What Will Tea Party Members Do When Their Politicians Betray Them?

[yurbud]

This is a dead on analysis, though the answer is obvious: they not will even notice that they are betrayed. If Fox News doesn't cover the betrayal or put a betrayal spin on it, they don't have the native intelligence to put two and two together, or they will be distracted by the latest two-minute hate on the scapegoat of the moment.

What's unfortunate is how many Democrats make the same calculation the author mentions in the last paragraph: if they betray their voters, they might get re-elected anyway, and if not, they'll have a fat payday waiting as a lobbyist, CEO, or do-nothing board member for having carried corporate water in office.

If they don't betray their voters, the corporate fire hose of money could be used against them instead of for them, and if they lose, no one will be offering them jobs with seven figure incomes.

We need to figure out a way to change that calculus. If we changed those back end incentives to corruption, the front end would somewhat take care of itself since a lot fewer people would want to run for office since it won't make them obscenely rich.

Tea Party members hate Wall Street bailouts, trade deals like NAFTA, job outsourcing, giant corporations buying laws, government spending, and elites telling the rest of us what to do. But there is no question that their candidates - many of them wealthy corporatists themselves - are funded by big corporations (even foreign oil companies) and Wall Street. So the question is, once in Congress will they vote with their base or their owners? And when they vote with the people who bought them, what will Tea Party members do about it?


***


It's pretty clear that the Tea Party members are being set up for a big disappointment. There is little chance that the politicians they are supporting are going to do what the members think they're going to do once in office. The members might supply the votes, but the big corporations behind so many of the things that the Tea Party members hate are the ones supplying the money and organization. These politicians, once in office, will understand that the big money can go after them just as well is it went for them this time, if they don't do what they're told by their big corporate funders. But on the other hand, there will be lucrative lobbying jobs waiting for them if they play along. They are going to disappoint the Tea Party members, no question. What will Tea Party members do then?

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104326/what-will-tea-party-members-do-when-their-politicians-betray-them

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Blame Obama and democrats, I suppose.

[Indianademocrat91]

2. They are idiots and racist republicans

they dont understand that they are being fooled even right now..

[democrat_patriot]

3. Wait for Rush / Fox to tell them what to do.

Duh.

[sadbear]

4. They will vote with republican leadership 100% of the time

Isn't that what their base expects them to do? I don't get the premise of this article. After all, tea party = republican. There's no way around that.

[Blue Owl]

5. They'll be too distracted by whatever shiny object Glenn Beck is dangling that day to notice

It's a common symptom prone to the "unsophisticated."

[DJ13]

6. Their Koch funding will have dried up long before that

Which will end the tea party and leave those people without media access, as they will have served their purpose.

[emulatorloo]

15. good point n/t

[ixion]

7. if a rethug is elected president, the teabaggers will vanish into thin air

you can bet on that.

[atreides1]

9. A white Rethug

Anything less would be unacceptable to the tea-baggers.

[pasto76]

8. IM glad Im not the only one who sees this

means Im not crazy. If repubs get enough of a foothold next week, the tea party and and their candidates will be VERY unceremoniously pushed to the side.

[The Wielding Truth]

10. If they are stupid enough to buy what is being sold now, they will fall

into what ever other trap the greedy and powerful have planned for them.

[Drale]

11. They'll probably blame Democrats just like they do know

but I am going to laugh my ass off, I might even go door to door to all the tea baggers in the area and ROFL on their front porches.

[Chulanowa]

12. They'll re-elect them

Is this really a question?

[yurbud]

13. I think the rest of the analysis was more interesting than the question

[Fearless]

14. Don't worry, they'll think they're supporting them regardless of what they do.

Like the think we're against them regardless of what we do.

[Dawson Leery]

16. They will blame Obama, blacks, hispanics, religious minorities,

immigrants and so on for the problems they face. The tea parties are nothing more than a re-branding of the tarnished GOP.

[MisterP]

17. judging by the past history of US parties, always vote for the Correct Party because

the others are Just Too Awful to allow in; this renders them voiceless in regard to those they elect, since they'll vote for them no matter what

:yoiks:

[mzmolly]

18. Exactly.

;)

I just tried to make this point to a concerned friend tonight. I'll send him the article, thanks. :hi:

[Politicalboi]

19. They don't notice the betrayal

When a Teabagger wins a primary, they automatically become Repukes. They just don't get it.

[Recursion]

20. Forget, probably

They forgot that a lot of the guys who ran on a term limits platform in 94 are still there.

[Bluenorthwest]

21. I'm so tired of pretending there is a 'tea party'

This piece even speaks of 'Tea Party Members' as if it were an actual Party, which it is not. It is the Republican Party, silly hat division. Members? They are members of the Republican Party. No one is registered 'Tea'. They are Republicans.
The terminologies lend them a legitimacy they do not have, and serve the GOP by cleanly speaking of their crazies as being from another Party. This makes the Republicans automonmous from the 'Tea' when in fact they ARE the Tea Party. This has served them very well in Florida, where folks are so convinced of 'Tea' that they are backing a Republican to beat a Republican. That is daft, you know. Just silly, absurd, rediculous thinking. Fear of a nonexistant thrid party. Fear of a Republican auxillery.
This notion that Republican used to be sane, then came the Tea Party, serves Republicans, who have always been Jesse Helms and Michelle Bachmann, no 'tea' needed. The GOTea. This shit is not new, folks, this is how they have always been.

[VioletLake]

22. Well said, Bluenorthwest. nt

[Bluenorthwest]

23. Members? That is just going too far if you ask me.

Shall I write a piece about the National Tea Party Convention in 1982, even though no such thing existed? That is what this sort of piece does. Fluffs them up, gives the Republicans cover. They are not just Republicans gone mad, no they are 'members' of another Party, the Tea Party. And those Members might react badly to their candidates, once they are seated. Their candidates are Republican candidates. Because there is no Tea Party. There is no such thing. They are not a Party. They are Republicans who knew the Republican brand needed some freshening and some time off. I will not help them gain those things by legitimizing a van full of nuts as an actual, organized Political Party.

[txaslftist]

24. Same thing the rest of us do.

Kick ourselves in the ass for voting for them and hope for better days.

[ezmerelda39]

25. Disappointed Tea Partiers will

find out that not only will the things they want 'fixed' are not going to be touched but it will somehow be their fault. Fox will make sure. People are homeless because they couldn't afford the house they bought and they personally brought the whole financial sector grinding to a screaming halt. When their jobs are gone and their Social Security has gone bye-bye, and their schools are closed and their house (if they still have one) burns to the ground it will all be their fault. Wow! That's a lot of responsibility for one person who only voted for what they thought was going to ease their misery. If Fox News doesn't blame them I for one will.