Neil W. McCabe — Sen. Ted Cruz to ‘Storm Congress’ Rally: It Is Time to Repeal Obamacare, ‘We Are Out of Excuses’

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz revved up hundreds of Tea Party activists at Wednesday's "Storm Congress" rally against the American Health Care Act crafted by Speaker Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) to stabilize health insurance markets, rather than repeal the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare....

Breitbart News

Sen. Ted Cruz to ‘Storm Congress’ Rally: It Is Time to Repeal Obamacare, ‘We Are Out of Excuses’
Neil W. McCabe

Also

Donald Trump: ‘I’m 100 Percent Behind’ Obamacare Replacement Plan
Charlie Spiering

Lord Keynes — The Strange Death of American Libertarianism in the GOP

Interesting insights on US politics from abroad as the Big Tent folds.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
The Strange Death of American Libertarianism in the GOP
Lord Keynes

Joel Kotkin — The three faces of populism

More than at any other time in recent memory, American politics now are centered on class and the declining prospects of the middle class. This is no longer just an issue for longtime leftists or Democratic or right-wing propagandists. It’s a reality so large that even the most detached and self-satisfied Republicans must acknowledge it.…
So, if populism will become a dominant theme in the next election, what form will it take? Populism itself is more a sentiment than a program; it reflects people’s deep-seated fears about the future and a festering resentment of the seemingly unassailable power of financial and other corporate elites. 

But the ways of addressing these concerns are often contradictory and almost impossible to agree upon. Right now, we see three distinct types of populism. Two variants, that of the Obama administration and its critics further on the left ["progressives"], share an allegiance to Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues such as climate change, racial redress, feminism and other social issues. 

The third – and, as of now, least-coherent – variant could be described as constitutional conservatism, one that seeks to improve middle-class prospects by reducing federal regulations and taxes and by decentralizing power away from the Washington leviathan…

Over the coming years, party factions that can form a convincing and broad-based populist agenda will have an advantage. Any party that believes, as some Democratic shills now say, that things are “pretty awesome” misses broad-based public sentiment, which remains very negative about the state of the country and the economy. Growing inequality, reduced opportunity – particularly for the new generation – will remain the defining issue of our time. It is time for the political class, in both parties, to confront this reality.

Orange County Register | Opinion
Joel Kotkin: The three faces of populism

Joel Kotkin | R.C. Hobbs Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange and the executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism

Note that Orange County is one of the most conservative counties in the United States.

Shane Goldmacher and Tim Alberta — Conservatives Build 7 Million-Strong 'Digital Army' to Push GOP Rightward in 2016

The digital army sprung to life with a click of a mouse in a nondescript office park in Alexandria. Less than 10 miles away, at the White House, the phones began to light up. One call came into the switchboard and then another. Thousands of people flooded the phone lines. 

It was early August 2014, and the callers were conservatives lambasting President Obama for promising what they described as "executive amnesty." The deluge of angry activists was not the work of a heavily coordinated national campaign, a pricey phone-banking operation, or really an exhaustive effort of any kind. 

It resulted from a single post on Facebook.

Taking the Tea Party to the next level.

A similar approach was used on the left by Adbusters to launch Occupy Wall Street.

National Journal
Conservatives Build 7 Million-Strong 'Digital Army' to Push GOP Rightward in 2016
Shane Goldmacher and Tim Alberta

There is no way in hell that the Republicans will not royally fuck up the economy and the dollar, too.

There is no way in hell that the Republicans will not royally fuck up the economy and the dollar, too. NO. WAY. IN. HELL.

With their hyper insane, fiscally conservative, spending cut, safety net demolishing, hard line ideology, this is a given.

I am calling it. You will witness the end of the stock market rally and the end of the economic expansion sometime between now and March of next year. I would use all stock market strength at this juncture to start selling out your stocks.

THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO ROYALLY FUCK UP THE ECONOMY AND THE DOLLAR.

The best part, though, is that after they fuck it up to the max (and this ain't gonna be no short-term thing), they will SUCCEED in putting all the blame on the fucking ass lame Democrats. And the Dems will deserve it! Hahaahahaaa!!!

Elias Isquith — The Times thinks the GOP civil war is over and the establishment has won. Here's why that's total nonsense

Here we go again: The media starts pushing the “moderate GOP” myth.…

As the Times piece makes clear, the conflict, more often than not, wasn’t over who the candidate would be, but rather how they’d present themselves and what they would say. Iowa’s Joni Ernst, for example, is just as extreme as McDaniel, flirting as she does with conspiracy theories and anti-choice absolutism. But the difference between McDaniel and Ernst is that while the former was the kind of conservative who let his wingnut flag fly, the latter was comfortable answering questions about her beliefs by responding, essentially, that she’d rather not say. Same thing goes for Colorado’s Cory Gardner, who’s currently getting a standing ovation from the political press for being so good at saying so little.

