot says:
Well, I’ve looked for those sounds and images and don’t see them. I didn’t see any at Tea parties I attended, and I didn’t see any on TV news. I did see one guy in a YouTube video who was proclaiming racism, but he was being follwed by a Tea Partier carrying a sign with big arrows pointing to him as a shill.
I have no reason to believe Cleaver’s accusations since they are not confirmed by videos that were running at the time. Some in the congressional group even had cameras trained on the crowd. Nor were they confirmed by the cop who was there. I also note Cleaver dove in his bunker and didn’t emerge for a few weeks after his accusations. His normal pattern is to squeeze these things for all they are worth.
I did see a segment on MSNBC where the anchor and guests were decrying the danger to minorities presented by Tea Partiers carrying guns. They showed a guy carrying a M16 at a rally. The problem was, they cropped the picture so we couldn’t see the guy was black.
I’d also observe that the Tea Party is more of an attitude than an organization. They want to shrink government and stop spending. I imagine racists are on both sides of those issues. Anyone think racists are monolithic in their views on economics and government?
So, does anyone have a link to the offending sounds and images? Have any newspapers reporters written of sounds and images they personally witnessed? What is the basis for believing they exist? If they exist, to what extent? there have been several long pieces done by reporters who followed the Tea party. I don’t think any of them characterized it as racist. I think the NYT did a long piece. I’ll see if I can dig it up.
Perhaps if we have some links to video, pictures, and personal testimony we will know what we are talking about. I certainly can’t prove a negative here, but I would appreciate some pictures and personal testimony.
July 21, 2010, 12:00 pmP.J. O. says:
jkeboxgrad, you’re not arguing in good faith if you’re positing there wasn’t HUGE dissatisfaction in the Republican base during Bush, especially after his first term, over the issue of spending and government benefit programs.
How is it you believe the Dems got their hands on Congress in ’06?
The only “dog whistlers” I see are people here trying to smear others’ valid political belief and smudge the record with charges of racism, overt or latent, it don’t matter, because we all know we’re all racist at heart, right?
July 21, 2010, 12:01 pmGerard Harbison says:
It’s amusing to see a projection of what might happen ten years from now referred to as a ‘fact’.
July 21, 2010, 12:06 pmElliot says:
Perhaps because the same predictions increase the deficits in the ten years leading up to 2020?
July 21, 2010, 12:24 pmMark Field says:
No doubt you’ll apply the same standard to Confederate Party concerns about future deficits.
July 21, 2010, 12:33 pmkarrde says:
It is worth noting that the proto-WASP was doing mostly business-as-usual, in terms of deficits…well, they seemed large at the time.
Until our current President turned the average Yearly Deficit of his predecessor into his own average Monthly Deficit.
July 21, 2010, 12:39 pmMark Field says:
False again. CBO projections show deficit reduction of $143 billion over that period.
Serious question: do you guys have ANY facts to offer?
July 21, 2010, 12:40 pmSarcastro says:
Yeah, NAACP uses colored to advertise that they hate black people! Also they are Marxists, provided one defines Marxist as someone who disagrees with A. Criminal.
July 21, 2010, 12:42 pmjukeboxgrad says:
As of May ’08, 60% of Republicans still approved of him. That’s not congruent with your revisionist claim about “HUGE dissatisfaction in the Republican base.”
“HUGE dissatisfaction in the Republican base?’ Really? I guess that’s why we heard William F. Buckley Jr. refuse “to denounce Bush and his policies ‘in the name of conservatism,’ ” and refuse to say that Bush’s policies are “unworthy of conservative benediction.” Never mind that Buckley made these statements 109 days after Bush signed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act into law.
And that’s why we heard Fred Barnes say that “the case for Bush’s conservatism is strong.” And that’s why Weekly Standard defended Cheney’s statement that “deficits don’t matter.”
Yup, there sure was “HUGE dissatisfaction in the Republican base.” That’s why we saw this many tea party demonstrations prior to 1/20/09: zero.
The same way Obama won. By winning votes from independents. Not by winning votes from “the Republican base.” Duh.
July 21, 2010, 12:52 pmkarrde says:
One problem that many commenters may not see is that while the Republican National Committee (and many Republicans elected to office) is not too much of a deficit-hawk, most of the people who are deficit-hawks are attracted to the Republican Party…because they know there is less of a place for them in the Democratic Party.
The Tea Party appears to be a popular effort to supplant or replace the current leadership of the Republican Party. Either by forming a new organization, or reforming the organization from within.
The racial attitudes of people who call themselves Tea Party members is curious, but wake me up when they begin advocating policies that directly hurt minorities.
As an aside: when a person claims that racists are more likely to exist in organization X, whether NRA or the Tea Party, do they mean more likely by 0.1 %, 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%, etc? If it is a low number, that means that people who are racist may also agree with the goals of the organization. If it is a high number, it may mean that (1) racists formed the organization for other purposes, or (2) that the organization was formed for racist purposes.
But we need much more information than we have to make that determination about the Tea Party.
July 21, 2010, 12:53 pmA. Zarkov says:
In practice “less democracy” can mean a more limited franchise along with a two-party system.
July 21, 2010, 12:56 pmCynical says:
The Tea Party is strongly against illegal immigration and amnesty. It is strongly against corporate welfare and bailouts. Lots of Republican officeholders support those things.
July 21, 2010, 1:00 pmbyomtov says:
Ilya,
My analysis makes no such assumption. To the contrary, I think both Tea Partiers and many members of other groups in the poll probably interpreted saying that a group is not “hardworking,” etc., in a relatively nonpejorative way, which is why so many described their own groups that way.
Then how can you claim that misinterpretation of the question accounts for the differences in responses between Tea Party members and their opponents?
July 21, 2010, 1:05 pmSarcastro says:
Huh. Good thing Republican voters are identical to Republican office holders, or else this might be irrelevant.
July 21, 2010, 1:06 pmP.J. O. says:
Fail, jukeboxgrad. Too many fiscal conservatives were for “teaching” the GOP a lesson by either sitting out or not working the ’06 election.
You can cherry-pick all day long those political writers and publications that supported Bush and Republican candidates that election, but you can’t convince me or too many readers that their “support” was unalloyed and not engendered more by fear of the even bigger-spending and less security-minded Democrats wresting control. Which they eventually did wrest, because enthusiasm for the GOP agenda gave way to weariness over the “compassionate,” bi-partisan and pork-laden-Senator-names-on-big-things-back- home-and-such spending of the Congress, with either WH approval or inability to rein in.
In ’08 the economy softened, the press declared a financial and security melt-down on account of the Republican President, and voters cast their ballots for Hope and Change and free stuff.
After which, things got worse.
July 21, 2010, 1:09 pmJK says:
First you claimed that the tea party existed under Bush, then you argued that a tea party-like movement existed under Bush, now you moved the goal posts again to “some Republicans were dissatisfied with Budgetary policies.” Those are some active goal posts.
I recall some dissatisfaction with Medicare part D, but nothing close to a tea party. I don’t recall a peep about the unbalanced tax cuts or the unfunded massive military expenditures which were even worse for the budget than the medicare expansion.
July 21, 2010, 1:13 pmGerard Harbison says:
Do you?
Are you under the impression that projections are facts?
July 21, 2010, 1:13 pmP.J. O. says:
Good lord, jukeboxgrad. You must be too young to have been on the internet a few years ago. Or to have read analysis of the ’06 election dynamics.
Or you’re really trying hard here to make nothing out of something.
July 21, 2010, 1:19 pmGerard Harbison says:
At the risk of derailing an invaluable ‘Republicans are poopyheads’ discussion, I have a question on the actual subject matter of the post.
I am a physical scientist, not a social scientist. Nevertheless, it seems the study by Parker is a comparison of tea-partiers with others in their attitudes to blacks, with the control being a comparison of tea-partiers to others in their attitude to their own group (whites). Parker has in more than one place presented the results in his ‘experimental’ comparison as evidence of racism in tea-partiers, while completely ignoring the fact that his ‘control’ study gives almost exactly identical results. It is true that his raw data have been available for examination. Nonetheless, in my field, if you got caught interpreting data as showing a real trend, when the data and the control are indistinguishable, an ugly word that has five letters and begins with the letter ‘f’ would be the prevalent descriptor.
I wouldn’t insult the social sciences by asking if what Parker did was standard practice. Rather, in practice, doesn’t doing this sort of thing get one in trouble, reputationally, with one’s institution, or with funding agencies?
July 21, 2010, 1:23 pmP.J. O. says:
Jukeboxgrad, you know all of this but are trying to mislead. I don’t have time to look up obvious citations all day, but here, from Wiki:
July 21, 2010, 1:27 pmjukeboxgrad says:
If you have any facts, you should show them. All you’ve shown us so far is pure wind.
Exactly. These people had a miraculous awakening on 1/20/09. Here’s an idea: bring some evidence to support your argument, not mine. I appreciate the help, but I don’t need any.
Some of your ideological pals seems to be under that impression. I recall this statement:
That statement appears above, and it also appears in lots of other places. Can anyone seriously claim that one-sixth of the economy has already been nationalized? Of course not. And when pressed, the people who offer that asinine claim move the goalposts like this:
So if you are trying to educate people who are “under the impression that projections are facts,” you’ve got your work cut out for you. Because this particular specious projection is regularly repeated as if it were already an accomplished fact.
