Can The Tea Party Survive?

Just How Long Will There Be a "Tea Party?"

by Alec Kohut

In the wake of President Obama’s decisive victory, as the first salvos in the Republican Party’s internal struggle are being delivered, the question of the Tea Party’s future has been questioned. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, in a direct shot at Tea Party candidates has already stated that the GOP had to stop being “stupid.” Consultant turned pundit Steve Schimdt said that conservatives are now seen as “loons and wackos.” So the question being asked is can the Tea Party survive within the Republican Party.

The answer is simple and definitive: Yes.

Even the impending war within the GOP that even I envisioned just months ago, may not come to fruition. Why? Because the Tea Party has proven itself the most effective electoral organization of either party in decades. Even longtime GOP stalwarts dare not speak disparagingly of the Tea Party for fear of being “primaried.” The Tea Party’s success in Republican primaries has forced the GOP to adopt the Tea Party’s message, as their message.

It’s a very simple proposition, Republican candidates and campaign consultants speak ill of the Tea Party at their own peril, and as long the Tea Party is the major influence in GOP primaries, they will be a force in American politics. And wherever there is a motivated group with a singular purpose in American politics, money will follow.

But let us not confuse survival, with longevity. The Tea Party will survive and be the most influential group within the Republican party until they lose the only purpose for which they survive. The glue that holds this angry mob of pure nonsense together, their singular purpose, will exist for just four more short years. The Presidency of Barack Obama, whom they love to point out holds the middle name Hussein, will end in January 2017, and so will the group know as the Tea Party.

Oh sure, some remnants will still be visible. Just as I imagine somewhere someone is still clinging to the “occupy” movement. But without a black President, there will be no Tea Party. Every issue they claim to so care about will remain, only without a person of color in the White House. Then all of code words shrouded in a phony patriotism they now espouse will ring hollow to their white ears.

Phrases such as, “Take America Back,” and “The President Hates America,” will fall by the wayside and the Republican party will restore some semblance of sanity and stop debating contraception and if rape is just another form of conception that is God’s intention. Nor will we comfort in the wails of Victoria Jackson crying that “America has died.”

The only real question is just how far will the Tea Party set the GOP back before President Obama finishes his second term? How long will it before Latinos, African-Americans and sane women actually consider dipping their toes into the Republican pool?

By the looks of it, the Tea Party will likely inflict as much as damage as possible. Already with their asinine secession petitions and plans to de-fund Planned Parenthood in Ohio, they look to be as crazy as ever. Plus, the angry mob is very upset at the “Republican establishment” for abandoning such Tea Party favorites as Joe Walsh, Allen West, and Todd Akin.

So don’t expect the Tea party to go quietly. They still hold enough angry crazy white people to win any primary election in America, and will likely set at least the early tone of the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, before slowly fading into oblivion.

After the circus that was the GOP primary, will the Tea Party focus it’s energy on one solid “conservative” to take back the White House? Probably not, but with the limited life span of the angry mob of nonsense known as the Tea Party, I can at least dream of a 2016 Presidential nomination of Michelle Bachmann, can’t I?

5 Reasons Why the GOP Is Still the 'Stupid Party'

by Alec Kohut

When Todd Akin made his infamous “legitimate rape” remark, Morning Joe Scarborough echoed GOP consultant Nicole Wallace’s view that she was tired of Republicans being, “The Stupid Party.” Without question, in 2012, the GOP again held firm their standing as Amercia’s stupid party. While one could easily write a book about the GOP’s sheer stupidity this election cycle, I have narrowed my list to the top five follies of the GOP that made rational people look at them and say, “they’re fuckin’ crazy.”

1.   What  Do You Mean You Don’t Like SPAM !!! (or Hate Obama)

Monty Python’s Flying Circus could easily recreate their famous SPAM skit with “What Do You Mean You Don’t Hate Obama !” Just as those in the Monty Python skit couldn’t understand how someone could possibly not like SPAM, the same could be said for the right-wingers who could never understand how people didn’t hate the socialist, Kenyan-born, anti-American, Muslim, Barack Obama. The GOP and the right-wing has yet to figure out that their repugnant vitriol and hatred toward the President, and creating a caricature of the man that no rational person see as credible, did not make people dislike the President, it only made the right-wingers look stupid. These actions have not, and will not ever hurt the President, but they do succeed at making the right and the GOP look totally batshit crazy.

2.   Take Out Your Damn Trash 

It really doesn’t matter how the trash got there, it doesn’t matter if you agree with it being there, and it doesn’t matter if it’s not your trash. When there’s trash in your house, it will stink up the house until you to remove it. In politics, it’s become known as a candidate’s “Sister Souljah” moment, in honor of Bill Clinton’s refutation of the black activist’s hate speech. Obama did it with Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones. George W. Bush did it to Robert Bork. And Mitt Romney did it never.

