Tag Archives: Tea Party

Saved from Becoming “The Party of Nonsense?”

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Pete King doesn’t do alternative universes.

He also hates bullies.

When Newt Gingrich stepped off the back of Air Force One and complained that President Clinton wouldn’t talk to him, King called the Speaker, “political road kill.”

He did public battle with Tom DeLay at the height of DeLay’s political powers, something few people ever did.

By taking on Ted Cruz, another Texas politician he sees as a bully, King is doing what he always does: Speaking truth to power. Continue reading →

In Defense of Marco Rubio

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally printed in The Hill

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is trying to save the conservative movement from itself. The question today is: Will it let itself be saved?

As an upstart outsider, Rubio ran against the Washington establishment and the conventional wisdom to take on a seemingly invincible Florida governor in a heated race for an open Senate seat.

But it turned out that Charlie Crist was a paper tiger, and his campaign collapsed in the heat of the Florida summer, leaving Rubio as the conquering Tea Party hero.

Almost immediately, the new Florida senator and Republican star hinted that he wasn’t entirely comfortable merely being a product of the Tea Party. He wasn’t an isolationist, and he believed in a muscled American foreign policy, a departure from the newly dominant Ron Paul wing of the Tea Party. As a former Speaker of the Florida House of Continue reading →

Jedi Mind Trick Fail

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Ranking Member of the House Government and Oversight Committee tried to channel his inner-Alec Guinness the other day, but he failed spectacularly.

Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat, tried to pull one over on the American people earlier this week.  Here is how the Wall Street Journal’s John McKinnon put it:

“Earlier this week, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), said he’s ready to drop the matter, following an interview on Thursday of an employee in the Cincinnati office that oversees handling of tax-exempt applications. The employee, who was a manager at the time, said the scrutiny started in early 2010 with an agent who noticed a single tea-party application come in, and flagged it for closer review. The manager “agreed that the case should be forwarded up the chain to technical officials in… Continue reading →

Obama, King Henry II, the Power of Suggestion

BY WILLIAM F. GAVIN

As we reach the end of Phase One of the IRS scandals, the  situation looks roughly like this (I say roughly because things change quickly): a bi-partisan majority condemns the IRS, and President Obama has stated his own condemnation. The White House, through spokesman Jay Carney, says that neither the President nor any White House official knew anything about the persecution of conservatives while it was going on. The IRS  says the wrongdoing was not partisan in nature, but the result of carelessness, incompetence, and lack of supervision by superiors.

I think that last point is going to be key to Phase Two, when investigations start to take place. If indeed this possible (and I think very  probable) violation of civil rights was not directed by administration officials, then what we have here (so goes the argument), awful as it is, cannot be blamed on the administration or specifically on the President. Continue reading →

Seeing the Big Picture

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were the highest-profile stars of the Tea Party Class of 2010. They successfully scared two centrists out of the Republican Party before a primary vote was even cast, and were held out as examples of conservative leadership, dedicated to stopping President Obama at all costs.

Less than three years later, they no longer seem to be so extreme. Instead of being content to vote “no” and go home, they are in the middle of the various Senate gangs. Toomey is working with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to enact Continue reading →

How to Break the Partisan Fever

BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from TownHall.com

Sunday on “Meet the Press” Colin Powell blamed divisive, poisonous Washington politics on the media and the Tea Party. The essence of Powell’s argument was: “Republicans and Democrats are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise. … The media has to help us. The media loves this game, where everybody is on the extreme. It makes for great television. … So what we have to do is sort of take some of the heat out of our political life in terms of the coverage of it, so these folks (Congress) can get to work quietly. … But the Tea Party point of view of no compromise whatsoever is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win.”

Of course this is historic. The media have been a circulation-, listener- and viewer-motivated political snapping turtle since the country’s founding (and a liberal snapping turtle since the 1940s). And, of course, the rise of divisive Washington politics predates by decades the emergence of the Tea Party to national attention in 2009. Continue reading →

Protest Media Bias

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

There is a lot of comparison being drawn between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. There are some similarities, but more differences between them, especially one: the coverage by news media.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters got their faces on ABC, CBS and NBC 33 times in the first eleven days of October. The Tea Party movement got coverage 13 times in all of 2009. The Media Research Center also found that the protesters got on camera delivering their message 87 percent of the time, compared to eight percent for their critics.

That was not the tea party’s experience, if I recall.

PEW research found that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) got more coverage quicker than the tea partiers. It took about three months for the media to pay attention to tea party demonstrations; it took less than a month with OWS, and OWS got its own acronym in no time. Continue reading →

GOP’s Silent Majority

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the FeeheryTheory.com

“And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.”