July 21, 2010, 1:33 pmElliot says:
That March 2010 projection assumes the 21% reduction in Medicare payment to doctors will hold. It didn’t. It was just put off for another six months, as it has every year since 1997.
July 21, 2010, 1:35 pmMark Field says:
This line of inquiry got started by discussion of tea party complaints about future deficits. If you aren’t willing to accept future projections, then you should immediately reject concerns about future deficits; both are based on projections. IOW, no need for anyone to complain about future health care costs, social security, etc.
And yes, I have posted facts, specifically the page showing that Bush policies are BY FAR the largest contributing factors to current deficits. That may not be all that surprising considering he’s only been out of office for 17 months, but (a) it was denied, and (b) it makes it hard to justify anyone who blames Obama for the deficits.
Aside from a nihilistic presentism, do you have anything else to add?
July 21, 2010, 1:38 pmGerard Harbison says:
Sorry, jukeboxgrad, ‘other people do it too’ has never been a winning argument in my book.
July 21, 2010, 1:39 pmJK says:
Sure the Ron Paul “revolution” people existed before Obama, but even as the article you quote notes that was a very different movement than the post-Obama more mainstream tea parties. The Ron Paul supporters were generally young liberal-tarians that were more opposed to (Bush’s) imperialistic foreign policy than even your average Democrat. That was an entirely different animal than the pro-military, no-cuts-to-Medicare, we-still-love0Bush tea partiers of 2009-10.
July 21, 2010, 1:40 pmP.J. O. says:
For jukeboxgrad’s disingenous argument: WaPo
These disaffected Bush voters weren’t mostly Ron Paul devotees, btw.
July 21, 2010, 1:40 pmCan't find a good name says:
Well, if you find such a word, please note that it applies to at least 4% of strong Tea Party opponents. In fact, it should even be an higher percentage once you look at the “intelligent” (10% difference for strong opponents) or “trustworthy” (15% difference for strong opponents) characteristics.
In fact, the strong Tea Party supporters had no more than a 14% gap in their ratings of whites and blacks on any of the three characteristics. The strong Tea Party opponents had a 15% gap in their ratings of whites and blacks as to trustworthiness.
I think these statistics show, mostly, that Tea Party supporters are more cynical about people in general than Tea Party opponents are.
July 21, 2010, 1:43 pmP.J. O. says:
JK/ jukeboxgrad,
Why are you eliding over the fact that the economy really took a nose-dive after Obama was elected, and the response to his ineffective and wasteful spending stimulus (complete with lots of spinning of the numbers, OK lying, about jobs created or saved, for one) was to galvanize already extant discontent over issues of spending and Federal hegemony?
July 21, 2010, 1:54 pmbyomtov says:
Jmaie,
I don’t see how your statistics refute the claim that:
By your own count there were at most eleven occasions when a Republican Administration had the opportunity, and they did it four of those eleven times. Four out of eleven is not extraordinary.
July 21, 2010, 1:57 pmSeattle Law Student says:
I’ll take a crack at this one. Basically because that’s like blaming the new general manager of a baseball team for their poor performance this year as compared with last year, when the departing general manager traded all the talent before he left.
July 21, 2010, 2:05 pmJK says:
I just don’t see any changes in the facts that would justify the change in the level of outrage. I realize that’s a subjective assessment, but it seems pretty well grounded to me. Tea partiers went from dormant to yelling in the streets in outrage within weeks of Obama being elected. The obvious explanation for this is that they were mad about some intrinsic aspect of Obama being president and not about any policies, and you haven’t said anything that would refute this pretty solid baseline assumption.
July 21, 2010, 2:16 pmSeattle Law Student says:
Let me add that in this case the departing manager not only traded away all the talent, but also signed a bunch of crappy Mo Vaughnesque long term contracts which cripple the team going forward.
July 21, 2010, 2:20 pmP.J. O. says:
Basically because that’s like blaming the new general manager of a baseball team for their poor performance this year as compared with last year, when the departing general manager traded all the talent before he left.
Sorry, Seattle Law Student. We had a Democrat House in ’06, and Obama and a Dem entire Congress in ’08 who promised to fix the economy and give everybody things. Their stimulus spending has failed horribly and they’ve lied about it, documented in numerous accountings. And their push to transform healthcare, extend coverage and mandate premiums constitutes Constitutional overreach to many Independents and Republicans, and one that will lead to further Federal control of/ encroachment into private citizens’ lives and business.
All triumphal estimates aside, the reality as many see it is healthcare is headed to be a combined SS, Medicare and Medicaid-level underfunded behemoth, in addition to our insolvent SS, Medicare and Medicaid.
July 21, 2010, 2:25 pmSeattle Law Student says:
P.J.O. – I’m sure you meant Democratic controlled house.
July 21, 2010, 2:32 pmP.J. O. says:
JK [fixed the avatar] has a hard-on about skin color, despite the fact, if he’s current with the news, he’s seen Independents who voted for darker pigmented Obama and other admittedly majority beige Democrats become increasingly disenchanted with the Dems’ goals, performance and the pathetic “Blame Bush” or cheat the numbers spinning.
July 21, 2010, 2:34 pmporterhouse says:
The 2010 South Carolina Republican primaries, combined with the results from the 2006 (low enthusiasm from Republicans), 2008 Republican primaries (low turnout), and 2008 general (Bush and McCain both declined in polls after Lehman collapsed and Democrats won BIG), all indicate that there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with Bush among Republicans and conservative independents. The 2010 SC Republican primaries really highlight this disapproval of the Republicans associated with Washington and Bush 43.
Once again, why cite polls and studies when you can cite actual EVIDENCE. Bush is a FAILED president, and enthusiasm for him waned in 2006 among people that supported him in prior elections. Conservative voters then started taking advantage new social networking techniques revolutionized by the Obama campaign in 2007-2008 and started influencing elections in 2009.
July 21, 2010, 2:53 pmJK says:
Actually I just meant the fact he is a Democrat, not that he is black. I would write something snarky, but the thread is about race so I can see how you might have read it that way.
July 21, 2010, 2:58 pmwhatever says:
Tea partiers went from dormant to yelling in the streets in outrage within weeks of Obama being elected.
Well, yeah, that’s precisely when Obama and Congress starting passing out even more bail-out monies like Tic Tacs on a date, hoping to get some.
Somebody got screwed, alright.
July 21, 2010, 2:59 pmzuch says:
… and if I followed you around with signs pointing out that you were a goat-farkin’ child molester, of course that would settle the question as well….
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 3:04 pmMark Field says:
Assuming this is both true and material (you’ve provided evidence of neither), all you’ve shown is that keeping the health care reforms in place was a good idea. Congratulations — you’re as effective as Gerard at undermining your own side.
July 21, 2010, 3:06 pmzuch says:
… and in other news, Hitler advocated population control.
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 3:10 pmJeffrey says:
Ilya, your analysis of the survey data meets the high standards one has come to expect of VC.
There is no doubt that most Democrats and Obama supporters–add the mainstream media to this category–are, politically speaking, terrified of the Tea Party movement and would like to tar and feather its members. Framing Tea Party members as racists is the liberal’s way of retaliating against the Tea Parties for calling Obama a “socialists” and a “Nazi.”
I am a former card-carrying, black member of the NAACP. I live in Iowa, the state that sent Obama on his way to the White House. I have attended three local Tea Party rallies, seen the signs and heard the rhetoric. The Tea Party people are not white, racist monsters. Many of them are College Republicans-young people–from Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa. Some of these students even voted for Obama. The fact is that many Iowans are as disappointed with Obama and the Democrats as other Americans.
Though I got disillusioned with the racial straight jacket of the NAACP before the advent of the tea parties, I felt more comfortable at the open, free-for-all Tea parties than at the up-tight regional NAACP meetings where I was reminded again and again that I was a victim, victim, victim of a racist white society. The word “white” refers to white liberals, conservatives, independents, libertarians, atheists, agnostics, Greens, etc, etc!
By the way, in one of the universities mentioned above, there will be a three-day seminar this fall with the following interesting title: “Critical Whiteness Studies.” Disclaimer: the seminar is not being organized by the NAACP or the Nation of Islam. Most of the speakers will be white liberal professors. I plan to attend to see white people of all political persuasions and especially of “heterosexual masculinity,” pilloried and burned at the stake for their “hegemonic tendencies”!
July 21, 2010, 3:19 pmjukeboxgrad says:
One of my favorite things about VC is when questions directed at me are answered by other people, who come up with better answers than the answers I had in mind. So thank you to the people who did that.
I should have made what I was getting at more clear.
Your righteous indignation about people who are “under the impression that projections are facts” would be more credible if it hadn’t been hiding under a rock when a flagrant example of that phenomenon appeared early in this thread. And I have a feeling it’s not the first time you’ve passed up a chance to demonstrate that your indignation is something other than partisan baloney, since that particular claim (about Obama allegedly nationalizing one-sixth of the economy) pops up here regularly.
I haven’t asked you to explain why Rs don’t like Obama. I’ve asked you to explain why there were zero tea party demonstrations during the thirty years when Reagan, Bush and Bush created 77% of the national debt that Obama inherited. We all know the real answer: IOKIYAR.
“Great deal” is a relative term. Most Republicans approved of him, even in 2008, and there were zero tea party demonstrations. No one wants to explain this mystery.
