Myth #1: The Tea Parties are all about right-wing bitterness that McCain lost.
Busted. This talking point has been repeated about eight zillion times by the shallow-minded sheep of the left because they heard Jon Liebowitz say it on The Daily Show. First of all, the fiscal right didn’t like McCain either. Second, McCain threw away any claim to fiscal responsibility when he flew back to DC to vote for TARP. Third, there’s an inherent admission in here that the last years of tantrum throwing by the left weren’t about the war, or “torture,” or any of that. They were throwing tantrums because they lost.
Myth #2: The Tea Parties were organized by a sinister conspiracy of FoxNews, Glenn Beck, and the RNC.
Busted. If anything, the RNC and the conservative media were late to the party, and hitched their wagons to the movement the way Madonna picks up on a trend two years after it breaks. Naturally, the left feels this way because all of their “grassroots” and “netroots” movements were, in reality, Astroturf movements paid for by George Soros, MoveOn, and unions. They wouldn’t know a grassroots movement if it showed up and held 2,000 peaceful protests across the country.
Myth #3: The Tea Party protesters never cared about deficits when Bush/Republicans were in power.
Busted. First, Bush’s spending was criticized by everyone from Rush Limbaugh, to Sean Hannity, to National Review, to insignificant blog commenters … everyone except maybe the mushy moderates at the Weekly Standard knew Bush s-u-c-k sucked on restraining government. Second, an astute observer may have noticed the Republicans lost control of the Congress in 2006. A major cause of this was that they were abandoned by the base for their profligate spending. Under Bush and Republicans, deficits had been steadily declining. The deficit began shooting up in FY2008… the first budget prepared by a Democrat Congress. Under Obama, deficits are at a level many that we on the fiscal right say is unsustainable.
Myth #4: The Tea Parties are anti-tax protests
Busted. And I would add, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong… The media have latched onto this idea as a way of acknowledging the existence of the Tea Parties while obscuring their real purpose. If any of them had even bothered to go to the Tea Party website, they would see that the protest is against big deficits, and big spending. Smart people realize that the more government spends, the more power it has over the people.
Myth #5: The Tea Party Movement Has Been Hijacked by Extremists and Nazis and suchlike.
Busted. This is a favorite smear from former Bush supporters who now fawn over Obama… like Andrew “Milky Loads” Sullivan and Charles “Nancy” Johnson of the Little Green Footballs weblog. Much as they wish it were so, it just isn’t true. This is movement made up of regular folk, taxpayers who see an out-of-control Federal government fueled by unsustainable deficit spending… and they’re fed up with it.
To a left-wing progressive fascist, that is probably just as threatening.
Graphic representation of how the left issues its "facts" about the Tea Parties.
14 Comments
April 15, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Today’s the big day… Citizens, assemble! http://www.shirts4freedom.com
April 15, 2009 at 11:20 pm
[...] Today is tax day, not to mention it is also a day that will go down in history as the day that America finally started standing up to our government. Protesters will be gathering in almost 800 cities through out the United States, to voice their concerns about our corrupt and runaway government. These protests are not about Democrats or Republicans, they are about Americans being tired of both parties and their inability to stop wasting taxpayer money. Most of the cities will not allow politicians to speak as they have designated these protests to be for the American citizen to have his or her voice heard. However, as good as these are, it cannot stop here. It is time for a revolution in this country, a full scale voter uprising. Our elected public servants need to understand that we, the voters, put them in office and that we can take them out of those offices. The blame for everything in this country that is going wrong is on our shoulders, because we have elected people to Washington to represent us and they have failed, miserably. It’s time to remove them, and a failure to do so, means that we are the problem. So stand up America, re elect no one. Would you pay the kid to cut your grass if he didn’t show up and cut it? Would you pay someone to put a roof on your house if they never did the job? Hell No you wouldn’t. We have a man in the White House who did not even show up for over half of the meetings he was supposed to attend. He didn’t even show up for half of the votes that he was supposed to have been there for, how is that doing the job he was elected for. Speak out today, let the people that are supposed to be serving us realize that they are not serving us any more and we are no longer going to pay them for not doing their jobs. We have people in congress that want to take rights from us, rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. They want to take our rights here in our homeland away from us, yet they speak about wanting to spread Democracy to other nations. Make sure that those people know we are not going to sit quietly and take it anymore. All in all just make sure that it does not end today. See you in Montgomery. De Oppresso Liber Semper Fi Links to Tea Party Stories http://tehresistance.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/five-biggest-tea-party-myths-busted/ [...]
April 16, 2009 at 4:50 am
What a joke. In case you haven’t looked at the signs people are bringing, they are pretty much an outlet for some who feel bitter about losing in November. What the Republicans need is a new brand, not to rehash the “old broken brand”. I’ll never vote Republican again until viable solutions are presented and clear direction outlined.
Remember though. Buy a t-shirt at the teabagging and support your local economy.
Best of luck.
April 16, 2009 at 7:08 am
So, a middle-school locker room comment about “tea-bagging” and a claim to being a former Republican voter. Juvenile and dishonest, you must be a “progressive,” Bob.
April 16, 2009 at 10:13 am
Alright Bob
Way to jump in there. Bring some more of your buddies and that way we can have a majority of idiots. Kinda like congress has been the last 2 years.
April 16, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Bob, did you get left out when they passed out the kool-aid?
April 17, 2009 at 10:47 pm
dear Bob Jones..
have YOU actually looked at the pictures ???
