Crash The Tea Party!

As seen in the Oregonian today, a local Beaverton teacher (registered democrat- for what it's worth, as reported on the radio) has a web site he runs from school called Crash The Tea Party. He outlines how to infiltrate it, make signs with mis spellings for their ralies to make them look stupid (as if they needed a lot of help...), lie about being members of the party to media and making idiot remarks...

I'm a big free speech person, but is it outside the ropes to infiltrate opposing political movements and try to sabotage them from within? Is it right to use public resources to do so?

It seems to me that the Tea Party will either fizzle out (like almost all the others) or remain pretty much what they are.

http://www.crashtheteaparty.org/

 

Was there a connection in the Oregonion that he is running that website *from school*? I haven't read it... but if so I think that is wrong. If he is just a teacher doing that in their own time then who cares.

I think the infiltration is bad form. Stand in opposition if you choose... but infiltrating isn't playing fair... very poor form and it reflects worse on the people doing it and what they stand for.

 

Looks like it's starting to go viral. The oldest post in that forum dates to April 9th, and now there are 17,000 posts and 3,600 users. That's a hell of a nice growth curve for being around 6 days. I guess a feature on the home page of Digg and a couple AP stories will do that.

Anyway, I don't really see a problem with it. It'll force the group to look more carefully at the really radical elements within it with a suspicious eye, which isn't a bad thing. If it really wants to succeed, it should try to steer clear of the dead end issues that just sound silly anyway.

If I were trying to lead the Tea Party, I'd look at the hippie movement of the late 60's/early 70's. (Yeah, kind of ironic, right?) The nutty radicals in that movement in many ways prevented it from being palatable to the mainstream. You don't convince average Joe Public to join your team by spitting on Vietnam veterans. Just like you don't do it by declaring Obama is a Muslim Kenyan anti-christ.

If they stick to basic messages about the size and role of government, the Tea Party has a much better chance of not fizzling out. Kind of funny to think this anti-Tea Partier might just force them to do that.

 

You're making the mistake of believing this is a top-down movement. It's bottom-up. There's no leadership; it's completely organic. And like it or not, organic means messy, which means the crazies hop aboard. The key is to look at the majority, not the freaks on the fringe.

 

I'm assuming you're talking about the teaparty. If so, I would argue it stopped being a bottom-up movement when Fox "News" starting using their own time and money to make advertisements for it.

 

And as long as it has no organization, it's going to be about as relevant to mainstream politics as the hippie movement was. Impacting some elections here and there, but never really moving the middle much. Because it'll forever be defined by its lunatic fringes. (Well, by everybody but maybe Fox news. And if Fox News was really good at molding general public opinion McCain would be president and the Democrats wouldn't hold majorities in both houses.)

It's not fair, but that's how it works.

 

wrong, it's old people ready to die

 

vbhp

 

Agreed. I would even argue that the hippie movement was less "idealistic" than many have argued. Being a hippie was largely about hanging out, smoking pot, and having lots of sex. The "core belief" was "Let's party." The Tea Party members, on the other hand, are much more serious, much more angry, and much more devoted to higher ideals like limited government, capitalism, and the Constitution.

Agreed, again. I'm on the verge of joining the Tea Party myself, and I've been a Republican for most of my life. I feel the Republican party has sold out most of its conservative principles, and I have little use for them. Give me some leadership that really believes in something!

 

The NYT/CBS just conducted a poll of the teapartiers that's pretty interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?src=me&ref=general

So in a sense you are right. These people aren't going to change like a hippie might evolve into a 1980's wall street broker.

However, America just isn't manufacturing a lot of new ones. It's a generational thing, a group of people pining for the days of Ronald Reagan. A lot of people under 40 don't really remember that era, and when the crowds start shouting "Socialist! Communist!" it sounds about as antiquated as calling somebody "Beatnik!" or "Whig!"

So there is an expiration date on this group. As the country becomes less Caucasian and it continues to raise more generations that stare at the extremists among the Teapartiers in bewilderment, their influence will continue to shrink.

Unless, like I said, the movement can figure out a way to weed out the extremists and convey an image that has a more diverse appeal.

 

A lot of hippies' core belief was that they didn't want to get shot and killed in Vietnam. That seems like a pretty serious concern.

I mean, obviously not as serious as a health insurance proposal, but still pretty serious.

 

You mean the way liberals pine for the days of Bill Clinton? Or the way leftists revere Che Gueverra and Fidel Castro? Hmmm. I guess it's a generational thing.

That's okay. They just have to be educated. The same people who don't know what these terms mean also couldn't tell you who the vice president is or how many states there are in the union.

So you think the idea of small government and lower taxes appeals only to people with white skin?? That's very odd. It's like saying that only black people like fried chicken.

Uh, did it ever occur to you that the mass media in this country is purposely depicting the Tea Party movement as a bunch of extremist whackos to further their own agenda?

 

Yep, that's definitely a high ideal. Save your skin and smoke pot. Now there's a rallying cry that will go down in history!

 

That's what I think. It's a short lived grass roots movement of people that have a general mistrust of government.

 

Really?

To me, a group that would actually court Sara Palin has serious issues. Very serious issues.

 

Mistrust of government is actually not a youth-unfriendly message. Defiance/mistrust of authority is a classic "young person" theme.

One could rework the old conservative witticism "If you aren't a Democrat before the age of 30, you have no heart. If you aren't a Republican after the age of 30, you have no brain" into a similar liberal/progressive one: "If you aren't a libertarian before the age of 30, you have no spine. If you aren't a progressive after the age of 30, you have no common sense."

Ultimately, I think Ron Paul is somewhat like Dennis Kucinich: they're both popular among young idealists, but for different reasons, because they have a clear and attractive message to many young people. They just don't win elections because they aren't perceived by the mainstream as having "moderate" solutions.

 

Actually from what I have read about Tea Party Financials, I believe this is just a big scam by some folks to take advantage of people frustrated with the status quo. They have spent hardly any of their money on anything useful.

 

that's a good idea!