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Should the Tea Party form its own political party?

Should the Tea Party form its own political party?


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Phys251

Purge evil with Justice
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The Tea Party, strictly speaking, is not a political party. Should this change? Should the Tea Party establish itself as an official political party?
 
Probably they should, but they won't. The Republican party is a coalition of factions, of which the Tea Party is one. By itself, the Tea Party lacks the numbers to wield political power as a party in this democracy, as do the various other factions that make up the Republican party. This is why they band together. But the Tea Party has become quite a bully within the party and other Republicans are now suffering by association. Eventually they may do something about this, but unless the Democrats also break up into smaller parties, and even the political playing field, I doubt we will ever see an official Tea Party political party. Our democracy is a two party system, as unfortunate as that is, and as long as it remains such, it isn't in the interests of the Tea Party to break off on their own.
 
The purpose of the Tea Party is to observe what is happening and present opinions, alternate options and general oversight. It is not a political party and should not become one.
 
Even old, established parties such as Libertarians can't get a toehold on the system. The only reason to become a party would be to make more money. When you have candidates, you have donors. Politics can be a very high margin business for the founders.

So, if they are sincere, no. But somehow sincerity and politics seem mutually exclusive (to me).
 
I hope so... Then they would be come irrelevant (oh wait they already are :lamo )
 
There's an insufficient difference in policy opinions between Tea Partiers and other, more 'generic' fusionist conservatives in the Republican Party to justify a split. The only distinction is in the degree of intensity.

If they want a separate party, the Constitution Party already exists for that.
 
No, because the two party winner-takes-all system we have in place will make sure that they cannot compete on a large scale.

The best thing that can happen is that one of the two major parties attempts to gather votes by limited pandering to the group and a few of their more tolerable ideas.
 
Even old, established parties such as Libertarians can't get a toehold on the system. The only reason to become a party would be to make more money. When you have candidates, you have donors. Politics can be a very high margin business for the founders.

So, if they are sincere, no. But somehow sincerity and politics seem mutually exclusive (to me).

If the environmentalists and conservationists could somehow meet in the middle they would make a very powerful third party as opposed to the Green Party that has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with wrecking Wall Street. The Tea Party could never stand on its own that way.
 
If Democrats and Republicans could meet in the middle, we wouldn't even be fantasizing about 3rd parties. They don't and they apparently don't need to. We stagger along blindly.

You can take all the green people in this country and you couldn't form enough of a party for a high school prom, let alone being a political force. And you see, few as they are and as in need of unity as they are, they don't unite even with a theoretically common cause.


If the environmentalists and conservationists could somehow meet in the middle they would make a very powerful third party as opposed to the Green Party that has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with wrecking Wall Street. The Tea Party could never stand on its own that way.
 
Why become a third party and deny yourself all the advantages of being part of the Republican Party
 
Why become a third party and deny yourself all the advantages of being part of the Republican Party

Exactly. Steering an existing ship back on course is far easier than trying to build a new one and entering the race from 100 years behind. ;)
 
The "Tea Party" is a media creation. There is no such united movement. It is made up of millions of individuals all over the country that have joined geographically isolated groups voicing their own beliefs at a local level.

That is what I believe the movement should keep doing - AT THE LOCAL LEVEL - until such time as they can reform the system biased towards two major parties not allow others to advance an agenda.
 
It would certainly make it easier to identify those without a clue on economics, and would help the republican party weed out the extremist idiots.
 
It's simply a revolt against Obama's policies, so it would be short-lived. If they want to be recognized after that, then I think they should create a party.
 
The Tea Party, strictly speaking, is not a political party. Should this change? Should the Tea Party establish itself as an official political party?

I've always thought that they represent a lunatic fringe of the Republicans, so no. The problem I have is when they go and define who's a "real Republican" and who isn't. It bugs me when someone like Orrin Hatch, who's been a Republican for a long time, gets suddenly told he isn't by a bunch of wingnuts.