July 21, 2010, 3:37 pmKen Arromdee says:
I already explained it. Anyone who objected to something Bush did already had plenty of organizations to take up their cause. Why bother creating a new one?
July 21, 2010, 3:51 pmP.J. O. says:
Why were most Democrats against civil rights for a century before they were for them?
Your “question”
has been answered multiple times in different ways and still you ask if Tea Partiers have stopped beating their wives.
None of those Republican Presidents you cite federalized massive bailouts and healthcare, with energy and more to come to the extent that Obama and crew have done, and in a faltering world economy that seems to be trending leaner and less socialistic as a remedy.
But not us. We got a mandate now…
July 21, 2010, 3:51 pmlosantiville says:
there were zero tea party demonstrations. No one wants to explain this mystery.
Because we can count. 2006 Budget Deficit $250 Billion (last Republican Congressional budget), 2008 budget deficit $470 billion (last Republican President/Demoncat Congress Budget), 2009 budget deficit $1.25 trillion, 2010 budget deficit $1.3 trillion, future deficits $1 trillion/year “forever”.
Barry has promised us average $1 trillion plus deficits during his whole 8-year term (if and when).
Note that the 2009 deficit is Barry’s because the budget was not adopted while Bush was president. Barry signed it.
“Please Don’t Tell Obama What Comes After Trillion” – Popular Tea Party sign.
Then there are a few other things we don’t like too – Stimulus, Obamacare, tax increases, nationalizations, etc.
I seem to recall a bit of opposition to Bill Clinton back in the day.
July 21, 2010, 3:55 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I think this sums the argument up pretty well: Obama is just as bad as Bush was, so the Tea Party people reacting differently upon Obama’s election means they are racists.
The central assumption to this argument is that the only difference between them is Bush is white and Obama is black, and this seems to me to be quite an assumption…
* * *
Still waiting (in vain, it seems) to hear what the actual “racist” policies advocated by the Tea Party people are (besides getting rid of Obama, which has been the only one posited so far, because that is based upon the same assumption).
July 21, 2010, 4:02 pmMark Field says:
Let me add a “welcome back” to jbg. You’ve been missed.
July 21, 2010, 4:09 pmA big fat Tourniquet for U says:
The racism being advertised by the networks and attributed to the Tea Party (need to work on that name) is a ploy wrapped in an agenda inside of an ideology supported by a political party and sponsored by a group.
I would bet the percentage and depth of “racism ideology” (there is no race (were are all human race) there is only ethnicity, but it’s sounds better to say “racism”) is the same as that found in any ethnicity anywhere in America or Europe for that matter. If you want to hang a lead balloon on a person place or thing just accuse that person place or thing or being “racist”. And since the new party on the block is starting to make some waves I sort of expected this type of advertising to crop up, expect more of it too, if I were to guess the next group to chime in should be the queers to hang something on the partiers (Hey, I LIKE that moniker!)
So to advertise what the group stands for here it is,
TEA PARTY NON-NEGOTIABLE CORE BELIEFS
Illegal Aliens Are Here illegally.
Pro-Domestic Employment Is Indispensable.
Stronger Military Is Essential.
Special Interests Eliminated.
Gun Ownership Is Sacred.
Government Must Be Downsized.
National Budget Must Be Balanced.
Deficit Spending Will End.
Bail-out And Stimulus Plans Are Illegal.
Reduce Personal Income Taxes A Must.
Reduce Business Income Taxes Is Mandatory.
Political Offices Available To Average Citizens.
Intrusive Government Stopped.
English As Core Language Is Required.
Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged.
Common Sense Constitutional
Conservative Self-Governance
If the partiers can hold on and get some honest advertising from time to time I think these core beliefs will appeal to the larger part of what is now the United States. I hope they do and that it happens. I agree strongly with all of the beliefs but I myself borrow on credit all the time so I can allow to a certain extent that my government can do the same (I believe credit is the wellspring of free market based capitalism), if a realistic effort is in place to control and maintain it correctly and as long as it doesn’t go too far.
July 21, 2010, 4:13 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Well, I guess this one, sorta.
July 21, 2010, 4:20 pmSeattle Law Student says:
Demoncat! I’m not gonna lie – That’s awesome. Way cooler than calling us the Democrat party. Makes Dems sound like members of the Thundercats or something. I like.
July 21, 2010, 4:23 pmHan Solo says:
>If refusing to describe a group as “hard working,” “intelligent,” or “trustworthy”
ISN’T that pretty much how a conservative would view ANY LIBERAL regardless of color?
Heck for that matter, I bet they would view pretty much the population at large nearly the same because they are much more aware of nearly 50% of the population being moochers off the rest.
July 21, 2010, 4:25 pmwlpeak says:
I suspect the explanation for why the Tea Partiers opposed HCRA is that they are more like me and less like you.
You sure seem to put a lot of faith in the economic predictions of politicians. Certainly more faith than I do. After all, shouldn’t these selfsame economic wizkids have foreseen this latest fiasco in advance and acted to halt the housing bubble before it burst? We’re supposed to believe them now?
Also that pesky mandate seems a bit too Orwellian for my taste. Why is it that Statist legislation always adds more state power?
Anyway, the deficit causing elephant in the room you seek isn’t the Republican party, it’s the budget. Cut the budget, ease the deficit. It’s so simple, even a Tea Partier can see it.
July 21, 2010, 4:26 pmSarcastro says:
Well, since you Tea Party haters can only provide some kind of correlation, I can make up whatever causation I want!
Also, Jeffrey, you story is just such a perfect encapsulation of the Conservatives racial narrative! It’s literally incredible!
Finally, I just hope you don’t say teabaggers cause then I’ll be forced to derail the thread into talking about how much of a victim of your obscenity I am.
[Really glad liberals dropped that tact. It was an instant heat-not-light generator.]
July 21, 2010, 4:30 pmSeattle Law Student says:
The military / intelligence portion of the budget is already close to the largest portion of the federal budget. How can you sanely propose strengthening the military while accomplishing the other items? I would request that your response not include politically impossible actions such as ending medicare/medicaid/social security.
July 21, 2010, 4:33 pmMark Field says:
In the absence of “these selfsame projections”, how do you know there will be budget deficits in the future? You’ve undercut your whole case.
Thanks for the economics lesson, Mr. Hoover. Cutting spending now, in the middle of a very severe recession, would make the deficit worse as a percentage of GDP because it would add deflationary pressure to the economy and reduce economic production.
And if you want to cut the deficit in the future, then you need to (1) admit that projections can be used to discuss the issue; and (2) support health care reform because it goes a very substantial way towards cutting the deficit. You might also support cutting the military budget too. Or you could give up on tax cuts, because they increase the deficit also. That is, you could do all this if you were serious.
July 21, 2010, 4:39 pmzuch says:
And if you want to fetter them with titanium shackles, just accuse them of “murder”. And if you want to wrap them up in a Kevlar straight-jacket, just accuse them of “rape”.
This approach has the salutary side-effect of reducing violent crime statistics across the nation, because all such accusations will be just manifestations of personal animus and the underlying “crimes” just inventions.
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 4:41 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Mark, thanks for the friendly words. It’s on account of George Romney. I couldn’t not say “Mitt the Mexican.”
Sorry, but I find this incomprehensible. If the appropriate response to a booming national debt is tea party demonstrations, then the tea party demonstrations should have started 30 years ago. The fact that they did not tends to create the impression that what they are truly about is something other than a booming national debt.
When you show me a Democrat who had a miraculous overnight conversion on that point, then he is just as much of a hypocrite as the people who became born-again deficit hawks on 1/20/09.
I see that you slept through the last few months of the Bush administration.
I see that you also slept through Bush’s $15.5 trillion bailout of Big Pharma. Why are you pretending that Obama has ever written a check that big? He hasn’t.
The 2009 federal fiscal year started 111 days before Obama became president. It’s a surprise to discover that the federal government spent no money during that period. How could it? After all, “the budget was not adopted while Bush was president.”
Your illiteracy is dazzling.
I can think of another important difference: Bush’s spending was more extreme and more wasteful. As I said above, the GOP has no problem with nation building, as long as it’s someone else’s nation.
July 21, 2010, 4:42 pmJK says:
But the tea parties started before Obama did any of that. Anyway, medicare part D is more costly than “Obamacare” and the tea partiers love Medicare and trash Obama for attempts to control its costs. I just can’t imagine that if McCain was elected and did the exact things that Obama has done that that Tea Parties would be the same.
Whether it’s about race or not, it is about Obama as a person and not about his policies. When the tea parties started, and where at their peak, Obama just hadn’t done much of anything yet. Now that Obama has actually done enough stuff that you can make a vaguely rational argument that his policies invoked peoples’ ire the tea parties are actually dwindling. Actual policy discussion appears to be an anathema to tea party interest.
July 21, 2010, 4:42 pmTom Tinker says:
I’m a Partier.
Yeah, that works. Good enough for politics. Now, where is that barrel of whiskey..
July 21, 2010, 4:42 pmporterhouse says:
We have facts that provide a pretty good picture of the support for Bush/incumbent/establishment in a conservative Republican group of voters. The 2010 SC Republican primary puts the support for Bush/incumbent/legacy Republicans around 30% among conservative/Republican voters, i.e., the percentage of voters that Inglis, Thurmond, and Barrett received.