April 18, 2009 at 1:32 am
Tea Party Myths Busted is BUSTED:
you’re writing about the tea parties as you would have liked them to be, but not as they really are. and you’re presenting the myths incorrectly.
1. none of us lefties think the tea parties are a reaction to mccain losing. we just think they wouldn’t have happened had mccain won. two different things.
2. We know the tea parties aren’t a conspiracy of FNC, glenn beck and the RNC – although fox news and glenn beck are trying to make everyone think that. We do know that Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and American Solutions used their large, politically involved donors to push the parties.
3. Tea Parties never cared about deficits during Reagan, Bush I and Bush II enough to protest like they are. And they never issued statements about how great they thought it was that Clinton balanced the budget. Not a peep. This is the main reason tea baggers are disingenuous.
4. Tea Parties aren’t anti-tax protests? Perhaps that wasn’t the original intent of the tea parties, but that’s what they turned out to be. Why else would they use the slogan Taxed Enough Already? The majority of the signs held by the protesters were about taxes – like, “Taxed to Death Already.”
5. The Tea Party movement hasn’t been hijacked by extremists? So why where there so many signs saying “Osama Bin Lyin.” Tying the American president to the biggest terrorist in the world is an extremist view. Calling for revolution and likening today to 1776 is extremist.
There’s REALITY and then there’s TEH Resistance.
April 19, 2009 at 8:24 am
Republican Congressman booed at Tea Party. So much for the myth of these things being partisan stunts.
April 22, 2009 at 2:48 am
@ meredith –
I don’t have any firm opinion about these `tea parties’, but I can spot b.s. when it see it –
1. none of us lefties think the tea parties are a reaction to mccain losing. we just think they wouldn’t have happened had mccain won. two different things.
actually a lot of you think that; and if McCain won, of course, they MAY not have been protests because Mc wouldn’t have been trying to hoist trillion dollar deficits on everyone…
2. We know the tea parties aren’t a conspiracy of FNC, glenn beck and the RNC – although fox news and glenn beck are trying to make everyone think that. We do know that Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and American Solutions used their large, politically involved donors to push the parties.
Of course, most of the `anti-war’ protests since 2001 were organized by the pro-North Korea Socialist Revolutionary Party: I would venture to say that such an outfit is more extremist than something called Freedomworks.
3. Tea Parties never cared about deficits during Reagan, Bush I and Bush II enough to protest like they are. And they never issued statements about how great they thought it was that Clinton balanced the budget. Not a peep. This is the main reason tea baggers are disingenuous.
Of course, the tea-party organizations were not in existence prior to this year. How you expect the non-existent to comment on something, I’ll leave to your addled `liberal’ brain.
The second point is that the deficits of all the Bush younger years combined add up to one year of Nobama’s deficit. That’s the difference.
Finally, where are the `liberals’ who were screaming about the `bush deficit’ now, when Obama proposes a massively larger deficit?
4. Tea Parties aren’t anti-tax protests? Perhaps that wasn’t the original intent of the tea parties, but that’s what they turned out to be. Why else would they use the slogan Taxed Enough Already? The majority of the signs held by the protesters were about taxes – like, “Taxed to Death Already.”
Yes, they believe they are being taxed to death. It’s a legitimate point of view, apparently except to you.
5. The Tea Party movement hasn’t been hijacked by extremists? So why where there so many signs saying “Osama Bin Lyin.” Tying the American president to the biggest terrorist in the world is an extremist view. Calling for revolution and likening today to 1776 is extremist.
“Lying” is an extremist sentiment? You mean the word that `liberals’ used in every reference to Bush? This is your `extremism’?
There’s REALITY and then there’s YOU.
April 22, 2009 at 4:10 am
Well done, Whig. Kudos.
April 22, 2009 at 10:35 pm
[...] he hit on 4 of the 5 discredited Tea Party myths, and threw in the juvenile left-wing tea-bagging slur that Anderson Cooper and Keith Uberdouche [...]
May 1, 2009 at 3:14 am
Ha ha ha ha ha!
I love it! I just love how miserable you conservatives are these days! It makes me feel SO GOOD that you’re whining and pouting all of the time.
The fact that people of your mentality hate President Obama so much just reaffirms what a good job he’s doing!
Keep it up, boys and girls. Ronald Reagan is dead. Get used to it. And he’s not coming back.
The changes that are coming are permanent ones. Get with the program or leave our country. This is a NEW DAY in America. And it’s coming no matter what you do or say.
Woo Hoo!!!!!
May 12, 2009 at 1:32 am
Jim,
Try looking back at the last 8 years of the liberals’ protests if you want to see people who were whining, pouting, and being miserable.
I was at the Orlando Tea Party, and nobody was whining, pouting, or being miserable there. It was a high- spirited event about regular people addressing their grievances towards the U.S. government’s economic policies.
“The changes that are coming are permanent ones. Get with the program or leave our country. ”
1. I’d say no. Anyone with a decent knowledge of American history would know that our political system is a kind of pendulum which swings from liberal to conservative and back again every couple decades or so. I mean, Carter led to Reagan, Bush II led to Obama, and Obama will inevitably lead back to a conservative.
2. We love our country too much to abandon it to the liberal extremists who’ve hijacked it. We are staying as the loyal opposition, and as the people who point out that Obama is not the beautiful messiah that his cult of personality make him out to be. Plus, weren’t you guys on the left the ones who kept howling “Dissent is patriotic” over the past 8 years? Oh, I forgot, that was when Bush was president. Now that Obama is president, dissent of any kind must not be tolerated. Isn’t that right.