The Truth About the Tea Party

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-on-the-tea-party-20100928

Matt Taibbi takes down the far-right monster and the corporate insiders who created it

By Matt Taibbi

September 28, 2010 7:01 AM ET

It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh. snip

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

[FormerDittoHead]

1. Sign of the times.

more: http://www.pocketfives.com/f13/prediction-democrats-retake-house-2012-election-634619/

[Hydra]

2. I swear, Reagan took the stupid in this country and legitimized them

My grandparents fell for it too- "The commies are coming to take your churches!"

Edit:

Read all 6 pages. Insightful, but nothing more so than the observation that these people want to "turn back time."

THIS is the current great divide. Some of us want to go forward, some of us want to go backward...and the 1% just want it all.

[leftstreet]

3. The Tea Party was never as mighty as the pundits have made it n/t

[pinboy3niner]

4. "The dingbat revolution"

Perfect! :rofl:

[ixion]

5. these people have teh stupidz so bad it hurts

seriously.

[butterfly77]

6. Where was McConnell?

Have they started protesting his home and office yet?