Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Identity is a curious word

It usually means, “Who are you?”

In Arizona, it probably means, “Show me your papers!” But I digress.

In math or trigonometry, an “identity” is a relation that is tautologically true.

But here’s a case where “identity” means both of these things:

Tea Party = Republican

The Washington Post had an article about this identity:

Tea Partiers' concerns are virtually identical to those of Republicans, poll shows

For some time now, the Post's E.J. Dionne has been valiantly making the case that the Tea Partiers, rather than representing some new political phenomenon, are essentially just right-wing Republicans. The only new thing about them, Dionne suggests, is the ham-handed revolutionary garb and the signs of Obama as the Joker.

Now we have some striking new data from Gallup that strongly supports this case.

Those arguing that the Tea Partiers aren't really anything new tend to point out that the vast majority of them are Republicans. But by itself, that isn't really surprising or conclusive. This new chart from Gallup, on the other hand, documents that the political concerns and priorities of Tea Party supporters are virtually identical to those of Republicans.

And Driftglass, as he does so well, gives us the color commentary:

The idea that a whole Movement which had nothing to do with the scumbag GOP had just happened to materialize out of sheer, patriotic thin air -- fully-formed and hating the Kenyan Usurper with a shrieking, white-hot rage 10 seconds after he took the oath of office -- was always absurd on the face of it.

But as the Conservative Movement has proven every day for the last 30 years, if you just keep repeating the same, ludicrous bullshit over and over and over and over and over Very Loudly, their imbecile Base will believe every fucking word of it, and the "liberal media" will report it as the gospel truth.

Truth is, it had the stink of yet another steaming load from the All-Purpose Karl Rove Playbook from the beginning.

There were, of course, the legions of pasty, white suburban rednecks in a ranting fury -- this time over the Deficit and the Constitution and the reach of Gummint -- which, after eight years of complicit silence and roaring applause over Republican debt, deficit, treason, catastrophe and one humiliating Conservative failure after another we were all supposed to just roll over and believe was something new under the Sun that had nothing to do with the fact that the GOP base are reprogrammable zombies. There was the omnipresent, slurring, bigoted face of Dick Armey at the head of this Shake-and-Bake Fucktard Army. There was the round-the-clock flogging of these astroturfed spectacles by Fox News programs and celebrities packaged as "fair and balanced journalism".

And now, boys and girls, it’s time to cue up interviews that I did at the Tea Party rally at the Minnesota Capitol on April 15, 2010.

Just Republicans with the vapors. Nothing to see here, really, just move along.

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