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Personal Liberty Bob Livingston provides you with a conservative, Christian view on life. Helping you live free in an unfree world. Delivering news on improving you health, boosting your wealth, and protecting your civil liberties." |
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Grudging Harvard Prof: Tea Party Is Here To Stay
12.30.13 03:15 PM
Despite all the mainstream media punditry that’s ready to shovel dirt over the casket of grass-roots conservatism and truly liberal (as opposed to radical progressive) thought, at least one Harvard professor thinks the Tea Party isn’t going away anytime soon. Harvard sociology professor Theda Skocpol actually believes Americans are more fed up today with the ossified stubbornness of the political class than they were in 2007, when “Tea Party” became a household phrase. It’s clear from the tone of his article that Skopcol is anything but an apologist for conservative values (he calls sequestration “draconian budget cuts,” conservatives “saboteurs” and Ted Cruz “arrogant”), but he sees the future written in Americans’ present disgust with the government they have now: Americans may resent the Tea Party, but they are also losing ever more faith in the federal government—a big win for anti-government saboteurs.Then he ponders how to be rid of “the damage the Tea Party is inflicting on American politics” and faces some realities that, though he laments them, are hard to ignore: For one, at least three successive national election defeats will be necessary to even begin to break the determination and leverage of Tea Party adherents. Grassroots Tea Partiers see themselves in a last-ditch effort to save “their country,” and big-money ideologues are determined to undercut Democrats and sabotage active government. They are in this fight for the long haul. Neither set of actors will stand down easily or very soon.Those pesky obstructionists! If only they’d allow Democrats to “govern effectively.” Of course, those who watched Democrats shut down the government, blame the Tea Party, and then proceed not only to get everything they wanted in the first place – but to rewrite the rules of Senate procedure to their benefit – see a very different set of political motivations than the ones Skopcol sees. It’s almost as if, grudgingly, progressives are already trying to take control of the narrative for the kind of political fight they’re (finally) realizing they’re doomed to face in the years ahead. http://personalliberty.com/2013/12/3...-here-to-stay/ |