This same primary provides insight into the number of racists involved in the Tea Party movement. Scott, an African-American, only received 68% of the vote against an establishment Republican. Gowdy, who is white, received 70% of the vote against the incumbent Republican. Now factor in positives for Thurmond–legacy, more moderate in more moderate district, not an incumbent, backed by establishment, etc. and I come to the conclusion that the disparity in the numbers for Scott as opposed to Gowdy leads me to conclude that the percentage of racists in the Tea Party Movement is around 1% with a margin of error of -1/+1%.
Just a word of warning to liberals…I am a liberal, but in 2007 I noticed that the MSM was becoming increasingly biased and seemingly less diverse in thought. At this point I decided to start reading a wider range of news media and opinion. Eventually, the public discovered that there was an insidious cabal of irresponsible and unethical journalists attempting to shape public opinion which proved my initial concerns correct. The JournoList promoted groupthink and has weakened the already weakened MSM…I would suggest all liberals to try to get a wider range of opinions on matter such as this, because the liberal side of the equation has been tainted by groupthink.
I already explained the lack of demonstrations in 2008, conservatives were disillusioned with Bush and the Tea Party movement had yet to learn the valuable lessons with regard to social networking from the 2008 Obama campaign. The 2008 Obama campaign used revolutionary techniques, those same techniques have found their way into the hands of conservatives.
July 21, 2010, 4:54 pmzuch says:
Commandment One: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.’ (Exodus 20:1-3)
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 4:58 pmjukeboxgrad says:
So-called conservatives lined up to support Bush’s $15.5 trillion Medicare boondoggle because Facebook hadn’t been invented yet? Wow. I grade that I, for Imaginative.
July 21, 2010, 5:05 pmPerseus says:
Your claim was that there’s never any tough talk on entitlements, and I merely said that your claim was too strong. After experiences like that, Republicans are understandably reluctant to try that again (and have been willing to demagogue the issue when it suits their ends), which is why it will probably take a crisis of some sort before we see major reform.
July 21, 2010, 5:09 pmAllan Walstad says:
I think there was considerable conservative disgruntlement with Bush’s new medical entitlement, with his failure to veto over-spending, and, to a lesser but still significant degree, with his wars and claims of unlimited authority to spy and torture. It started to boil over with the Wall Street fat cat bailouts started by Bush. But if you’re conservative, where ya gonna turn? Even as far as the wars and spying are concerned, Obama has sent more troops instead of bringing them home, and pushed through renewal of the so-called Patriot Act. The fact that Tea Party supporters have effectively opposed some of the GOP heirarchy’s preferred candidates suggests strongly that the Tea Party movement is not just a response to Obama. I think the neocons will prove to be the big losers with the rise of the Tea Party — a darn good thing, if I’m correct about that.
July 21, 2010, 5:11 pmporterhouse says:
You need to read posts before you comment on them.
Conservative voters did not necessarily support the Medicare Drug plan, but the Republican establishment and Jeb Bush considered it necessary in order to win FL in both 2000 and 2004. Al Gore also proposed a Medicare Drug plan in 2000, were conservative voters supposed to vote for Gore in 2000? Btw, I voted for Gore, Kerry, and Obama because I am a liberal and I thought Bush was incompetent and his policies irresponsible. I will most likely not vote for Obama in 2012.
July 21, 2010, 5:11 pmzuch says:
You mean “funds” of course. Like AFP, FreedomWorks, and other astroturf Republican operations greasing the skids….
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 5:14 pmAllan Walstad says:
Porterhouse: Keep posting reasoned comments. Take the zingers you get in return as compliments.
Occasionally, indulge in a zinger :-)
July 21, 2010, 5:17 pmjukeboxgrad says:
And this alleged lack of support manifested itself in the form of how many tea party demonstrations? Zero. Fool me once etc.
July 21, 2010, 5:20 pmMalvolio says:
Thank you for the false economics lesson, Dr. Keynes. Yes, some people believe that deficit spending spurs the economy. They’re wrong, but they do believe that.
July 21, 2010, 5:21 pmwlpeak says:
Errmm…I don’t recall making a case about future deficits, or using economic predictions per se, The credibility of politicians with poor track records making predictions, perhaps. But that is a different thing. Ya know.
Then you follow on with a Keynesian diatribe. I don’t want this to devolve into an Economics argument. About the only way a post on race baiting could get worse. But I will say, he isn’t the only economic theorist in town. Spending isn’t the only game in town. Surely even President Clinton got his surplus without the current levels of Govt. spending.
As to reducing the deficit, it is a FACT, ( I thought you’d like one), that spending less than you take in reduces your deficit. No dicey economic predictions are needed.
But to address you final section, I see no need to credulously accept any prediction, let alone an economic one from people who have demonstrated no track record for accuracy in prediction or integrity in enactment. Nor to believe your assertion that the ‘Health Care’ ‘Reform’ act that was passed and seems yet to be fully comprehended by anyone, will lead to anything other than an increase in demand on the People’s coffers just as every previous attempt along these lines has. And finally, perhaps the Military budget should be cut. But if it were, it would be the only cut proposed here to an indisputable Government responsibility. And if the end result of this profligate spending by the Government of the last several years has lead us to this, then the Government itself has failed in its primary duties to the People. And it is therefore no wonder or surprise that they have begun to demonstrate their dissatisfaction whether in a Tea party or not.
July 21, 2010, 5:25 pmJeffrey says:
Sacastro,
Is the racial pigeonhole-no pun intended–to which liberals consign blacks better than what you call “conservative racial narrative?”
Teabaggers you say? Did you notice how Scott Brown teabagged Martha Coaxley in Massachusetts, and laughed all the way to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat? Did you see how Michele Bachmann teabaged Nancy Pelosi into starting a Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives?
July 21, 2010, 5:29 pmporterhouse says:
I am not a conservative, but I consider myself part of the Tea Party movement…so I was complaining in 2003 about the fact the 2003 Medicare Drug plan was not paid for and I voted against Republicans in 2004. Once again, people did not know the power that they possessed in 2003. The Republican establishment backed Bush in 1999 and he won the primary. Conservatives voted for Bush over Gore and Kerry. Bush barely beat Kerry in 2004. Bush’s approval rating dipped below 50% very early in his 2nd term and he never recovered. Bush supporters clearly became disillusioned in 2005-2006 and Democrats took control of Congress and then the presidency in 2008.
I have now become disillusioned with the Democrats, so I am voting for Republicans—we, unfortunately, have a political system dominated by two political parties that leads to a binary decision on election day.
July 21, 2010, 5:41 pmSarcastro says:
Jeffrey‘s switch from Obama supporter to doctrinaire right-winger just keeps getting more incredible!
July 21, 2010, 5:42 pmJeffrey says:
Sarcastro,
Your liberal racial condescension aside, taken together, your handle, “sarcastro” and the word “teabagger” (which you gratuitously introduced into this thread) are graphically ironic descriptors. Like my kid would say, get it! Ha ha ha ha!
July 21, 2010, 5:49 pmPerseus says:
You accuse someone of nihilistic presentism and then rely on an economic theory rooted in the notion that “in the long run, we’re all dead.” Aside from third-rate irony, do you have anything else to add?
July 21, 2010, 5:50 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Bush’s approval rating among Rs never dipped below 60%, and zero Rs organized demonstrations to protest his spending. Therefore it’s reasonable to wonder why the reaction to Obama is so vehemently and vividly different.
July 21, 2010, 5:55 pmSarcastro says:
[Yeah, I was noting how it is good no one brought it up cause it derails the thread. Case and point.
As for racial condescension, liberals at times have some racial problems, but I do not see them wholesale writing off of a race as bought and sold, as if they have no personal choice.]
July 21, 2010, 6:03 pmporterhouse says:
No it isn’t, because the economy went into recession in Dec. 2007 and has not really recovered. Obama won in 2008 in part because of the economy and the financial meltdown, now you refuse to believe that voters can stay engaged about the economy and they have ulterior motives.
The Bush economic policies contributed to the current deficits, but the deficits were actually declining in Bush’s 2nd term (we now know the decline in deficit was due to unhealthy economic growth that resulted in a financial meltdown). The old line is…deficits don’t matter until they matter–well, they matter now and they are HUGE. Just because Bush and the Republicans made a mess does not give Obama and the Democrats the right to make a mess of their own…Democrats were put in power to CLEAN UP the Bush mess. Tea Party members believe Obama and Pelosi are making the economic mess worse.
July 21, 2010, 6:12 pmzuch says:
Oh yes. The Hannity/Palin 2012 (or is it Palin/Hannity?) Dream Team™ will be far better. Or will the moderates in the Republican party win out over the foamer contingent, and nix this Tea Party wet dream? Who knows? At the moment, initial results of this face-off are inconclusive, with perhaps a slight edge to the moderates, but a lot can happen between now and then … such as the foamers’ nuttiness driving off independents in droves and allowing the foamer contingent to win the primaries.
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 6:58 pmzuch says:
Really?!?!? You sure it wasn’t Pelosi handing her some rope?
Cheers,
July 21, 2010, 7:00 pmElliot says:
It would if I had my goat with me…
July 21, 2010, 7:10 pmMark Field says:
Let’s see, Keynes or Hoover? Hmm. Tough call….
If your only concern is current deficits, then surely you recognize, per the chart I linked earlier, that Bush, not Obama, is the cause of those deficits. Which explains why the tea party is so upset at Obama.
True. Which is why you should be REALLY upset with Bush (and see the chart referenced above).