In November of 1969, Richard Nixon uttered this line in a televised address to the nation, explaining his plans in Vietnam.

At the time, the nation was enveloped in social, economic and racial turmoil. Nixon was speaking to the folks in the country who were respectful of authority, preferred order to chaos, disdained the revolutionaries and distrusted the intellectual elite who were attacking the pillars of American society.

The silent majority came to mean the white middle and lower middle class of America, and Nixon’s phrase came to be seen as a way to polarize an already polarized society. Continue reading →

Pre-Post Look at Debate

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

PRE-DEBATE
The President finally got around to sending his Jobs Bill up to the Hill today. In spite of the early betting it is almost all paid for with higher taxes on: people making over $200,000; hedge fund managers; oil and gas companies; and, corporate jets. The candidates’ staff spend the afternoon looking for any language in the bill which will draw applause or derisive laughter from the audience. Continue reading →

Politics Take Dangerous Turn

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from the Washington Times

In the past few weeks, leading Democrats in Congress have called Tea Party members terrorists, said they should go to hell and accused them of wanting to lynch black people. Last weekend at an event attended by President Obama, the head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., attacked the Tea Party, screaming, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches [Tea Party members] out and give America back to an America where we belong.” (Note: The president was not on the platform when Mr. Hoffa spoke.)

So far, neither the president nor any prominent Democrat has condemned such remarks – even though the phrase “take out” is commonly used to describe an act of criminal homicide. Thus, Mr. Hoffa’s statement might rise to the level of incitement to violence. Continue reading →

Perry Leads on All Fronts

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from Mullings.com

National polls measuring support during the primary season are suspect because we don’t have national primaries. We have state-by-state primaries and caucuses. A national poll measuring support five months ahead of the first caucus is beyond suspect. It is meaningless.

Having started out with that warning let me make another assertion: No matter how suspect, meaningless, pointless, or futile a poll might be it is still better to be in first place than it is to be way back in the pack. Continue reading →

Status Quo Triumphs Over Future

BY TONY BLANKLEY

 Reprinted from Washington Times and Townhall.com

The debt deal, if it sticks, is a triumph for the bipartisan, status quo-clinging Washington establishment. Here is a prediction: Between now and January 2013, total actual spending cuts will be minimal. That will result from the following: (1) The $900 billion deficit reduction is almost all back-loaded to the years beyond 2012. (2) The select committee created by the budget deal will fail to pass a “second tranche” deficit-cut package of an additional $1.5 trillion. (3) The “trigger” will be pulled that will identify an additional $1.2 trillion. (4) The pulled trigger won’t require any more deficit reductions to go into effect until 2013, when a new Congress and either a new president or a re-elected President Obama will be able to re-decide (or repeal) all these decisions.

Continue reading →

Pelosi-Bachmann Axis, Party of No

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from thefeeherytheory.com

Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, must be very happy with her colleague Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann (R-Minn.) has stated repeatedly that she will never vote to increase the debt limit. And her position is winning converts among some House Republicans, especially those who are worried about a primary challenge from the right.

Continue reading →

Nothing Small About Spending Cuts

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

It is easy to be fairly nonchalant about the current budget battle that has consumed the Congress.

Pundits (myself included) have pointed out that the tens of billions of dollars being discussed is chump change, especially if you consider the trillions of dollars that we owe to the Chinese.

Continue reading →

Earmarks and The Power of The Purse

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

Mitch McConnell bowed to reality with his statement on earmarks yesterday.  It couldn’t have been easy and it shouldn’t have been.

Earmarks are essential part of our Constitutional process.  For any member of Congress (House or Senate) to willingly give power away to the executive branch in such a haphazard way is troubling.

Continue reading →

Media Missed Mark on Campaign Coverage

By Michael S. Johnson

Delta Airlines’ Sky Magazine had a 26-page spread last month on the Midwest’s new tourist hotspot, North Dakota . It featured Governor– and now U.S. Senator-elect– John Hoeven, who  gets much of the credit for making North Dakota one of the most prosperous states in the country.

Continue reading →

Hawks, Doves Analogy Passe

By Tony Blankley

Reprinted from the Washington Times

 Last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tried his hand at dissecting Republican foreign policy attitudes. I commend the senator for trying to come to grips with this vital question, which is getting so little, if any, national discussion. As foreign events grow ever more threatening, the view of the now both culturally and congressionally dominant party – the GOP – becomes central to the range of political options President Obama has available to him.

Continue reading →

No October Surprise A Surprise

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

This summer I was convinced that in September, the Democrats would launch an election-year counter-offensive, an October surprise that would plug the drain of Democratic polling numbers and slow the slide of a lot of Democratic candidates.

Continue reading →