How The Tea Party Toasted Itself

Time after time we hear Tea Party representatives telling us that their extreme policies are what the majority of Americans want and the entire reason they were elected to office. While a majority of sane people have thought all along that such was not case, the most recent polls confirm it.

Delusions of the Tea Party...image credit the politcalticker.com

(No, Tea Party, you are not America. You're just delusional. An overwhelming majority of Americans -85 percent to be exact- don't think, feel or act like you. They don't hate gays. They don't want a state religion. They don't think women should be subservient to men. They aren't religious fanatics. They don't even hate taxes anymore. You represent an extremely small minority faction, one that would be described in most countries as an 'extremist minority faction'. But wait, what's that I hear? I think it's reality calling. Maybe you should get an Obamaphone, so you can hear what it has to say...)

The latest poll from CBS shows that support for the Tea Party continues to dwindle, now at it's lowest point since the group first made it's way onto the polls as a 'thing.' National support for the Tea Party stands at just 15 percent, with only a small number of republicans still identifying as members of the Tea Party.

Does this mean that the reality of the Tea Party's extremist positions has finally overcome the heavily funded libertarian propaganda of the Koch brothers, as it is broadcast daily on Fox News? The 'taxed enough already' party appeared out of nowhere. It was supposedly a grass roots movement, but somehow was in possession of a surprising number of shiny new tour buses. Hmmm.

Remember when they railed against the 'Obama tax increases' that never existed, and claimed that the Affordable Care Act contained death panels, because the president wanted to kill Sarah Palin's baby? There was the Norquist pledge and the disgusting birther movement, all spawns of the Koch brothers and their Tea Party lunatics.

The Tea Party managed to lure some of the more simple minded people into its web of deceit. But how long could they really hope to retain those people, when their entire platform was based on bull**it? Sooner or later people start to wonder, if Obama is coming for our guns, what's taking so damn long? When do hijabs become mandatory, we've been waiting six years now. I think the whole thing has to be getting boring by now.

For those who haven't figured it out yet, the Tea Party is the fossil fuel party. Texas tea isn't really as 'code' as they thought it was. The destruction of the EPA doesn't sound as appealing after your water's been poisoned by the fracking industry. Sarah Palin's 'Drill baby drill' just isn't as sexy today as it was a few years ago. It's part of the reality of America's short attention span and superficial nature, cult figures in this country go out even faster than they come in. In the case of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert and Ted Cruz, it couldn't happen fast enough.

Voters have now seen the extremist Tea Party in action. There are just way too many youtube videos depicting one or more of the wing nuts speaking of the House floor. There aren't enough people left in America who are shuttered in old folks homes. There aren't enough Fox viewers who are too scared of the liberal media to read or watch anything not generated by the right wing. There surely aren't enough 'patriots' holed up in bunkers listening to underground radio, waiting for the Muslim invasion or the second coming of Jesus.

In 2010 people didn't know what the Tea Party was. In 2014 they do, and they can't identify, as the newest polls show.

The Tea Party got to be a thing because they baited people with the promise of 'no new taxes.' That idea might have seemed appealing to even some rational people, just a few years ago. But now people across the country have begun to realize that without taxes nothing really works. Roads and bridges crumble. Police and firefighters get laid off. Schools close their doors. Businesses move away, in hopes of finding safer communities to operate in. They realize that taxes are a part of life, and they aren't dumb enough not to see through the Tea Party's endless fight against raising taxes on the rich, coupled with their willingness to throw the middle class and the poor under that not so shiny, not so new tour bus.

The no new taxes appeal is long gone. The majority of Americans favor raising taxes on those who now own the majority of the wealth in this country. People get that the folks who have most of the wealth SHOULD be responsible for paying most of the taxes. Trickle down theory was exposed as a lie a long time ago. The right keeps wrapping it in different packages and selling it back to their ever dwindling base of supporters.

With the original 'no new taxes' slogan decimated, they've been left to focus on wedge issues. As the name suggests, wedge issues are meant divide people; whites against blacks, second amendment fanatics against supporters of peace and non-violence, religious fanatics against everyone else...

What happens when you build an entire political party on wedge issues? Nothing good. You get 961 anti-women bills introduced in 2 years, but no meaningful legislation. You get 'when does life begin' definitions inserted in flood insurance legislation, but you don't get flood insurance. You get thousands of bills challenged in federal court, but you don't get many passed and you do get many overturned. You get spiritual lessons from self-appointed spiritual advisers called Congressmen and medical lessons from people with an 8th grade education at the state level, but you don't get a damn thing done.

What's most important about the GOP focus on wedge issues is that the division they create has finally served to divide them. Contrary to what the Tea Party seems to believe, the extremist positions of their elected representatives do not sit well with most Americans. The average voter does not think that abortion is the most important issue facing the country. The average voter does not want the separation of church and state dismantled, maybe because even Christians need 13,000 different denominations, because they don't all believe the same thing and they don't all favor the government dictating what they can and can't believe.

Mostly the Tea Party is on its way out because the reality of it has set in. For example, in Michigan tea party legislators voted to take away the right of local cities and towns to govern themselves. Considering the party is supposed to be 'inspired' by the Boston Tea Party, when colonists declared "no taxation without representation" the tea party's move to decimate the right of voters in the state to select their own representation is just too much for most people who are paying attention.

David Pakman has a great segment on the decline of the Tea Party this week. He makes a lot of great points on how the GOP's focus on wedge issues has splintered their own party, hopefully for good. Here's the video from his show on youtube.