Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Jimmy Carter's been sick in the hospital for the past couple days, so here at Ricochet we thought we'd give the man a few days to recover. After all, it's neither fair nor much fun to kick a man when he's down. But Carter's been released from the hospital and has resumed his busy schedule spewing absurdities about things he doesn't understand. And so it's time to get back to work.
Jimmy Carter: I led the first Tea Party
[I]n some ways my successful campaign for the presidency in 1976 resembled the Tea Party movement of today. We capitalized on deep dissatisfaction with the policies and practices of government officials, especially those who served in Washington.
Thirty-five years ago, the American people were eager for fundamental changes after the embarrassment and lies of Watergate and the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers, and revelations that the CIA and top leaders had been involved in criminal acts, including murder. As a Georgia farmer, I was considered by many to have no association with these stains on our national character
Jimmy Carter: But my Tea Party was better
Other factors are very different now. Much of the financial support for the "grassroots" Tea Party movement has come from extremely wealthy owners of petroleum and energy companies whose profits depend on preventing strict environmental standards and regulations that promote safety and competition. Another is that a powerful news organization has provided the requisite publicity and promotion for the Tea Party movement.
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Aug '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Doesn't he oppose Israeli "(TE)APARTheid"as well?
Aug '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
So everyone but Jimmy Carter is comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter... who thinks he represents the opposing force.
What's that line about poker--there's a fool at every table, and if you can't tell who it is, it's probably you?
Edited on Sep 30, 2010 at 3:56pmMay '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Jimmy Carter:
As much as I dislike Carter, then and now, there is some truth to this statement. He was very much the unexpected outsider, and the way his campaign played up the "peanut" thing you'd have never known the man was a successful politician. The pundits and "insiders" didn't take him seriously, which probably helped him in the primaries.
That and he was running against a Mormon from Arizona, which didn't play well with most Democrats.
However, once he picked up some major primaries there was nothing "grass-roots" about his election. Or his administration, for that matter.
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Well, Diane, there's no question that some of the more libertarian Democrats trying to recover from the McGovern debacle looked to Carter as a figure with a lot of promise -- a lot more than anyone else on offer that year. But Carter's time on the stump was by any measure a lot more promising than his time in the White House. Carter of course is drinking something much stronger than tea if he really means to imply that he wouldn't have appreciated a big media platform for his then relatively anti-establishmentarian take on Democratic politics. I am certainly a fan of promoting competition -- and tea partiers tend to be way more like me in this regard than the more corporatist Republicans on the right -- but I suspect the right is united in a fairly deep suspicion that Jimmy Carter's vision of proper government regulations is the one most likely to foster a competitive environment of free enterprise.
Jul '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
"... petroleum and energy companies whose profits depend on preventing strict environmental standards...."
Precisely why We have petroleum and energy today..... for now.
Jul '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Diane, by the look of your picture you are too young to remember. But there is indeed some truth to this.
Carter was embraced by the electorate (at least the less perceptive portion of it) as a true breath of fresh air, a change from corrupt Washington ways. It is a fairly clear line from Carter to Perot to Gingrich to Ventura to (at some level) Obama. At each turn the people's hopes were dashed. And at each turn their anger grew hotter and hotter. Because none of these people - Carter the least - lived up to their self-promoted hype.
That is the one thing that gives me pessimism about the Tea Party. the track record ain't good.
May '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
When Carter speaks, it's as if someone mixed every far-left trope into a bottle of pompous juice and shook it at the nearest microphone. In just one paragraph, we learn that the Tea Party is run by oil magnates. Fox News controls the clueless non-leftists. Unregulated industry is the bane of man's existence. It'd be tiring, if it weren't so funny!
Left wing Tea Party co-opting must be a theme this week - read Tom Friedman's NYT column from yesterday, if you must. Spoiler: Tom still wishes we were more like China.
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Patrick Shanahan: Diane, by the look of your picture you are too young to remember. But there is indeed some truth to this.
You've caught me. I was born during Reagan's presidency. So I don't remember the Jimmy Carter tea parties.
Aug '10
Re: Jimmy Carter: Father of the Tea Party?
Thirty-five years ago, the American people were eager for fundamental changes after the embarrassment and lies of Watergate and the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers, and revelations that the CIA and top leaders had been involved in criminal acts, including murder.
...
Much of the financial support for the "grassroots" Tea Party movement has come from extremely wealthy owners of petroleum and energy companies whose profits depend on preventing strict environmental standards and regulations that promote safety and competition. Another is that a powerful news organization has provided the requisite publicity and promotion for the Tea Party movement.
Yes, it would have been nice had there been a powerful news organization in the 70s willing to provide publicity and promotion for all that suppressed indignation over Watergate and the Vietnam war. History could have been very different.