Tag: Tea Party

Boehner’s Favorable Rating Drops 10 Points

Jon Ponder

A second national poll released after the tea party threatened to force the United States into default during the debt-ceiling negotiations finds voters holding an unfavorable view of the GOP tea party in particular.

The tea party’s favorability declined from six percentage points, from 37 percent in July to 31 percent now

On Aug. 5, a CBS/NYT poll found that 40 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the tea party, the highest percentage recorded since CBS/NYT started polling the question.

Now a CNN poll finds that the hostage-taking tactics of the Republicans and their dominant fringe minority may have taken a toll on their collective public support, according to Huffington Post:

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Rick Scott’s Unintended Consequences

Trish

8,418

Number of Florida public workers filing to enter the five-year phased retirement process known as DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Plan) after Gov. Rick Scott (Tea/GOP) signed a bill requiring them to contribute to their own pension plans. The figure is more than double last year’s, when 4,157 signed up, and means that Florida will lose senior public employees in record amounts in coming years.

A Double Blessing

Trish

Gov. Rick Scott is not only living the idea of being a conservative Republican, but he’s also a blessing to our party.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, introducing Florida’s governor at planning sessions in Tampa for the 2012 RNC convention. Democrats listening to Priebus call the Republican Florida governor – whose latest approval ratings are at 35% – a blessing for his party immediately thought, “And for ours, too.”

S&P Cites Tea Party’s Extortion Politics, Which It Calls ‘Political Brinkmanship,’ in Downgrading U.S. Credit Rating

Jon Ponder

In explaining why it was lowering the U.S. credit rating late on Friday, Standard & Poor’s singled out tea party obstructionism on the economy:

“The political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable than what we previously believed,” said S&P, one of three leading credit rating agencies.

“The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.”

“Brinkmanship” is putting it politely, of course. A better description is economic terrorism or political extortion.

It was the tea party, not the Democrats, who took the economy to the brink in the debt-ceiling negotiations, and yet, predictably, conventional wisdom in the Beltway has it that S&P was referring to everyone in Washington — that the hostage negotiators are just as bad as the hostage takers.

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Raw Deal: 28 Tea Party Caucus Members Voted Against Debt Ceiling Bill

Jon Ponder

As has been noted here before, one of the tea partyists’ sacred campaign pledges — along with not raising taxes or voting for debt ceiling increases — was that they would “fight efforts to use a national crisis for political gain.”

But that was 2010. In 2011, they broke that pledge — big time — when they created a bogus national crisis over raising the debt ceiling, despite the fact that the ceiling had to be raised in order to borrow the funds to cover the billions in new spending in the budget they voted for.

By choosing to negotiate with them, and then by giving into their demands over and over, Pres. Obama enabled the tea baggers’ extortion politics. In doing so, he handed them a big political win, in the short term at least.

That did not stop them from turning the weeks of negotiations into one long temper tantrum. And even after all that, even after they cowed the president of the United States into giving into their demands and agreeing to their Raw Deal, 28 tea partyists voted “no” against the final bill in the House yesterday:

Here’s a list of the economic terrorists who held the U.S. economy hostage and then voted against taking the ransom they had extorted from the American people because it wasn’t enough:

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Beck Compares Norway Camp to Hitler Youth

Trish

YouthCampMaybe we should thank Glenn Beck for comparing the Utøya, Norway camp where rightwing zealot Anders Behring Breivik killed 68 people and wounded many more to a Hilter youth camp.

“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler youth, or, whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing,”

Tea party camp counselor: ‘Some of the kids will fall for it. Others kids will wise up.’

We should thank him because – ignoring the American Legion’s Boys State and Girls State summer camps, which have provided civics leadership to such alumni as Neil Armstrong, Tom Brokaw, Bill Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Michael Jordan, George Pataki, Jane Pauley, Harry Reid, and even Rush Limbaugh since 1935 – his incendiary and ignorant comment allows us to shine a light on a far more disturbing phenomenon.

Tea party groups are holding their own camps this summer, where children and young people are being indoctrinated with anti-social and scarcity-based beliefs. Take this Florida camp.

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Bitter Friday Fun Break

Trish

nfl-football-debt-ceiling-s

Time to laugh in the final hours of life as we knew it before Congress said, “Hold my hand. We’re jumping!” and took us all over the cliff of welshing on America’s debt, which they — Republicans included — authorized when they voted to spend all that money. As we call our collective Visa companies, we say, “You know all those restaurants I already ate at, and all the Netflix I already watched, and oh yeah, that big ol’ car repair bill I already used my card to pay for? Well I don’t want any of it now and I’m not going to pay for it. See ya!” We will pass the time waiting for Visa’s response by futilely contacting our elected officials and then blaming it all on Pres. Obama. Happy times.