Mitt had his chances, with the Todd Akin debacle, he was lukewarm, saying Akin’s should quit the race. He did absolutely nothing in the face of hateful comments by Rush Limbaugh, Richard Mourdock, Joe Walsh, Allen West, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and list goes on. Not only did he refuse to empty the trash and show some backbone to Donald Trump and John Sununu, he embraced them. And in turn, that trash stunk up the entire GOP house.

3.   Let’s Just Keep ‘Em From Voting

Give Bush some credit, he knew he wouldn’t win the African-American vote, nor the Latino vote. But nor was he going to show an outright hostility towards them that left him little option other than keeping them from voting. Which is exactly what Mitt and the GOP did. But it backfired, and backfired big. The idea that one political party would overtly try to prevent voters from casting a vote, did not just outrage and motivate the minorities whose vote they were attempting to suppress, but all believers in the idea of democracy in America.

And any conservative that tries to tell you that Voter ID laws are not about suppressing the votes, but maintaining electoral integrity is a DAMN LIAR….

“Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. Done.”

                                                -- PA Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai

4.   Skewed Polls

Just like with climate change, and evolution, conservatives possess an uncanny ability to just dismiss actual data that doesn’t agree with their views. The clinical term for this condition is called stupid. And we saw their sheer stupidity in the great polling conspiracy idea of “skewed polls.” Now this doesn’t mean that campaigns and pundits shouldn’t spin poll data that is unfavorable. Declarations such as: “The only poll that matters is on election day.” Or, “our internal polling shows us making up ground on several keys issues,” are standard rebuttals when poll data looks bad. But not the right-wing in 2012, oh no, it’s a polling conspiracy to help the other guy. It’s bad enough a couple of idiot right-wing pundits said such a stupid thing, but the fact that a majority of Republican voters believed it, shows that stupidity is more widespread in the GOP than any of us thought.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it now seems that the presidential candidate and his staff believed it as well. Reports now state that Mitt and his staff were “shell-shocked”  as the battleground states all went blue. It turns out their internal pollsters had “unskewed” its own polling to show Romney winning by a wide margin on election night. Stupid.

5.   America is a Bunch of Moochers and Freeloaders… Help the Wealthy !!

It’s funny when you think of it, the GOP pursues policies for decades of lower taxes, until we get to the point where 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax. Then the GOP nominee tells his rich friends, those people who pay no federal income tax suck, and won’t take personal responsibility for their own lives.

The irony of this issue is that the idea of an expanding welfare state and government spending has been used to help the GOP in the past. But once again stupidity ruled the day in the GOP, and in addition to Mitt’s 47% video, he nominated a VP candidate who wanted to voucherize Medicare and was actually booed by the AARP.

Republicans have traditionally framed the debate as “deserving vs. undeserving,” and saved the “maker vs. taker” talk for private functions with their wealthy benefactors. However this year, with the help of the Citizens United supreme court decision, and the alliance between Pual Ryan and Ayn Rand, this year the wealthy came out of the woodwork, crying not only that there is class warfare, but that they were losing.

Well, unlike Republicans, not all Americans are stupid, we’ve watched taxes on the wealthy fall, as their wealth skyrocketed, only to be stashed in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Islands shell corporations, and we asked the simple question: Where are the jobs?

Multi-millionaire entrepreneur Nick Hanauer summed it up best in his TED talk, that at first was banned from release:

“If it was true, that lower taxes for the rich, and more wealth for the wealthy, led to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs.”

Nate Silver Didn't Predict the Election, He Calculated It

by Alec Kohut

One of my favorite lines in any book is from Jurassic Park, after the dinosaurs have taken over, and cocky mathematician Ian Malcolm is terribly injured as the eccentric creator of the park says “Who could have imagined it would turn out this way.” A young lady replies, “Apparently Malcolm did.” To which Ian Malcolm replies:

“I didn’t imagine it, I calculated it.”

Nate Silver didn’t predict this election, he calculated it.

Nate Silver is no whiz kid, nor has he developed new sophisticated math to analyze elections. Nor did Silver have any information or knowledge that was unavailable to you or me, or Dick Morris, Michael Barone, Fred Barnes, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow,  Peggy Noonan and even Politics & A Beer.

I am not minimizing what Silver accomplished, he is brilliant. Effectively applying math and science to a field dominated by emotion and opinion, although sounding simple, is a daunting task. He performed it to near perfection. It was interesting to watch him listen to pundits incredulously as they attempted to discredit him using their views and opinions. The idiots couldn’t understand that Silver was basing his statements on math, not opinion. In other words, he was playing chess, they were playing checkers.

I also accurately called how the presidential election would go. Using a method not nearly as analytical as Silver, but relying on the data just as well. Unlike Silver, I am very biased and opinionated. Looking at the numbers, including those at Silver’s 538 New Times Blog, I asked myself a simple question: How would I feel if the numbers were reversed, and it was Romney leading in all the polls, and momentum shifting his way?

