Protest signs that deny the Tea Partiers credibility with anyone not already agreeing with them:

* "Get the Red Out of the White House"
* "Waterboard Congress"
* "Ken-ya Trust Obama?"
* "Traitor to the U.S. Constitution."
* Pictures of dead bodies at the Dachau concentration camp and compared health care reform to the Holocaust.
* Obama as Sambo
* "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds"



Just as the GOP declared the John Birchers unwelcome, the Tea Partiers who want to be taken more seriously need to exile the bigots and haters. So long as the media can focus on this aspect, they won't get much traction outside of the ever-shrinking GOP.

Even if I kinda sneakingly like the "Waterboard Congress" one. I mean, its just Enhanced Interrogation, riiiight? )

"One thing that seems crucial to emphasize is how much this was not a “revolt” or an explosion of anti-GOP establishment fervor. I want to be very precise here. Many voters in NY-23 revolted against their local party leadership by backing Hoffman, but the outpouring of support for Hoffman came from the very center of what remains of the national Republican establishment. Viewed locally, Hoffman was not the establishment candidate. However, he was the national GOP establishment’s candidate, which is why I do not regard his defeat as such a great loss."

So, the local GOP candidate was the local establishment choice, which the rank-and-file rebelled against, and pulled it the now-mainstream national GOP talking heads like Back and Palin?

"To the extent that last night signaled the amount of right-populist discontent in the country, the establishment support for Hoffman represented yet another episode of the national party attempting to feed off of populist enthusiasm to sustain its own decaying body and to co-opt (and then ignore) populist themes while having no intention of ever governing in the interests of their constituents should they regain power."

Both parties have a tradition of this, best recently portrayed in Obama's first year of election-promise-breaking.

"The prominence of the pseudo-populist Palin in all of this was significant. Her presence served as a reminder of how often conservative voters are pandered to rhetorically and symbolically and how uninterested Republican leaders are in serving the interests of their constituents once elections are concluded."

Pretty much, yeah.

"Hoffman’s failure may mean that rank-and-file Republican voters in once-safe districts are no longer going to be taken for granted, and it could mean that their votes will have to be earned with policy proposals that address their concrete interests. The national and Congressional party has no clue how to do this, and so they keep failing. Candidates at the state level seem to grasp this basic idea and have started having some success."

So, I wonder how long before the Tea Partiers (conflating them with active rank-and-filers) get representation within the party by someone who isn't essentially a panderer?

His full article:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/