Salon

The Times thinks the GOP civil war is over and the establishment has won. Here's why that's total nonsense
Elias Isquith

Think Progress — Meet The Newest Wave Of Tea Party Congressmen

If there is a silver lining to be gleaned from a night of storm clouds for liberals, it’s this: they will no longer have to utter the words “Rep. Michele Bachmann.” Nor “Congressman Steve Stockman.” Nor a host of other lawmakers with fringe right-wing views on gay people, science, poverty, and other important issues.

However, with every election comes a host of new politicians looking to fill their shoes. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of new Tea Party blood in Congress this year.

More laughs.

Think Progress
Meet The Newest Wave Of Tea Party Congressmen

Amelia Rosch, Joaquim Moreira Salle, Scott Keyes

John B. Judis — Dave Brat and the Triumph of Rightwing Populism

Dave Brat’s victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has been widely attributed to Brat’s opposition to immigration reform. But in his campaign, Brat and his Tea Party backers gave equal weight to denouncing Cantor as a tool of Wall Street, the big banks, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Brat’s campaign reflected an old strain of rightwing populism that continues to be an important part of our politics. 

American populism is rooted in middle class resentment of those who are seen as enjoying the benefits of the goods and services the middle class produces without having earned them through work. Its ideology is what historians call “producerism.” It first appears in the Jacksonian Workingmen’s Parties and then in the Populists of the late nineteenth century. But it takes a leftwing and a rightwing form.

Facing an ailing economy, leftwing populists from Huey Long to Paul Wellstone primarily blame Wall Street, big business and the politicians whom they fund. Rightwing populists from George Wallace to Pat Buchanan also blame Wall Street, but put equal if not greater blame on the poor, the unemployed, the immigrant, and the minorities, who, like the coupon-clipper on Wall Street, are seen as economic parasites.

The Tea Party is a heterogeneous movement, but many of its members, and many of the local candidates it champions, are rightwing populists. And that was certainly true of Brat....

New Republic
Dave Brat and the Triumph of Rightwing Populism
John B. Judis

Tim Murphy — Eric Cantor Loses GOP Primary. Wait, What!?

[Eric] Cantor became the first majority leader to lose a primary in 115 years.

So who is [David] Brat?

Mother Jones 
Eric Cantor Loses GOP Primary. Wait, What!?
Tim Murphy

Arturo Garcia — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor loses GOP primary in stunning upset (via Raw Story )

Did Democratic crossovers oust Cantor?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor loses GOP primary in stunning upset (via Raw Story )

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) will not be-relected this year after losing to Tea Party-backed challenger David Brat in the Republican primary race for Virginia’s 7th congressional district, the Associated Press reported Tuesday night. Cantor…

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Digby — Tea Party’s great dunce-off: How Ted Cruz is quietly kicking Rand Paul’s butt

The real Tea Party.

At the time the Tea Party allegedly sprang up out of nowhere the country was still reeling from the war in Iraq and a financial crisis that shook the economy to its core, so it naturally marketed itself around economic issues. Therefore, the Tea Party was assumed to be populated by people who cared little about social issues and defense and instead signaled the beginning of a new, highly motivated libertarian faction in the GOP. But polling showed the Tea Party largely overlapped with the Christian Right and the traditional Republican hawks. In fact, they are the same people.

And it must be noted that the right wing of American politics is inherently reactionary and always animated by certain impulses, however they might be identified at a particular time. As sociologist Theda Skocpol, author (with Vanessa Williamson) of the book “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” described them:

They are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative-minded men and women who fear that “their country” is about to be lost to mass immigration and new extensions of taxpayer-funded social programs (like the Affordable Care Act) for low- and moderate-income working-aged people, many of whom are black or brown. Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but Williamson and I did not find this to be true.

Salon
Tea Party’s great dunce-off: How Ted Cruz is quietly kicking Rand Paul’s butt
Digby

Brendan DeMelle — Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry's role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party's anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, 'To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts': the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era....

Mind-bloggling article. This is not being orchestrated just in the US but globally.

Finally, this report might serve as a wake-up call to some people in the Tea Party itself, who would find it a little disturbing that the "grassroots" movement they are so emotionally attached to, is in fact a pawn created by billionaires and large corporations with little interest in fighting for the rights of the common person, but instead using the common person to fight for their own unfettered profits.

