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What Hath the Tea Party Wrought?
Not much that’s good, according to my editorial board colleague, Dorothy Rabinowitz. Have a listen.
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Published in General
I don’t think I need to hear Yet Another Pundit explain why they hate the Tea Party movement. I think I’ve heard it all by now.
Oh come on! Ms. Rabinowitz is totally off it. This is the level non-argument that Senator Cruz conjures up?… I thought I was listening to some crank off MSNBC. No facts just vitriol. Until those on the right come to our senses and understand this a battle between Americanism (Mr. Cruz and company) and European Socialism, then we will lose this great experiment forever. The Socialists are playing for keeps. The GOP are playing for preferential parking on Capital Hill. Come on Ms. Rabinowitz, you can do much better than this! Ugh!
Yep. Pretty much just a pile of ad hominem insults like “extremist” and “insane” and no actual content.
I shouldn’t have listened, because she was making me very angry.
And people like Dorothy Rabinowitz will do just fine no matter what happens. The establishment will still have their jobs. They’ll either get a nice waiver or they’re wealthy enough that it won’t matter.
Meanwhile, out here in the real world, people are losing jobs, having hours cut back, watching their premiums skyrocket or losing the coverage they have, or just going broke because of rising costs.
And Rabinowitz and her ilk just want us to accept it and move on?
Hell no.
The Tea Party has succeeded in getting the WSJ and the comfortable Beltway pundits who really are sympathetic with the statist entity, and people like Mary and Dorothy –and many others, to reveal what they are really made of and how we really cannot count on them when a fight is needed. They [the smarty pants pundits] are oh so smart, but Cruz and his friends are today on the Senate Floor, talking to the American people and they are the only Senators who I could imagine listening to for hours.
You are all such smart pundits, but Cruz et alia have found a way to get past your horrible filters.
Be fair to Mary. She did try to challenge Rabinowitz’s position, but Dorothy was having none of it.
It’s the Underpants Gnomes method of getting votes.
1. Jettison the party of all conservatives.
2. ???
3. Win elections!
It’s like the GOP has completely forgotten how the Tea Party saved their bacon in 2010.
1. Jettison the party of all conservatives.
2. ???
3. Win elections!
It’s like the GOP has completely forgotten how the Tea Party saved their bacon in 2010. ·5 minutes ago
They have, indeed.
I’m just gobsmacked at the long knives out for Ted Cruz. They act like a lackluster work force that has a go getter that just started, making them look bad. This makes the derision of Rand Paul’s filibuster by the GOP Establishment and Punditry look tame.
Be fair to Mary. She did try to challenge Rabinowitz’s position, but Dorothy was having none of it. ·6 minutes ago
Maybe, maybe not. I have heard and read Ms. Kissel elsewhere. She can be unkind to the Tea Party or Conservatives in general.
I can’t even get through this whole interview as the tone Mrs. Rabinowitz has adopted is so thoroughly smug, superior, and condescending, that it is genuinely off-putting–and I don’t even self-identify as a Tea Party member.
Were it up to me, I’d ask Mrs. Rabinowitz, who seems like she’s been so comfortably ensconced in her post for so long that she’s lost touch (or, perhaps, she was never recognizably anywhere near the center-right in the first place), for her resignation.
“Mrs. Rabinowitz, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Wow! This was nasty.
The upside is that that they would not come out like this unless they felt really threatened by the Tea Party. We may be stronger than we think.
The upside is that that they would not come out like this unless they felt really threatened by the Tea Party. We may be stronger than we think. ·4 minutes ago
I believe we are much stronger than we think.
It’s amazing, Ted Cruz has attacked precisely no one personally, he’s merely advocating a course of action. His opponents have disparaged and undercut him at every turn.
The course of action is quite simple. Congress has the power of the purse and the GOP has 1) a majority of one house of Congress and 2) enough members in the Senate to mount a filibuster.
Cruz advocates using both these powers to defund Obamacare because 1) Obamacare is bad for the country and 2) it’s what they ran on and what their constituents expect them to do.
Even if this effort fails, it’s well worth fighting, because when Obamacare is implemented, everyone will be keenly aware of which party opposed it, because of the principled stand by Ted Cruz and the attention he brought to the issue.
Me too. It was quite revealing about her and the powers that be at Ricochet that she was chosen and then proceeded to call those opposed to the abominable immigration reform scheme ‘racists’, ‘backwards’, and associate them with the Nazi’s ‘Blood & Soil’ policy.
And that was the first week she was on Ricochet.
If it weren’t for Ricochet members and a few exceptional people on the Main Page I would not have renewed my membership to Ricochet.
And where does Ms. Rabinowitz get the idea that it is novel to run against Washington? People of all stripes have been doing that forever.