Depends on whether you mean nominal debt or debt as a percentage of GDP. Under current economic conditions it would deflate the economy and reduce GDP, thus making the remaining deficit relatively larger, even if smaller nominally.
Which, again, explains why the tea partiers should be REALLY mad at Bush.
Striking while the irony is hot, what I’ll add is that you seem to have misunderstood the context of Keynes’s famous quote.
July 21, 2010, 7:10 pmElliot says:
It’s true. Congress just did it. And it’s material because it represents costs the OMB March projection did not consider. The OMB projections also did not consider what it now projects as $140 billion in administrative costs various federal departments would expend to manage ObamaCare.
July 21, 2010, 7:15 pmporterhouse says:
Tea Party members are mad at Bush/incumbent/legacy/establishment Republicans…just check out the results of the 2010 SC Republican primary. Thankfully, Bush is no longer in office, now Tea Party members are taking out their anger on establishment Republicans and the irresponsible economic policies of Pelosi/Obama.
What you fail to comprehend is that not all spending is equal. For example, Bush’s 2001 and 2003 spending bills (tax cuts) were irresponsible and contributed to unhealthy economic growth. Likewise, the Pelosi 2009 spending bill funneled money to Democratic special interest groups in the public sector and thus failed to stimulate economic growth in the private sector. The Bush/Obama TARP bill bailed out big banks, but failed to get the banks lending again and thus stifled job creation.
July 21, 2010, 7:23 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Well, that changes the premise of my understanding of the argument a bit, i.e., from ‘Obama is just as bad as Bush’ to ‘Bush was even worse than Obama.’ This, of course, makes the Tea Party people even racist-er. However, it doesn’t change the fact that race simply isn’t the only – nor even the major – difference between the two. In addition, people have shifted toward “anti-statism” and “anti-mandate” etc. arguments since those previous comments, which increases the likelihood (to my mind) that it is a political party and ideology issue (as some, even on the liberal side, seemed to indicate even early on in the debate) moreso than a race issue.
July 21, 2010, 7:59 pmArthur Kirkland says:
It was business-as-usual for Republican presidents’ deficits, but a distinct departure from demonstrated budget performance during Democratic presidencies.
If Tea Partiers were genuinely outraged about deficits, and wanted to send a message about size of goverment, the evidence would have led them to vote for Gore and especially Kerry. But to endure hamhandedly arranged Republican deficits for years, then revolt in favor of the Republicans when a Democrat arrived? One wouldn’t ascribe that level of stupidity to a group of out-on-the-first-question contestants from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
It seems the precipitate for Tea Partying remains elusive.
July 21, 2010, 8:19 pmleo marvin says:
Ditto and
ditto.
Now if Orin would just quit goofing off and sucking down three martini Capital Hill lunches, this place might find it’s way back to a modicum of sanity.
July 21, 2010, 8:39 pmBruce Hayden says:
Hockey stick anyone?
July 21, 2010, 8:48 pmPerseus says:
The quote was used simply in order to encapsulate the effectual basis of the silly Keynesian consumption function that you seem to hold in such high regard. In any event, that added nothing of any substance to the discussion, which is consistent with your own nihilistic presentism.
July 21, 2010, 8:54 pmBruce Hayden says:
Well, I think that the general hypothesis is wrong. Why would thinking that Blacks, on average, don’t work a hard as Whites, who marginally don’t work as hard as Hispanics, and none work nearly as hard as Asians is racist? I would suggest that deep down, most of the people here think that. And, except for the Hispanics, I would suggest that if being on welfare were a viable proxy, it would turn out that these stereotypes are accurate. Indeed, I would suggest that pretty much any proxy that you would use would likely give comparable results (again, ignoring Hispanics, a larger percentage of whom haven’t been here long enough to become established).
Of course, it would be racist to admit any of this. But, I would suggest that that refusal to admit it is even more racist, because it excuses bad behavior (in this case, not working hard) because some group or another is considered a victim class. The Tyranny of Low Expectations.
What I consider racist is meeting someone, and judging them on the color of their skin, and not the content of their soul. And, I would assume that that is the ideal for most, if not all, of us here. Unfortunately, that was not a part of the survey.
July 21, 2010, 9:12 pmleo marvin says:
Come on, Elliot. Unless someone stole your Google, it’s impossible to have looked in earnest for racism from the Tea Party fringes, and come up empty. But if you insist on playing dumb, I’m sure you can at least find your way to former neocon hero, now apostate, Charles Johnson’s site. He’s taken it upon himself to expose the sort of garbage that made him flee the right. Here are a couple of examples to start you off. And here’s one from CNN, in case you’re boycotting Johnson.
And Elliot, please don’t take this as an excuse to move the goalposts and argue that these examples are atypical. I already said I don’t think the Tea Party is generally characterized by racism. I’m only responding to your skepticism that there’s any racism there at all. You wanted examples, so here are a few, and if you’re sincerely interested you’ll find more where those came from.
July 21, 2010, 9:27 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Hi leo, nice to see you. As I go through another routine hiatus where I enjoy months of mostly just lurking, there have been many times that your comments make me glad I decided to bother scanning a thread. So even though Orin is not here I find stuff that’s worth reading, thanks to you and a few other people.
July 21, 2010, 9:47 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I am no economics expert, and am open to education based on reliable authority, but these charts indicate you might be wrong.
This chart and this information seem interesting, too, for any Tea Partier genuinely motivated by a concern with respect to government deficits. Change-of-registration forms are available from your voter registration office, or from your local Democratic committee.
July 21, 2010, 10:18 pmMark Field says:
Which still doesn’t explain why they never organized while Bush was in office, but appeared within a month of Obama taking office.
I not only understand this, I agree with it.
You’ll have to take this up with the consensus of economists, because they think it did.
Agreed.
Silly me for not understanding the import of an out of context quote on an unrelated issue.
July 21, 2010, 10:22 pmPeter Shalen says:
I would love to believe this. Then I could concentrate all my anger against Obama on his foreign policy.
Any evidence of this “consensus”? Or for that matter, any hint of what evidence the people supposedly comprising the consensus give that the spending bill helped growth in the private sector?
Or when you say “consensus” do you mean Paul Krugman?
July 21, 2010, 10:50 pmporterhouse says:
I distinguish between healthy economic growth and unhealthy economic growth.
Consumer spending drives our economy, so funneling revenue to state employees that are unionized and tend to vote Democrat will end up injecting consumer spending into the economy. That said, public sector jobs are paid for by private sector taxes, so you need private sector growth first and foremost. Yes, private sector consumer spending is the same as public sector consumer spending, but the private sector must lead us out of recession. Propping up the public sector can only help soften a recession, but only if the private sector is growing while the states work out their budget problems.
I do not know anybody that thinks the big housing bubble states are going to see property tax revenues and sales tax revenues get back to 2006-2007 levels in the short-term, ipso facto, these states will have to make difficult budget decisions and unfortunately the stimulus is merely delaying the inevitable.
July 21, 2010, 10:51 pmPerseus says:
As I’m more inclined to believe in animal spirits than in your authority on economic matters, I’d ask that you tell us more about this alleged “consensus of economists.” Exactly who are they, and what do they think?
July 21, 2010, 10:55 pmporterhouse says:
The 2004 election was focused on terrorism and two wars, so the election was not focused on the economy. Also, generally incumbent presidents win big or lose, rarely do they barely win like Bush did in 2004…and this was after the Republicans gained seats in the House in 2002.
That said, going forward Tea Party members are supporting candidates like Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott, and they are REJECTING candidates like Charlie Crist. Charlie Crist supported the 2009 Pelosi spending bill, and Tea Party members forced him out of the Republican party and championed Marco Rubio. I do not know how the motives of the Tea Party can be any more clear in light of this event.
July 21, 2010, 11:04 pmPeter Shalen says:
Yet the media created the bizarre myth that Bush had won because of religious fundamentalism. Do you remember the “Jesusland” map?
You mean they care about the issues they say they care about? That is SO WEIRD!
July 21, 2010, 11:11 pmElliot says:
That’s it? Three out of how many thousands of signs? If one contends that is not atypical, is it typical?
Confederate flag? Is that racist? Why?
Sign about murders? How is that racist?
And Mark Williams?
From your link:
Like I said earlier, lots of folks are insulted because nobody in the Tea Party cares they are black. “The most unkindest cut of all…”
July 22, 2010, 12:01 amporterhouse says:
I recall Crawford, TX was the capital of Jesusland.
July 22, 2010, 12:21 amleo marvin says:
JBG,
You’re too kind as usual. And though it’s always good to know you may be lurking, your active return is cause for celebration, and not just because of your comments, invaluable though they are. Your presence tells us the Eye of Soros has once again fixed its gaze in our direction, so it won’t be long before The Witch-king of ACORN leads an army of Americorp sock puppets into the decisive battle to end this tiresome age of free men. Now begins the Age of Death Panels, Welfare Queens and Stifling Government Regulation!
July 22, 2010, 1:21 amjukeboxgrad says:
I told George that if he told you our plan you wouldn’t be able to keep your mouth shut. Of course I was right.
By the way, if you see him before I do tell him I need a raise.
July 22, 2010, 1:30 amleo marvin says:
Elliot,
You’re a busy boy. You build straw men, move goalposts I warned you not to, and find time to play dumb about the implications of Mark Williams and a Confederate Flag waving yahoo who, like you, pretends not to understand why African Americans would find that offensive. That’s a lot of shamelessness to pack into one comment.
