How do tea parties end?

[PosterChild]

As many have noted, the tea party is on the decline. Here is another look at their demise, but one that was interesting to me because it introduces a concept that I had not encountered before: The "anti-system party".

So how does the Tea Party’s story end? Consider a wider lens, one that includes comparable movements in other democracies. The Tea Party is but one example of a common form of political insurgency—one that almost always loses in the long run. This kind of counter-establishment movement is common enough that comparative politics has a term for it: the “anti-system party”—a group that seeks to obstruct and delegitimize the entire political system in which the government functions. As explained by Giovanni Sartori, the Italian political scientist who coined the term in 1976, an anti-system is driven not by “an opposition on issues” but “an opposition of principle.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/tea-party-how-will-it-end-102984.html#ixzz2tGSV7835

[DJ13]

1. With a puff from the caterpillars pipe

[unionthug777]

2. i like that !!!

[CTyankee]

8. I was going to say "when everyone goes home 'cause Mom told you to."

But yours is ever so much more elegant!

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. I'm saying an interesting ...

and explanatory intersection here ... one that we surely be denied; but posts to the internets live.

[Doctor_J]

4. Has any other such movement had complete control over the mass media?

That's a major difference this time around.

[PosterChild]

5. This article was published in the main stream...

...if not the mass media. I don't think the tea party does, nor could any "anti-system party", dominate the main stream media. If you dominate the main stream media, you are no longer "anti-system", you ARE the system.

[Doctor_J]

6. Really? How much anti-teabagger information do you see on Fox "News"?

any Cabal "News"? Hate Radio? Newspapers? Weeklies? My perusal of these organs finds almost none, except in editorial cartoons. And the teabaggers are extremely establishment/corporate.

[PosterChild]

7. Fox? Don't know...

...because I don't watch it. Same for hate radio.

I don't watch cable news, but I do read over CNN's web site and they publish articles and opinions critical of the tea party. The other mainstream web site I read is Politico, and they have a lot of critical commentary regarding the tea party. The link I posted comes from Politico.

Newspapers... the ones I read... have lots of tea party criticism. Of course, I read the Washington Post and the New York Times so that might be expected. They are, however, about as main-stream (if not mass market) as you can get.

I don't read Weeklies.

As far as teabaggers and the corporate / establishment goes, one constant theme that I have been encountering in the main stream media since the emergence of the tea party is the idea of the tea party as a counter-establishment "insurgency" within the republican party and conservative ranks. This criticism has only intensified with the failure of "tea party" candidates (especially in senate races), the failure of the tea party caucus to achieve the radical* budget cuts they have sought, their failure to repeal the ACA, and the destructive consequences of their failed tactics.

*They have been able to achieve budget reductions, but nothing as radical as they have held out for. And the tactics that got them that have basically imploded on them and are not going to be effective anymore as we have just recently seen with the clean debt ceiling bill.

The tea party does not have a lock on the main stream / mass media and they have always been characterized as an anti-establishment insurgency.

[CTyankee]

9. I still don't believe that the Tea Party was ever a grass roots movement.

It was planned and orchestrated by the RW establishment for its own purposes. I will never believe the propaganda that it isn't. A few suckers took the bait is all...

[PosterChild]

10. You should distinguish between...

...a "grass roots" movement and a radical, anti-system movement. The two may or may not overlap. The Koch Bros, who are instrumental in funding the "grass roots" tea party movement are rich, but they are not "establishment". They are radical, right-wing, libertarian ideologues. The hard-line "no compromise" tea baggers are anti-system radicals regardless of their funding or their level of populist appeal.

[CTyankee]

11. I just don't believe that all these Tea Parties just "happened" to spring up at the same time.

I feel there had to be a "center" where the strategy had been laid out and coordinated within smaller "cells" at local places. I agree with your characterization of "anti-system radicals" but they all rallied under the same name and just lied that it was all grass roots-y. To me, that defies logic.

I did hesitate to use the term "establishment" but couldn't quite decide what terminology to use. I suppose there is the loose shambles of what we used to call the "establishment,' but it is getting harder and harder to pin it down now. Eric Cantor? John Boehner? Senate Republicans?

[PosterChild]

12. The Koch Bros. The Club for Growth. Radical Libertarians + Money. (nt)