Pam Stout used to think that the federal government was a generally useful to thing have around:Olbermann: Beware fear's racist temptation Feb. 15: In a Special Comment, Keith Olbermann explores the relationship between fear and racism and encourages Americans who are distressed about the nation's future to avoid political groups that appeal to their less noble inclinations.But all that was before the Great Recession and the bank bailouts, before Barack Obama took the White House by promising sweeping change on multiple fronts, before her son lost his job and his house. Mrs. Stout said she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated — even manufactured — by both parties to grab power.
....Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement.
....The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure.....They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.
That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).
If you think these folks have a serious chance at building a movement, this piece is pretty scary. But if you think they're such obvious cranks that they'll never be able to organize beyond the PTA level, it's actually a bit of a relief. I'm mostly in the latter camp. What's more, if writer David Barstow is right, their energy is largely driven by hard times. Once the recession starts to abate, they're going to lose a lot of steam.
But whether or not you agree, the whole piece is worth reading.
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Clawson (DK): NV-Sen: Tea Party On
Sun columnist Jon Ralston is reporting that the Tea Party has qualified as a third party in Nevada and will have a candidate in the Senate race to battle for the seat held by Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The party has filed a Certificate of Existence but needs to get 1 percent of the electorate to vote for its candidate in November to permanently qualify, according to the report.
Ralston reported that Jon Ashjian will be the Tea Party's U.S. Senate candidate on the November ballot. Ashjian still must declare his candidacy.
The natural question to ask is, are we supposed to call it the Tea Party party, or just the Tea party?
It remains to be seen how much of a difference this will make. But given Reid's deservedly lousy polling, he needs all the good news he can get. He got one piece late last week in the news that Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki won't run, and anything that can drive a wedge on the right and siphon off a few votes that might otherwise go Republican counts in the good news category.
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