July 22, 2010, 1:46 amleo marvin says:
JBG, oops. (And Soros says money’s on the way out right after private property. Think Big Picture.)
July 22, 2010, 2:04 amzuch says:
Bruce Hayden, meet Mark Williams. Mark, meet Bruce….
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 2:10 amleo marvin says:
Why? That’s just as consistent with a partisan agenda as an economic one. (This isn’t up to the standards of your Third Amendment scholarship.)
July 22, 2010, 2:18 amporterhouse says:
I have already stated that the Tea Party movement is a conservative movement and essentially a subset of the Republican party. I voted for Kerry and I wanted Rumsfeld fired in 2004, but in 2004 the economy and deficits took a backseat to other issues.
The Bush years had economic growth with as much substance as cotton candy, but the average voter was unaware of this and continued to take out interest only mortgages, home equity loans, run up credit card debt, and the DJI hit 14,000 (Bush’s approval did NOT break 40%)…which gave them a false sense of financial security. Under Obama, the deficit, stimulus package directed at public sector employees, health care bill that is seemingly paid for by Medicare cuts, underwater mortgages, crushing student loan debt, and the 9.5% unemployment rate have all combined to re-energize conservatives. The techniques employed by Obama in 2008 have now been adopted by the Tea Party movement, and so far the techniques have resulted in several major wins…so Obama does deserve some credit for these wins.
Saying that this “isn’t up to the standards” of my Third Amendment scholarship is like saying Hamlet is not as good as Macbeth.
July 22, 2010, 4:05 amRicardo says:
FY2009 included Bush’s last few months in office. Now those months were not exactly uneventful on the spending front. The deficit includes about $200 billion due to TARP and the GSE bailouts which were a Bush policy as much as an Obama one (and a necessary one at that). Another $300 billion was due solely to falling revenues caused by the recession.
Not at all. Milton Friedman, for instance, never denied that deficit spending could spur an economy. He thought it was a lousy idea because governments get addicted to spending, because monetary policy is usually more effective and because the lag-time between the beginning of a recession and when the government can realistically start spending is too long. The first and the third are political rather than economic arguments and the second unfortunately does not apply in the present scenario.
July 22, 2010, 7:49 amRicardo says:
It was later economists like Hicks and Samuelson who formalized the silly Keynesian consumption function.
Keynes was not very interested in math-based economics himself — he had that much in common with Hayek. His “General Theory” does talk about a consumption function, though: “The relationship between the community’s income and what it can be expected to spend on consumption, designated by D1, will depend on the psychological characteristic of the community, which we shall call its propensity to consume. That is to say, consumption will depend on the level of aggregate income and, therefore, on the level of employment N, except when there is some change in the propensity to consume.”
Now, you have to compare this to the alternative at the time, which is the original classical model. Classical economics says consumption should only change when something long-term and structural in the economy changes, like the long-run rate of economic growth or the psychological rate of discount. Classical economics is wrong. Temporary changes in income and employment change consumption — sometimes drastically. Whether your consumption function is silly or complicated, there’s no getting around the psychological relationship between employment, income and consumption.
July 22, 2010, 8:05 amMark Field says:
Several responses demanded that I do Google searches for them to show a consensus of economists on the impact of the stimulus. That’s way off topic (partly my own fault, of course), so I’m not going to respond much beyond a few links:
Here is the CBO. Here is Mark Zandi. See also here. And here.
July 22, 2010, 11:26 amzuch says:
And the Nazi guy was walking around with a signed check from George Soros hanging out of his pocket? As Hertz would say, “not exactly….” The ‘smoking gun’ — the damning clue that he’s some kind of plant — was the allegation that his shirt was new (and supposedly showed folds). Wow, Inspector Closeau has nuttin’ on your guys….
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 12:03 pmElliot says:
I agree Blacks might find a Confederate flag offensive, however, I see no reason to equate Black offense with racism. The flag issue has been debated for years. At best it is an undecided issue. In a movement that considers a federal power grab from the states to be crucial, it certainly can have implications other than racism. So, if that is the worst the Tea Party has to offer, I’d say those racist images just aren’t there.
You linked to a story of Mark Williams getting the boot as an example of Tea Party racism. I’m afraid that demonstrates the opposite.
And the sign about murder? That is an example of racist images? Exactly what is racist about that?
In my last post, I neglected to comment on your link to the poster showing Joe McCarthy holding a picture of Obama over a caption that says “Vindicated.” I presume that is an allusion to McCarthy’s much derided habit of holding up papers saying he had lists of communists in government. So, this poster implies McCarthy has finally found a communist in government, and that communist is Obama. Can you tell us how that is racist? Exactly what makes that poster racist?
So, when an intellgent and well informed person like you goes out looking for racist images, they just aren’t there. So, why should we believe they are? That was my initial point. We are all piously discussing what isn’t. The emperor really does have no clothes.
July 22, 2010, 12:04 pmzuch says:
That would be ‘debated’. Blacks say the Confederate flag is racist. We say the Confederate flag is racist. You folks say it’s not. You want to fly it because you like to fly it (and maybe because it pisses us off). It’s “heritage” … and let’s not sak what kind of “heritage”…. But of course you’re not racist; what an ugly accusation. Hell, to you the only guy that’s “racist” is that CCC/Nazi guy walking around the Tea Party and he’s a Soros plant (so perhaps just a faux racist). Matter of fact, we don’t really have any real racists anywhere <*koff-koff*>
Here ya go: Some enlightening tee-bee for you. Maybe you aren’t racists, but you sure do use it, and that’s almost as bad….
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 1:36 pmzuch says:
Here, for one. Money quote: “Posters portraying President Obama as a witch doctor may be racist, organizers of Tea Party protests say, but they reflect anger about where he is leading the country.” More accurately though, should be “where they hallucinate he is leading the country”….
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 1:42 pmlibarbarian says:
Tea Partiers might dislike all Gov’t spending, but they seem to dislike Gov’t spending on poor and minorities a heck of a lot more than spending on middle & upper class whites.
July 22, 2010, 3:37 pmPerseus says:
That’s hardly a “consensus of economists” (and includes economists who dissent from the alleged consensus). I was hoping that there was such a thing since it would have to be a truly vast conspiracy that’s very effective in disinformation techniques to fool people that the “consensus” doesn’t exist.
July 22, 2010, 4:38 pmporterhouse says:
Actually, it is on topic…it is only off topic if one believes Tea Party members are motivated by racism, and said racism is somehow leading them to support candidates like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Marco Rubio; while rejecting candidates like Thurmond, Barrett, and Crist.
July 22, 2010, 4:56 pmElliot says:
I agree it would be debated. I noted there is a history of differing views. However, in the context of people protesting a power grab by the feds from the states, it is reasonable to see it in its non-racist context.
If we are thinking of the same video of the guy wandering around the Tea Party rally muttering racist slogans, the most instructive aspect shows him being actively challenged, refuted, and repudiated by many others. They even have a sign pointing to him out. I don’t know if he is connected to Soros. Is he?
And the witch doctor? The subject is ObamaCare. Health care. With doctors. So, the message is ObamaCare is a sham. It’s much like the Voodoo Economics we heard so much about. That has become part of our political lexicon. Would it also be racist to say ObamaCare is Voodoo Care?
Context and message does matter in symbolism.
July 22, 2010, 5:52 pmleo marvin says:
Elliot,
Mark Williams is a racist who liked being a Tea Partier enough to put “Tea Party” in the name of his own little group. He was indisputably a racist Tea Partier right up until the Tea Party kicked him out for impoliticly making his racism their public embarrassment. If he was smart enough to express his racism in subtler, more publicly acceptable ways, he’d still be a racist Tea Partier. How does that “demonstrate the opposite” of my argument, unless you think I believe Tea Party leaders want their members to make public spectacles of their racism?
And no, I don’t claim every conceivable display of a Confederate Flag is necessarily racist. Neither is every conceivable display of a swastika necessarily anti-Semitic. But if a Jew asks someone waving a swastika to stop, and the flag waver refuses, insisting he doesn’t understand why the Jew would find it offensive, that’s anti-Semitic. Likewise, for the Tea Partier in that video to refuse to stop waving the Stars and Bars, insisting he doesn’t see why the African-American questioner would be offended, is plain racism. (And I’m not going to hair-split whether it’s “racist” or just “intentionally racially offensive.” If you want to argue that Confederate flag-waving Tea Partiers aren’t racist, they’re just intentionally racially offensive, be my guest.)
July 22, 2010, 6:08 pmporterhouse says:
I do not support the Confederate flag flying anywhere but in museums (Sam Houston is one of my heroes). That said, the Confederate flag still flies on the grounds of the capitol in SC…and guess who the conservative Republicans supported in their most recent primary in SC. They overwhelmingly supported Tim Scott and Nikki Haley! Guess who Tim Scott, an African-American, beat in the primary…he beat Strom Thurmond’s son! Guess what historical place is in Tim Scott’s district…Fort Sumter, and the Confederate Flag flies at the state capitol in Columbia! Why do people refuse to face the facts?!?
July 22, 2010, 6:18 pmleo marvin says:
Elliot,
If you really believe images of Obama with a bone through his nose are analogous to George H.W. Bush’s criticisms of Reaganomics, the most charitable explanation is that you’re clueless.
