Stop Mock at Tea Party

[nmbluesky]

The media doesn’t get it, says Kirsten Powers. The Tea Party crowd is about to radically reshape the Republican Party on a scale not seen since Barry Goldwater in the 1960s.

Whether they are loons, principled conservatives, or a mix of both, they are a potent force that won’t be intimidated off the national stage by snarky media coverage and clueless attacks from the establishment.

Yes, Goldwater was demolished by Lyndon Johnson in the landslide that was the 1964 presidential election. But his crowning accomplishment was igniting the flames of a conservative movement that would eventually lead to the election of Ronald Reagan, ushering in eight years of conservative realignment. To this day, conservatives rule the Republican Party which, prior to Goldwater, wasn’t the case.

Today, Barry Goldwater is romanticized as an undiplomatic but principled conservative with an adorable penchant for “shooting from the lip.” He retired after decades in the Senate as a revered elder statesman. Even Hillary Clinton once referred to herself as a “Goldwater girl.”
But in his heyday, Goldwater was decried by Democrats and liberal Republicans alike as a dangerous demagogue, who would lead the U.S. into nuclear war, eliminate Social Security, and roll back civil-rights progress. He once advocated giving battlefield commanders in Vietnam the authority to use nuclear weapons.
Demands were made that he disavow his “racist” and “extremist” followers.
Sound familiar?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-16/stop-ridiculing-the-tea-party/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsC4

[Xipe Totec]

1. They are a farce to be reckoned with n/t

[Coexist]

2. rofl.

[lunatica]

3. Good one!

They certainly are.

[safeinOhio]

4. these types pop up every few decades

Harper's 1964 article nails it back then.

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html