The answer was simple, I would have been depressed, knowing that it would likely be a landslide for Romney had the numbers been reversed in his favor. But they weren’t, so could I have drawn any other conclusion than an Obama landslide? Here’s my video from last Friday, before the election:

http://youtu.be/w5zRkvIJokk

The only thing every pundit, left and right, all agreed on this year, was this election was going to be close, very, very, close. Razon thin margins that could take weeks, maybe months to sort out. And every single one of them was wrong. Does that mean they are all idiots? Yes. Rachel Maddow ignoring the data, and claiming on her show that the election could come down to the party affiliation of Secretaries of State in the swing states, was just plain stupid. Michael Barone imagining Romney winning 303 electoral votes, stupid. Peggy Noonan on Monday writing that the polls should not be trusted, stupid. Fred Barnes listing the factors that all signaled a Romney win, stupid.

The pundits held firm to their beliefs and skewed the numbers to fit those beliefs while Nate Silver held firm to the data and skewed his beliefs to fit the numbers. That why Nate Silver is smart, and brilliant and pundits are idiots. It seems simple, because it is.

But right-wingers are never bound by facts or science. From climate change to evolution to the election of Mitt Romney, no amount of data, math or science affects their views. Giving right-wingers knowledge and information is no different than giving a 2-year-old car keys. The child will play with them, and believe they are using the keys in a very effective manner, but the child simply has no clue. Right wing pundits are the same with knowledge, they play with it, believe they are using it effectively, but just like children, they simply have no clue. Unfortunately many left wing pundits are no different.

They simply imagine things, not calculate them.

In the end, it was never a fair fight, Math & Science vs. Fox News. 

Want to submit a guest column to Politics & A Beer? E-mail me at aleckohut@hotmail.com.

A Second Look at the Race

After Debate #1, America Took Another Look at Mitt, and Saw the Same Twit

by Alec Kohut

It seems so long ago, the first debate. After which it was proclaimed that it was a new race for the Presidency. The pundits declared Mitt the winner, and the liberal pundits, well at least most of them, just went along with the prevailing wisdom of a big debate win for Mitt. I didn’t, Al Sharpton didn’t, and Norman Goldman didn’t. And with the election just five days away, turns out we were right.

The only thought from pundits after that first debate that did hold true was the idea that many would now give Mitt Romney a second look. Well, they have, and just as I said after that first debate, nothing really changed. Unless you were enthralled by Romney’s idea of repealing Dodd-Frank and replacing it with…”trust me,” the debate was pretty boring. It wasn’t a new race, it wasn’t going to be close, it was only going to be easier for the mainstream media to hype. That’s all, nothing more.

But people did give Mitt Romney a second look, and like before, they saw the same thing. They saw the same say anything politician/used car salesman, that will say anything to get elected. And boy did we see it this last week. First, he went to Ohio and blatantly lied about US auto jobs being shipped to China. And yes, America was giving him a second look, and we all saw the lies, and we all saw the auto executives call him out as what President Obama would call, “a bullshitter.”

And America watched a President respond to a natural disaster with resolve and determination. And America watched two men, one republican, one democrat, put aside politics and be the civil servants they were elected to be. And America watched two Americans show us that our greatness as a nation are the things that bring us together, not the things that divide us.

Chris Christie didn’t earn the respect of just Democrats this week, he earned the respect of a nation.

Mitt Romney also made a great effort this week, an effort to ignore what he had said previously about FEMA, and Federal responsibility to Americans in need. He dodged reporters, and staged a phony “relief effort,” but everyone watching knew one clear fact: it’s over. America did take another look at Mitt Romney, and the first debate really changed nothing.

America saw the same man who said 47% of America won’t take responsibility for themselves, that FEMA should be abolished, and a man who lied to Ohioans about JEEP production moving to China. They saw the same Mitt Romney after the debate, that they saw before the debate.

The American people have seen that Mitt Romney is indeed who they thought he was, and were reminded, again, why Barack Obama was elected President in a time of crisis not equaled in many of our lifetimes.

Tuesday, Barack Obama will be elected for a second term as President of the United States. He will be re-elected because we are moving in the right direction, and from the worst recession since the Great Depression, we are coming back, strong. America is coming back in a way few could have imagined four years ago.

And we’ve done it without Republicans. Because we are on the right side of history, and we are on the right side of the economy, and we are the ones who can make America better while the GOP tries to obstruct the economy and progress.

President Barack Obama has proven we don’t need John Boehner, or Eric Cantor, or Mitch McConnell to bring America back. While they have cheered against America, and celebrated poor job reports, President Obama just kept working, kept on keeping on.

And in the end, isn’t that all we really ask of our public servants, whether its Chris Christie, or Barack Obama, just keep on keeping on for us. Not for party, not for politics, but for us.