In a way, they represent the waning of the power of the GOP as they start listening to their populist wing. It's only temporary. The GOP will be back as soon as they relegate the TPers to the fringes of the tent.
 
It's simply a revolt against Obama's policies, so it would be short-lived. If they want to be recognized after that, then I think they should create a party.

Maybe they can organize around Second Amendment rights.
 
I thought that was their whole point in the first place, to be their own political party.
 
I don't want the Tea Party in the Republican party. So yes, they should.
 
Exactly. Steering an existing ship back on course is far easier than trying to build a new one and entering the race from 100 years behind. ;)

Back-on-course doesn't appear to be the direction the tea party has been steering the GOP since their political influence began after the 2010 election.
 
If they were smart, they shouldn't. But just in case they are not, perhaps it would be better that they should. Third parties are mostly useless, aside from the rare moment that they actually influence the Party platform. It's a fool's game.
 
I thought that was their whole point in the first place, to be their own political party.

No, the point was the threat of it. If they felt they were not being attended to, they offered the threat that they would. Now, the word, Party did not mean political party, but rather an organized front. Women had the NWP, for example, but they never meant to run their own candidates, nor did they.

They had enough traction for people to pay attention to them for a couple of years. They haven't delivered enough results. Frankly, the Party leadership needs to ameliorate their complaints but also has to weaken their stature.
 
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Maybe they can organize around Second Amendment rights.

The only single-issue Parties that amounted to much influence were the anti-slavery parties. It takes a hell of an issue be of much use. The second amendment is no such problem yet. Furthermore, it has a well-established and successful organization backing it already.

Now, if you extend the Tea Party to be really beyond fiscal issues, you run into the inevitable problem of alienation-something that can be observed by what the NRA refuses to do: expand.
 
The Tea Party, strictly speaking, is not a political party. Should this change? Should the Tea Party establish itself as an official political party?
They need to establish true Conservatism in the Republican Party.
 
They need to establish true Conservatism in the Republican Party.

Have the democratic populists lecture everyone about conservatism? That's rich.

The Tea Partiers can spare us the purity lecture. The conservatism of John Adams, Burke, and Hamilton had been long since abandoned. Hell, most of them believe in the moderate welfare state. All they have to offer is vague semblance of fiscal policies, irresponsibly prefer to cripple the ability of the government to function with a balanced budget amendment, mixed with fanciful rhetoric about how the average person knows better than their leaders, and refuse to accept the art of compromise and instead favor rebelliousness.
 
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Back-on-course doesn't appear to be the direction the tea party has been steering the GOP since their political influence began after the 2010 election.

It takes time to get it together enough to get candidates elected. It also takes time (and a good deal of money) to influence the votes of existing candidates. Obama is often cheered for his "help" given to the great loafing class (welfare, in all of its many forms), for allowing the federal income tax rates for the "working class" to remain, reduced to as little as half, what they were under Clinton (often ignored when he derides the "Bush" FIT policy) and he supports unionized labor (well above that of non-union labor). That is his right, yet you seem to ignore that right to any political opposition to these "fair" (actually, simply your prefered) policies.

That is where your arguments fail, since you refuse to see that doubling the federal deficit differs substantially from Obama's campaign promise to cut the federal deficit in half. Many of the republicants in the Senate, in the wee hours of this morning, voted for a "compromise" deal that had taxation increases to spending cuts expressed at about a 40 to 1 ratio. The Obamatrons see this as good for the nation, a huge "win" for Obama, and yet would never admit that they or Obama do not care one lick about creating an ever more massive federal deficit/debt, so long as they are assured that they will never personnally be called upon to repay it and, of course, continue to get all of their favorite "promised" federal benefits.

The federal gravy train is fast running out of money even for basic track maintanence. The annual interest on the national debt alone continues to move up the list of major federal gov't expenses/programs. Unlike Greece the US economy is too big to bail.
 
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