Nah, they aren't that smart.

The Huffington Post
Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers
Brendan DeMelle | Executive Director, DeSmogBlog.com

David Ferguson — Michele Bachmann: Tea Party is an ‘intellectual movement’ at its core (via Raw Story )

Michele Bachmann: Tea Party is an ‘intellectual movement’ at its core (via Raw Story )

In her remarks to the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the assembled crowd that the Tea Party and conservative movements will triumph over progressivism because of the right’s unstoppable intellectual…

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Alan Grayson — How to Destroy an Entire Country

...What is the cause, then? The World Health Organization has the answer: austerity. "Austerity" is a bloodless term for gross economic mismanagement, animated by heartlessness. That robotic cut-cut-cut mentality that deprives us of jobs, of public services, of safety, of health, of infrastructure, of help for the needy, and -- ultimately -- of our economic equilibrium and the ability to survive. The mentality that ushers in, and welcomes, a vicious war of all against all. Austerity is destroying an entire country, right before our eyes…..

In America, we have a rich and powerful lobby that has the same prescription for every economic malady: austerity. Cut-cut-cut. Cut Social Security and Medicare. Cut teacher and police and firefighter jobs. Cut health care. Cut pay and cut pensions. It all boils down to that one ugly word: austerity. And austerity always brings disarray, disaster, decay and death.

People often ask me my position on various issues. Well, I'm for certain things, and I'm against others. But on one issue, I'm very consistent. I'm against pain and suffering. Especially avoidable pain and suffering. And therefore, I'm against austerity. It begins with seemingly innocuous budget cuts. It then leads inexorably to the destruction of countless lives.

Why am I telling you about Greece? In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called It Can't Happen Here. But it can. And it's up to us to prevent it.

The Huffington Post

How to Destroy an Entire Country
Alan Grayson | U.S. Congressman for Florida's 9th District

David Edwards — Faith and Freedom Pres. Ralph Reed: Christie has ‘same principles’ as tea party (via Raw Story )

Faith and Freedom Pres. Ralph Reed: Christie has ‘same principles’ as tea party (via Raw Story )

The president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition confirmed on Monday that New Jersey voters will be voting for the “same principles” as the tea party and conservative Christians when they cast their ballots to re-elect Gov. Chris Christie (R) on…

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David Lightman — Poll: Non-Tea Party Republicans "are splitting from the GOP"

A new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll sees some evidence. Here's the analysis from NBC's "First Read" Friday:

"Our NBC/WSJ poll has shown that fewer respondents are identifying as Republicans. So who is leaving? Well, one set of numbers give us a big clue."

In a three-way generic congressional race, a Democrat gets 35 percent. The Republican gets 28 percent, and the independent or third party hopeful gets 30 percent.

"You might think that it's Tea Party Republicans who are siding with the third party/independent candidate," the analysis says. "But you'd be wrong. The third party support is coming most from self-identified independents and non-Tea Party Republicans."
In other words, the poll finds, "it's the Non-Tea Party folks who are splitting from the GOP."

McClatchy
Poll: Non-Tea Party Republicans "are splitting from the GOP"
David Lightman

Stephen Rosenfeld — Libertarians in 2013: The Even Whiter, Wealthier, WASPier Bastion of Republican Party

They are not the same as Tea Partiers or the religious right; this is a different crowd.

AlterNet
Libertarians in 2013: The Even Whiter, Wealthier, WASPier Bastion of Republican Party

Stephen Rosenfeld

Not a very in depth post, but useful in distinguishing the different GOP factions and their agendas. What is interesting is the demographics.

Laura Clawson — Cruz Caucus plots next Republican hostage taking ... of its own party

More on the GOP civil war from the trenches. High stakes game played by newbies to Congress and the political process. They think they are smashing success so far, and apparently so does their constituency. How this will play outside the base remains to be seen. Previously, candidates would through red meat to the base well in advance of the election and then with a wink-wink, run to the center. Seem that is ruled out by these purists. Previously, this would get you smacked down by the leadership. But these are different times.

