{"id":11616,"date":"2010-11-09T00:49:47","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T07:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11616"},"modified":"2010-11-09T00:49:47","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T07:49:47","slug":"do-we-need-a-tea-party-of-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11616","title":{"rendered":"Do We Need A Tea Party Of The Left?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his blog<\/a>, Kevin Moore writes:<\/p>\n

The argument goes that if the Obama White House had done more to create jobs and had done a better job advertising this fact, the demise of Blue Dog Democrats and the rise of Teabag Republicans could have been avoided. There is truth there, but what I don\u2019t understand is why the electorate would put in place people even less likely to solve the country\u2019s economic problems. If the GOP or the Tea Party had actually advanced real ideas about creating jobs and strengthening the economy\u2019s fundamentals, their victories on Tuesday would make more sense. But they didn\u2019t. They espoused only a more extreme version of the same tax-cut-and-small-government rhetoric we heard ad nauseum during the Bush years \u2014 an eight-year reign that ended only two years ago, mind you, with disastrous results. They should have been \u201cshellacked\u201d at the polls just as harshly as the Blue Dogs.<\/p>\n

But by what? This is a two-party system. If you punish one party, you can only do it with the other. The only virtues of the Tea Party has been their espoused distrust of both parties and their tactical infiltration of GOP. A more reasonable and more productive response by voters would have been to form a strong third party to propose policies and solutions that the other two parties are incapable (by virtue of their corporate backing) of formulating. So far, this has not happened. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If anything, I think what this election shows is that although third parties aren’t viable in the USA, it is possible for a “second and a half” party like the Tea Party to succeed. The Tea Party sees itself as separate from the Republican Party, but nonetheless they’re running against the GOP in Republican primaries, and supporting some ideologically compatible GOP candidates. You can argue over whether or not this strategy has been good for the GOP — but it’s certainly been good for the Tea Party. And it’s certainly given their views more power in Congress (both because of the members they’ve elected, and because of the GOP incumbents who will now hesitate to vote moderately for fear of being primaried by the Tea Party).<\/p>\n

Could the Tea Party model – a “second and a half” party — work for progressives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his blog, Kevin Moore writes: The argument goes that if the Obama White House had done more to create jobs and had done a better job advertising this fact, the demise of Blue Dog Democrats and the rise of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}