Scott McClellan and David Frum rip tea parties as extreme, bad for GOP

[democracy1st]

Run time: 02:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2yvClc6fqU   Posted on YouTube: March 30, 2010 By YouTube Member: ThinkProgress2 Views on YouTube: 2074   Posted on DU: April 01, 2010 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 1088

 
Last night on CNN, Larry King discussed the growth of the Tea Parties and their effect on the Republican Party. While Nancy Pfotenhauer, a Republican strategist who has worked in the past for David Koch, the oil billionaire funding the top groups organizing the Tea Parties, praised the development as “phenomenal,” other Republicans were doubtful. David Frum, a speech writer in the Bush White House, and Scott McClellan, the former press secretary to Bush, decried the Tea Parties for their extreme views, like seeking to abolish Social Security. McClellan explained that the Tea Parties have “limited appeal” because they are simply a “divisive protest movement” that “plays too much to people’s fears and hatred”:

FRUM: When you bring on two people on to an important show like this, and they represent themselves as leading a conservative and libertarian uprising against the president, and you say what you would really like to do, and they say, we would like to abolish Social Security, if given half a chance, is that helpful to the Republican Party? There probably aren’t even two percent of the members of the Republican Party who think that way. But that — those are the people on television. That’s not helpful. <...>

MCCLELLAN: And then you also had the comments from the one Tea Party activist that was at the rally over the weekend in Searchlight, referring to President Obama as a terrorist. I mean, that’s just outrageous. You know, I think that there are probably many decent people in the Tea Party movement that have some legitimate concerns about their economic security. <...>

But this is a divisive protest movement that plays too much to people’s fears and hatred. And it’s got limited appeal. I think that after the 2010 elections, you’re going to see this party or the Tea Party movement dissipate to a great degree. … It has limited influence. It really hasn’t shown itself to be a strong, powerful force, even within the Republican Party. However, it is pushing Republicans too far to the right.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/30/bush-rip-teaparties/

[LaPera]

1. This is nothing new...the teabaggers are just another republican manipulative vehicle.

The republican Party has always been an extremist lying conniving underhanded two-faced pile of shit of a party.

The republican party has NEVER been an honorable party....always corporate & greed motivated.

The republican party has always been about suppressing the workers, the poor & the middle class who just get in the way of corporate profits by wanting fair pay.

[Jefferson23]

2. democracy1st, you might be interested in this article by Scott Horton:

What Frum’s Firing Tells Us About Politics Today
By Scott Horton

I’ve previously suggested that, in terms of tactics, I see the G.O.P. diverging into two main tendencies. One is Karl Rove’s G.O.P., in which short-term partisan gain trumps all other considerations, electoral politics tops policy, and pumping up the base is the instinctive reaction in every contest. Rove’s approach has created the present G.O.P.: an enraged group of largely white, over-40 males with its heaviest concentration in the states of the old Confederacy and in the Mormon Belt of the Mountain West. The alternative is David Frum’s G.O.P., which operates from a clearly defined set of conservative principles, believes in a longer-term strategy focused on building the party back to something approaching a plurality, and is committed to finding a modus vivendi with Democrats that allows the G.O.P. to accomplish at least some of its objectives when it’s out of power. Frum has presented a very compelling case for his views, and were he to prevail, it would produce a G.O.P. that pursues most of the same objectives as before, but behaves differently as it pursues them.

in full: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/03/hbc-90006783


When I heard that Frum would be on LKL, I watched..unfortunately, the conversation did not speak enough about his firing imo.