A word of warning about the Tea Party plans

[NJmaverick]

Talking to my father he told me some of the tea party plans. He told me he attended some of their events. Rather than let him know my disgust for the group, I listened. He talked about how the tea party is telling people to run for elections at local levels and especially school boards. So one needs to be watchful that your town and local school system is not destroyed by tea party lunacy.

[mdmc]

1. I can confirm this

I too heard that the tea party was advocating participation in the political process.

[mmonk]

2. Yes. They already highjacked our school board.

We definitely will be ready for them next time. They took advantage of a low turnout off year election and its been intense ever since.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. They will be surprised by the need for them to be responsible

It will be a major shock to them
Then, they will follow Bible Spice's lead and quit. After all, she has shown them the wY.

[mmonk]

8. Their difficulty has already started.

They grabbed the tail of a lion thinking they caught it.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

4. Watch for people running on a "green" ticket, too...

We had someone running for Congress as a "Green" candidate. When I researched to find out who he was, I found that though his environmental policy was moderately environmentally friendly, his social policies were clearly right-wing thug.

Kicking and recommending your post. Now is NOT the time to let our guard down.

[Rage for Order]

5. Oh my God!

Right now they're simply encouraging people to run for local office. Next thing you know, they'll be encouraging people to vote! What a devious plan!

[iamjoy]

11. Actually, It Is

Too many voters don't pay attention to the down ticket races, such as School Board. But, candidates are introduced at the tea party rallies, and in the mega-churches (of which they are members). So, the teabaggers all support that candidate. Meanwhile, the Moderates aren't paying attention and the Liberals are still meandering. So, these Reactionaries get elected and before you know it we have abstinence only sex education, teaching "intelligent design" rather than evolution and other right-wing propaganda worked into our curriculum. The right-wingers then use the experience on School Board to launch a political career.

What we have is a paradox. Greater participation in the political process is a good thing for our Democratic Republic. But, if one side is well organized and well funded while another is not it can be quite dangerous to our freedoms.

[Rage for Order]

13. It has been my experience...

That the voters who turn out for their local elections are more involved in the process as a whole than are those who only vote in nation elections every 2 or 4 years, and these voters tend to have a good idea of the views of the people for whom they cast their ballot.

I don't view people running for office to be some insidious plot. There is no reason to believe a teabagger candidate would be any different than the standard, run-of-the-mill conservative candidate. I wouldn't vote for either one of them.

[csziggy]

24. The Republicans have been working to provide voters less information

About their candidates at the local level. They have managed to get party affiliation removed from the ballots and the requirements for campaign advertising. And since they will lie about their stance on every issue, often the voters do not know who their choices are for these local elections, especially since few media outlets do any kind of decent reporting on the races. If the voters take the candidate at their word and vote for him because they assume the candidate will do as they claim, the voters can be shocked at the result.

That is how our anti-development county ended up for a few years with a pro-development county commission. Now that the activist community has been alerted to the danger, they are fighting back, but some of the damage done during that time will be with us for years - poorly planned, environmentally damaging developments that are making the county pay for infrastructure improvements rather than having been paid for by the developer who lined his pockets and left the area.

[SpiralHawk]

12. It is devious when you acknowledge that the HATE government

And mean to destroy democracy

in favor of their perverse theocratic fascism

[Rage for Order]

14. Idiots run for office all the time

The solution is simple: vote for the other guy

[NJmaverick]

16. Local politics is usually not about ideology

so rather radical and dangerous right wingers can sneak into office, with the help of the tea party.

[Motown_Johnny]

6. Lets hope this backfires

Since viable conservatives are not able to enter the process due to the 'baggers being elected.

Maybe there won't be any viable conservatives with any experience to move up the ladder in the future.

[butterfly77]

7. They are also running as Dems ...

when they are really RepubliCONS..

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. Same they did back in the 80s with the Moral Majority - target the school boards.

Get the loonies in charge of education and they can guarantee an ignorant and pliable population so that their jihadist fake-Christian ideology of hate and violence to anything non-white can be carried out without hardly a whimper of protest.

[NJmaverick]

15. Yes, that's my fear

[laughingliberal]

20. Yep.

Just like the 'stealth' candidates of the moral majority. Knowing the public was nauseated by their RW, moralistic, authoritarian stands, they trained candidates in obscuring their true agenda and they infiltrated local politics in droves.

I clearly remember a group of their activists approaching me outside the polls in Houston in '92. "Ma'am, ma'am," they said urgently. "Would you vote for a judge who had some people arrested just for praying on a sidewalk?," they asked. "I certainly would if the people were praying on a sidewalk and blocking access to a women's health clinic. Is that what happened?" Boy were they pissed! Bit their forked, little RW tongues and walked away.

No doubt the teabaggers will take a page from this playbook. We are still suffering the effects of their infiltration of the 80's and early 90's.

[NJmaverick]

23. No doubt, the key will be to counter it

[IDemo]

10. It doesn't help when the local news gives them validity

You'd think they were the League of Women Voters.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/05/14/1193114/tea-party-boise-endorses-labrador.html

[Chipper Chat]

17. I talked with a local Tea Party Big Wig and yes they are.

School boards are where they plan to "take over the public school system in America." She gave me some literature which advocates an attack on Michele Obama in 2012. (She has too many servants, etc). This will ramp up after Sarah Palin is nominated .

[eShirl]

18. shouldn't every politically active group be doing this?

[Frances]

19. I don't know of any political group that has a whole

cable network supporting its philosophy (Fox-tea party)

Tea party candidates also get the backing of religous groups: the Catholic heirarchy is so anti-abortion that they do all they can to defeat Dems (Kerry comes to mind). As do the mega churches that fundamentalist tea partiers attend.

Rove got many, many votes for Bush this way.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

21. Standard practice

for (left and right) activists. Just that, as a rule, the right is more persistent. Back in the early 1970's the "run for City Council/School Board" issues involved compliance with the Charlotte-Mecklenberg court ordered school bussing cases across the country.

[MIprogressive1]

22. Thats fucking scary

[Donnachaidh]

25. oh booga booga -- citizens actually planning on getting involved in the political process

Yeah, that's a BAD thing... :sarcasm:


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I suppose it is in a RW nutbag state like New Joisey....

:rofl:

[NJmaverick]

26. Why do you consistently protect the right wing nuts and tea baggers

while also attacking liberals and Democrats? What exactly is your goal?

[B Calm]

27. That's why so many teachers are being laid off.

[jmowreader]

28. This is straight out of the Robertson/Reed playbook

IIRC someone asked Ralph Reed if he was running someone for president, and he said no because he'd rather have his people on ten thousand school boards than he would have the White House. (I don't think he would have OBJECTED to having 10k school boards plus the White House, but you get the idea.)