Daily Kos
Cruz Caucus plots next Republican hostage taking ... of its own party
Laura Clawson

Mike Lofgren — The Revolt of the Lower Middle Class and the Stupidity of the Elites

 Mike Lofgren takes on Michael LInd's thesis that the Tea Party revolt is characterized by the regional (chiefly Southern) "local notable who are locally successful and have accumulated modest wealth — millions, but not billions. Lofgren sees it differently and rather alarmingly so:

In periods of political crisis or threatening social change, the lower middle class[ii]often has been the demographic segment most susceptible to militant authoritarian movements - such as the Klan or the Coughlinites in earlier times in American history. In other countries as well, the lower middle class has been the basis of fascist movements. As Richard J. Evans documents in The Coming of the Third Reich, the original electoral backbone of the National Socialists was the lower middle class, exemplified by petty shopkeepers, the lower rungs of the white-collar professions and land-poor farmers. As the great economic calamity of 1929 intensified, these groups feared, above all, sinking into the despised proletariat. It was this emotion that caused them to identify the source of their problems less in the banks, corporations and cartels that were the proximate cause of the crash than in the contaminating presence of foreigners and the underclass. France has had periodic bouts of thisphenomenon, with movements like Action Francaise, the post-World War II Poujadists (the definitive small shopkeepers movement) and, more recently, the anti-immigrant party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose psychologically penetrating political catchphrase was "I say what you are thinking." Capitalists are of course more than willing to fund such parties if they are on the brink of success and can be useful to capital, just as the German cartels began to fund the Nazis after their breakthrough election in September 1930. Nothing succeeds like success: University professors and intellectuals flocked to the Nazi Party once it gained power. But the motivating energy of the movement sprang, above all, from the fear and resentment of those tenuously situated a couple of rungs above the actual poor....

Lofgren then looks at what is happening in the US. He sees a disturbing ascendence of authoritarianism in this iteration of the Tea Party, obscuring its Libertarian roots:

[In What's the Matter with Kansas Thomas] Frank identified the culture wars as trumping economics, but the fascinating question he never sufficiently answered is how this mechanism works at the granular level.

In 1933, psychologist Wilhelm Reich attempted to answer that question in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. His answer: The virus is all around us, because it is latent within ourselves. But it flourishes in rigid, punitive and authoritarian upbringings, whereby a person's early domestic circumstances foreshadow his future relationship with state and society. In a home life filled with punishments, taboos and guilt, Reich saw the kernel of the future fascist: repressed, conformist and outwardly submitting but filled with a rage over his humiliation whose source could never be admitted. This dilemma accounts for the curiously contradictory psychology of the adherents of authoritarian movements. They are highly suggestible followers of some strong leader whom they can masochistically adore, yet at intervals they become anarchic and rebellious. And as they cannot admit the roots of their rage, they displace it onto others: Hence the xenophobia, the militancy, the endless search for scapegoats. It is no coincidence that this kind of personality finds an outlet on the Tea Party - which overlaps so heavily with followers of the Religious Right, whose lives are often a catalogue of commandments, taboos and shibboleths.

All this unhealthy energy usually does not find a unified political objective unless coaxed along by money and organizational skill from outside....

...there are always not a few businessmen willing to finance an ostensibly populist movement so as better to manipulate it, and who then get an unpleasant surprise....

Definitely an analysis worth reading all of. This is a defining movement of our time and not only in the US.

Truthout

The Revolt of the Lower Middle Class and the Stupidity of the Elites

Mike Lofgren

Kerry Eleveld — GOP civil war! Poll shows Tea Party disdains religious right

A new poll adds more heat to the GOP civil war — the Tea Party's lack of interest in the religious right's agenda...

Remember when Evangelicals were the staple of the Republican coalition? Turn them out and you could win any national election. Well, they are fast becoming the fringe of the GOP, based on recently released research from focus groups conducted by Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Erica Seifert for Democracy Corps.

The GOP is now roughly split into three factions: one-third Evangelical, one-quarter Tea Party and one-quarter moderates. These focus groups, which were purposely assembled homogeneously to encourage participation, were chosen because they comprise the base of the Republican Party.

True, the Tea Party has its own goals and it’s wreaking havoc on the Republican Party and the nation. But what’s striking about the insights gleaned from the groups is that both moderate and Tea Party Republicans view the Evangelical agenda as a total distraction.
Evangelicals are apparently beside themselves over losing the culture wars. According to the memo, they “believe their towns, communities and schools are suffering from a deep ‘culture rot’ that has invaded from the outside.” Their main focus is homosexuality, but they’re also concerned about the decline of small homogenous towns.

But the Tea Party folks couldn’t care less about social issues.

Salon
GOP civil war! Poll shows Tea Party disdains religious right
Kerry Eleveld

Ted Cruz is trying to combine the Libertarian wing of the Tea Party with the religious right. It will be interesting to see how that will work out for him. Rand Paul is already clued in to this dilemma as is Paul Ryan, who already encountered a sh*t storm in trying to push Ayn Rand and stay true to his Catholicism and had to "clarify" his position.

It's just not possible to combine Libertarianism or Objectivism with the social conservatism of the religious right without compromising one or the other.