Will the Real "Tea Party" Please Stand Up

Here is an interview with Karl Denninger who founded the "Tea Party". He is outraged that right wing Republicans seized his group and dropped the original agenda in favour of the same old social conservative agenda of "Guns, Gays, and God"...



Toward the end of this piece he puts forward his complaint about "wedge politics", i.e. the two parties find an issue where there is a 50-50 split in the electorate and then can focus on winning a small number of people to get the "50% + 1 vote" majority to rule. He thinks this distorts the political process. That is an interesting perspective that I don't see discussed much. For all the Republican bellowing about "strict construction of the Consitution" and "the intentions of the Founding Fathers", they don't talk much about the fact that the founding fathers and founding documents never envisioned a "party system" of government and in fact that many saw partisan politics as a problem.

I wonder how many of those "partisans" of the Tea Party know its history, are aware of Denninger's unhappiness, or understand the role that the Republican Party is playing. My guess is "not much".

Here's Sarah Palin telling Tea Party protestors that they "are winning". Dylan Ratigan points out that this just isn't the case...