As for the white supremacist hounded in the video, all that proves is the people hounding him don’t want to be publicly associated with what he’s selling. Maybe they’re offended by it, or maybe they just know it’s politically toxic. Personally I assume most of them really do disapprove, but I’m a bleeding heart liberal who takes people at their word. That doesn’t make the video the logical proof you claim it is.
And speaking as a Soros plant, I assure you that guy wasn’t.
July 22, 2010, 6:48 pmsmead jolley says:
The issue is so simple only lawyers could make it complex. Try to follow: (1) the current definition of “racism” is opposition to any policy that disproprotionately benefits blacks (disparate impact); (2) the tea partiers are opposed to preferences for blacks, be they spots at Berkeley, municipal jobs or no-down mortgages; (3) therefore the tea partiers are racists. The only mystery is why Loki, Martinned, Dilan and the rest won’t admit that this is their syllogism.
July 22, 2010, 6:58 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Next up, Elliot is going to explain that there also no racism when Limbaugh told a black caller “take that bone out of your nose.”
July 22, 2010, 7:34 pmzuch says:
Oh, yes. The Civil War was all about a “power grab by the feds from the states”, and the Stars’N'Bars is just emblematic of this great (and horribly misunderstood) struggle…. Why, the great underlying principle of “state’s rights” made a resurgence in the ’50s and ’60s, when numerous politicians (strangely enough, mostly in the South) ran on this platform … along with some of the concomitant “rights” that the relevant states wanted to keep.
This is why I said ‘debated’. Some people try to pretend there’s some actual debate worth considering. There isn’t … any more than there’s any debate that the earth is 6000 years old (needless to say, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be people advancing both propositions, but that’s another matter).
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 9:54 pmzuch says:
What did the sign (pointing him out) say? Yes, he was being “actively challenged” and “repudiated” by the guy(s) making the video (but how do we know that this person wasn’t a Soros plant) … but I don’t know about “refuted”. Perhaps you meant “refudiated”?
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 9:58 pmElliot says:
Your post was a story about how the Tea Party dumped the guy because of his racist actions. That does not demonstrate racism in the Tea Party. It demonstrates the opposite.
The guy with the flag said it represented freedom from Washington. That was his message in the context of the Tea Party opposition to the increasing growth and power of the federal government.
However, in general, any given Black does not get to decide for everybody what is racism. He can tell us what offends him, but he doesn’t get to label folks racists or anti-Semites for offending him. In the video you posted, the Black and white guy had an interesting conversation, but neither evidenced racism. Insensitivity to others’ feelings does not constitute racism.
Perhaps you can share the information you have about the intentions of the people in this incident? My contention is the flag is a reasonable symbol of protest against a perceived power grab by the feds from the states. They guy told us why he was displaying it to support freedom from Washington.
Characterizing ObamaCare as the product of a witch doctor is quite analogous to characterizing economic policy as being a product of Voodoo. Both use humor and ridicule to characterize the opposition policy as an illusory solution to a serious problem. They paint the policies as being just as illusory as the attentions of Voodoo or witch doctors. In fact, given that doctors are a vital element in ObamaCare, the witch doctor image is more on point than characterizing economics as Voodoo. Perhaps that’s a Voodoo witch doctor?
Well, OK. I’m content for it to prove the Tea Party doesn’t want to be publicly associated with the racist slogans he’s muttering. What more would you want it to prove?
I think you would have a stronger case on the witch doctor and flag if they did not have reasonable connections to the issues being protested. There are many instances where there would not be a reasonable connection. Context, purpose, and message matter in communication.
July 22, 2010, 10:02 pmzuch says:
Soooooo … not “snake oil salesman” … instead a stereotypical “African witch doctor”. Purely by chance, I’m quite sure.
But I’d note that even the Tea Party organisers in the link I posted agreed that the poster was racist….
Oh, yes. Good example. Guess who came up with that term? Betcha can’t….
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 10:09 pmzuch says:
… and wearing a Swastika armband is a “reasonable symbol” of support for wienerschnitzel and Wagner.
Cheers,
July 22, 2010, 10:18 pmPeter Shalen says:
Hello, folks. I don’t think the Tea Parties are motivated by racism, but it’s obvious to me that the witch doctor meme is racist. Why deny it? To do so only weakens the case against the charge of systemic racism in the Tea Party movement.
July 22, 2010, 10:25 pmElliot says:
“It’s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain’s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics — not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.”
Paul Krugman, NYT, April 4, 2008
July 22, 2010, 10:54 pmRicardo says:
The Confederate flag is the symbol of the Confederate States of America. What did the Confederate States of America stand for? Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens made sure that future generations would know, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
People who fly the Confederate flag for political purposes are either racist, ignorant or both.
July 22, 2010, 10:54 pmleo marvin says:
That’s some ambitious relativism you’ve got going there, Elliot. I never figured you for such the postmodernist. So, in the proper context there’s nothing objectively offensive racially about marching with Confederate flags and depicting African-Americans with bones through their noses? Likewise for burning crosses? Lynchings? How about lynching Obama the bone-through-nose witch-doctor in effigy, in a field of burning crosses? Properly contextualized of course.
July 22, 2010, 11:02 pmElliot says:
If you conclude people who fly the flag for political purposes are racist, don’t you first have to know their political purpose?
What do you mean by racist?
July 22, 2010, 11:07 pmElliot says:
In the context of protesting ObamaCare I don’t see any connection between either lynching or cross burning, and health care. Nor do I see any connection to limiting the growth of the federal government.
July 22, 2010, 11:13 pmRicardo says:
Sure, which is why some of them are ignorant rather than racist.
Someone who believes in “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man” in the words of CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens.
July 22, 2010, 11:18 pmElliot says:
It’s quite possible to know about and reject Mr. Stephens yet still use the flag as a protest symbol against federal incursion into areas one considers states’ purview. If this is the case, do you contend one believes “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man?”
Is the object of racism limited to negros?
July 22, 2010, 11:39 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Of course the Confederal flag issue is still undecided . . . and will be so long as there are enough racists and rednecks to stoke a debate.
July 22, 2010, 11:45 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I sense that Tea Partiers don’t mind spending on minorities so much — as long as it is spending on weapons that kill minorities in other countries. In fact, that kind of spending seems to make them feel better.
July 22, 2010, 11:49 pmRicardo says:
Not to Godwin the thread here, but that’s like saying it’s possible to know all about anti-Semitism and racism in the National Socialist Party in Germany but still use the swastika as a symbol of opposition to Communism or foreign occupation. Indeed, there are apologists for Nazism in Europe and the U.S. who do exactly that. These are both certainly issues the National Socialists took up at the time but it would be fundamentally ignorant and dishonest to strip out the historical context and say that that is what the symbol should represent for political purposes.
July 22, 2010, 11:58 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Doesn’t criticizing Tea Partiers for using the confederate flag — a symbol of traitors and losers, with a Southern accent and at least a hint of racism — resemble faulting the tiger for wearing stripes?
July 22, 2010, 11:59 pmElliot says:
Ricardo,
I’m discussing the flag at Tea Party rallies. You are indeed Godwinning. Thanks for an interesting discussion.
July 23, 2010, 1:00 amRicardo says:
Yes and the people flying them are either racist, ignorant or both. You are quite welcome.
July 23, 2010, 1:21 amNicole says:
I don’t know how this is hard to see. You take a not insignificant portion of independent/right leaning people who are genuinely pissed off about the way government is being handled under the Bush administration add an administration change that is largely nominal in nature which brings lots of people who are pissed off that the Democrats are in control of the White House, and you get a political movement. Add to this that the Republican establishment has co-opted the group and encouraged it because they can run candidates on it and gain politically since they’re willing to at least pay lip service to many of the tea party ideas, and you get to where we are now.
This would have happened regardless of whether it was Obama was in office. Really, the key was Bush — you needed the critical mass of independents/conservatives/libertarians pissed at Bush. Because you had Bush leaving with pissed off people and then had Obama come in which pissed off other people (and because of the bubble burst, you had Obama and Bush sharing really awful bailout policies so the people pissed at Bush could easily transfer that anger onto Obama as well), and you got the tea party. As long as you had a Democrat come in, this was going to happen because it allowed the unholy alliance between the libertarian element and the party line GOP. It didn’t happen before because you never had that alliance before; the Republicans were too busy fighting each other in their big tent. Bush came in after Reagan so the party line GOP stayed happy, and Bush Senior just wasn’t that bad, especially for the libertarian element after Reagan, so the libertarian element stayed not pissed off. (Also, Clinton wasn’t unlucky enough to take office the same instant the economic bubble was bursting and the Gulf War was over before he came in, so you had no carry over of expensive gross policies.)
July 23, 2010, 3:48 amLN says:
I have no idea why people think this is so complicated. The Tea Partiers are simply partisan Republicans. The most recent Republican President was widely unpopular and so the Tea Partiers decided to re-brand themselves as some sort of grassroots movement. (Similarly, in 2000 the son of an ex-President positioned himself as a Washington outsider, just like basically everyone else who has won that office.) President Bush’s primary domestic policy achievement was cutting taxes. Cutting taxes has been on top of the Republican Party agenda for decades. The “Taxed Enough Already” Party is just carrying on.