Dorothy Rabinowitz: “This maniacal effort to shut the government down.”
She sounds like a NYT editorialist, lost in the clouds of her clubby fears and prejudices. And this is on the Editorial Board of the WSJ! I have seen her write well and sensibly 20 to 30 years ago. Sadly, at this point, it is all gone. Maybe this is why the WSJ has become so poor. And, it must be said, Mary Kissel thought it important to showcase this screed that has no thought content. If she had any sense, she would have been embarrassed by this and she should have been kinder to an elderly lady by keeping her from shaming herself.
I cannot believe this is the same woman who wrote “No Crueler Tyrannies”. She is, was, one of my heroes. Now, like Peggy Noonan who swooned over Obama, reality intrudes, love is dead.
I say down with the WSJ.
This is disappointing, especially from Dorothy Rabinowitz, whom I admire greatly. The only comment I can make is a plea to Rabinowitz and others like her to see that Washington is not working and that the efforts of the Tea Party are valid because the government is terribly broken—maybe not for the elitist, but definitely for everyone else. If you don’t presuppose that the government is no longer functioning as it should—as is best for American prosperity and strength in an increasing hostile world—then it would be logical for you to think the Tea Party and Ted Cruz (and his ilk) are nuts. Why be forced to take medicine if you don’t think you’re sick? It would be crazy, wouldn’t it? This is how Rabinowitz is viewing the Tea Party and the actions of Rand, Cruz, Lee, et al. We can’t blame her for coming to a logical conclusion based on her presuppositions. However, my question is “How do we get people as talented and intelligent as Rabinowitz to question their own presuppositions?”
If only we could get belt-way “conservatives” to fight like this against liberals.
To answer my own question, I would like to make this inquiry: The Tea Party is working from the assumption that the government is no longer functioning in such a way to promote prosperity and freedom for American citizens. Given this premise, the Tea Party is either (1) delusional and crazy, (2) manipulative, power-hungry liars who want to wrest authority from the establishment so they can have it for their own, or (3) right about the country and doing what they think is best to fix a broken system.
My challenge to journalists like Rabinowitz is to unpack each of those possibilities, not with rhetoric, but with fact. Examine it, study it, explore it—from the grass roots up. Put aside all assumptions that you think the government is okay (though a little shaky) as it is, and explore the possibilities that something else is going on here. You might very well come to the conclusion—after exhaustive investigation—that the Tea Party is nuts. Or you might conclude that they’re just power mongers. Or you might come to the conclusion that they have something to say—something legitimate that could affect the future of every American.
This is just another example of the fact the coasts just do not understand how angry those of us in flyover country are at the state of our republic.
Opposing ideas that are well founded requires reason, not ad hominem. The problem is Rabinowitz, Medved and others are afraid of tactical defeat and don’t like a bit of cleansing Jacobinism to get the political ball rolling. They can’t give a very reasonable argument against or suitable alternative to the current impasse. They want to believe reason will prevail in the end and we’ll “fix it” … they revert to the old Herb Stein-ism that “what can’t continue won’t”. Sadly, we have heard this music too many times before and what supposedly can’t continue, goes and goes like the Energizer Bunny. It is time to get off this ride.
Opposing ideas that are well founded requires reason, not ad hominem.
Very well said.
Yep. Pretty much just a pile of ad hominem insults like “extremist” and “insane” and no actual content.
Exactly. It’s hard to believe that this sort of thing passes for an argument.
There are about a dozen cogent criticisms one could make against the Tea Party: that it doesn’t always choose its battles well; that values force of rhetoric too highly and legislative achievement too lowly; that it hasn’t yet learned to govern, only how to be in opposition; that, in politics, the only way to get some things done is to compromise on others. (For the record, these problems became less pronounced after 2010).
But Ms. Rabinowitz madenone of these arguments; instead she just made ad hominen attacks about how the Tea Party is out of touch and doesn’t represent America. What a waste.
There’s much to admire in Dorothy Rabinowitz’s usual bravery and conviction. Don’t forget, however, how strong a supporter of John McCain she was in the 2008 primaries. Sadly, whatever her many merits, she is an establishment statist. Not totally her fault, though. It’s the bubble she inhabits.
It sounds like her great fear is that the Tea Party is indeed in touch and wants to pull the GOP towards a series of more populist positions: anti-immigration, anti-interventionist, and anti-corporatist.
But Ms. Rabinowitz madenone of these arguments; instead she just made ad hominen attacks about how the Tea Party is out of touch and doesn’t represent America. What a waste. · 1 hour ago
May all those New York papers go broke. Stop sending them money. (‘cept mebbe the Post… ;) )