Like all partisans the Tea Partiers were extremely upset when their preferred party lost control of the White House. They consider Democrats to be part of a fundamentally illegitimate ruling party and so they will naturally find any narrative that paints Obama as illegitimate quite attractive. If the Democratic President was a white guy or a white woman the narratives would be different, but I’m sure the Tea Party would still find him or her quite illegitimate. Obama is black and his father was Kenyan so it’s not surprising that racist and xenophobic narratives come into play. I don’t think the Tea Partiers are primarily driven by racism — they are primarily driven by partisanship — but racism does play a role in the construction of many of the particular narratives they’ve come with about Obama.
At any rate, Obama has proven to be a remarkably bland milquetoast technocrat who will never do anything too upsetting to the status quo. Whether this is good or bad depends on your views. I do think his race has helped him sell a message of “change” to liberals who would have been slightly more frustrated with similar policies carried out by President Clinton. His race also helps Republicans sell a message of “radical change” to people who would have been slightly less frightened by similar policies carried out by President Clinton.
All in all, the capacity for people to debate stupid bullshit cannot be overestimated.
July 23, 2010, 11:27 amzuch says:
Fail.
G.H.W. Bush Speech at Carnegie Mellon University (10 April 1980), allegedly referring to Ronald Reagan
Cheers,
July 23, 2010, 12:17 pmzuch says:
Which didn’t exist. Today’s Tea Partiers are almost a mirror of the conservative branch of the Republican party (see WISER study), and Bush didn’t lose the conservatives.
It is true that some of the earliest nascent Tea Partiers were Paulite loons (who arguably did have some beefs with Dubya, particularly on foreign policy) … but the name has been pretty much co-opted by people like Armey, Koch, Bozell, etc.; that is to say, the AstroTurf™ “Tea Party Brought To You By FreedomWorks/Amur’kansFerProsperity Inc.” And that is far more popular … at least with dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republicans, which is what the Tea Party is nowadays.
Cheers,
July 23, 2010, 12:29 pmPeter Shalen says:
I think that’s a very legitimate point. Nobody remembers the Nazis for their economic policies. They are remembered for their racism and their mass murder. I think it’s natural for an African-American to be as offended by the Confederate flag as I, as a Jew, am offended by a swastika. If folks are going to protest government intrusion they should find another symbol.
July 23, 2010, 12:34 pmBrian Riedl says:
Excuse me? So because I have not single-handedly forced Congress to fix Social Security and Medicare, that means I or the Heritage Foundation don’t care about those ticket items?
Damn, I lost my magic wand that allows me to force Congress to reform Social Security and Medicare.
Still, I think my playing a lead role in initiating a $14 billion spending cut does matter. How much have you persuaded Congress to cut?
The same website lists over 100 reports and op-eds of mine calling for Social Security/Medicare reform, as well as Congressional testimony, and dozens of speeches and town halls from coast-to-coast on entitlement reform as part of the Fiscal Wake Up Tour.
You seem to have left that part out of your critique of me.
Spare me the cheap shot.
Brian Riedl
July 23, 2010, 2:39 pmThe Heritage Foundation.
Careless says:
Did Field and Kirkland really never get called on pretending that the deficit from Bush tax cuts in this coming decade would somehow be Bush’s fault? They expire this year without the government acting to extend them. That chart you keep linking to is blaming expected actions of Democrats for the majority of the deficit.
July 23, 2010, 5:46 pmPerseus says:
That others formalized Keynes’ consumption function (or that Keynes was attempting to show how classical economics got it wrong, which I’m aware of) is really beside the point since what I was driving at is that Keynes’ view of consumption is silly from the perspective of new classical macroeconomics.
July 23, 2010, 8:00 pmChristopher John says:
How to diffuse the terror of the word racism. This is a short tutorial on how to get by the terror and stigma of the PC crowd’s attacks on everything that doesn’t comport to their view of race. As many whites can testify, any thought that isn’t molded by the liberal, PC crowd is immediately branded “RACIST.” Hmm, just seeing it in print here probably has some of you weak in the knees. Sit back, take a deep breath, relax, it’s going to get better, I promise.
Okay, you’re a white guy and you have some opinions on race. Guess what? You’re allowed to. But you know you don’t dare say anything. We all know it. Now here’s the point, your opinions may be right, they may be wrong, but it matters not. No opinions other than the PC proscribed pre-programmed pogrom are allowed.
Well, this is all utter nonsense and it’s got to and is going to stop. There are legitimate areas of difference and grievance between the races. Of course all people should be equal before the law, and be given equal opportunity, but should not and cannot be made equal by the gerrymandering of reality itself. Diversity may sound nice, but as the great Thomas Sowell (a black man) said, “Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of “diversity” that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word. ”
Issues of black crime, drug abuse, towering HIV and AIDS epidemics, welfare, affirmative action and many other subjects can no longer be conveniently brushed aside with the usual PC-baloney that is designed to stop all words and thoughts dead in their tracks. Our illustrious Attorney General Eric Holder has called for an honest and open discussion on race, so now, let’s have one. By the way, all of the topics listed above, have and are being discussed by black leaders, at least some of them, but are supposedly strictly off limits to whites. Why? We hear and see black complaints about whites on a daily basis.
What I am about to write, by the way, is not some esoteric academic theory, but tried and true, tried and proven, in the battlefields of business where I have spent most of my life. It’s not one of the ways, it is the only way to diffuse these baseless, out of hand attacks with the dreaded “R” word. If I do say so myself.
You, a white guy have gotten brave and said whatever it is you had to say. Once upon a time in this country that was also known as freedom of speech. You can look it up in the dictionary for more information. I’m guessing it’s under “F.”
Now, a black guy, or more likely some mindless PC zombie calls you a racist. You immediately hit the floor, frothing at the mouth, spinning uncontrollably like a Whirling Dervishes. Next you are crawling up the name-caller, pulling on his pant-leg begging for forgiveness. Tears stream down from your watery eyes. Can I give you a piece of advice? Man, get up off your bony white little knees and start being a man. That’s another word you might want to look up in the dictionary, “man.” There are legitimate issues that need to be discussed. Nothing should be off limits. And if so, why?
So the PC-ers have called you a racist, let me show you the response.
“You’re a racist!”
(Easy, relaxed) “Whatever…is what I said true?”
“Yeah, but you’re a racist man, a dirty racist.”
(Easy, relaxed) “I’ve been called many names, lots of them when I was in school, it’s kinda silly, could we get back to the facts?”
It’s really that simple.
If you’re perceptive you might notice a few things. You don’t find me falling on the floor, whining and crying, giving dozens of reasons why I’m not a racist, reciting all the black people I know and saying how I loved the mini-series Roots. My demeanor, cool. My attitude is sort of just back-handing this charge out of the way. It doesn’t need a big response, no need for speeches, just address it casually, not giving it much credence and quickly dismiss it.
If you make it into a major issue, it is a major issue. If you make it into a minor issue, it’s a minor issue. If you make it into nothing, it’s nothing. Remember, this is the only arrow in the PC-ers quiver, diffuse it and he’s toast.
What was the most important thing I did here? You may have noticed I never even bother to answer or address the question. A few points here. The nanosecond you try to answer a charge like racism, you have already lost. This is because now you are back on the ropes defending, when you should be in the middle of the ring, pressing the facts. For another thing, I don’t have to answer charges like these, neither do you, and neither does the guy making the claim. It’s like he’s fishing and trying to get you to bite on the bait. Let it go by, let it pass. You have simply stated what his charges are, name calling and silly. This is all that needs to be done. Why do you constantly keep making mountains out of PC attacks that are necessarily designed to shut you up and conceal the facts? Every time you act like a clown, you have simply taken the bait, fallen into the PC trap and they can play with you mercilessly until they decide to finish you off.
If race were the only area of PC intrusion it would be bad enough, but as it touches our lives in so many ways, race being just one of them, this PC baloney has to stop. The last thing any of us need is thought and speech control. If it won’t stop of it’s own accord, then these are the methods needed to diffuse it.
Remember, when someone plays the so-called “race-card” it only works if you silly enough to pull up a chair at that particular poker table.
July 24, 2010, 5:01 pmMichael B says:
Academics, more than any other group, tend to be more sensitive along racialist lines, primarily along lines that support perceived (real or imagined) oppressed groups and that run counter to perceived (real or imagined) oppressor groups.
This racialist casting rarely reaches still more extreme, more virulent racist categories; though it does tend to “systematize” a variety of racialist or “racially based” assumptions (e.g., via “meta” arguments, via the semantic and general semiotic indicators, the structures of the language, the arguments cast, the questions posed, etc. used to forward and defend relevant arguments).
Q.E.D.? No.
However, it is a line of inquiry well worth exploring, one which ever curious academics are profoundly incurious about, or so the paucity of evidence suggests.
(E.g., Marx not only raised “the Jewish question,” he raised it in a highly dubious manner. Marx likewise unambiguously stated that certain groups (viz. Slavs, various primitives categorized along racial lines) would need to be killed en masse. There are manifold and manifest more contemporary examples as well. And yet, as applied to any of the examples given or alluded to, where are the trenchant critiques from academics? They are virtually non-existent, that’s where.)
July 26, 2010, 6:17 pmMichael B says:
Another example, one wherein many academics, beyond being incurious, have evidenced a long history of apologetics:
Historians Run Out of Excuses for Arab-Nazi Alliance, brief, supportive excerpt:
July 26, 2010, 6:29 pm