Friday, March 18, 2011

NewsBusters Thinks Birthers and Tea Baggers are Different

The birth of a tea bagger. From Machine Wilderness
There was a time when the Tea Party was thought to be a grass roots populist uprising. There was a time when it was thought that Tea Partiers were more interested in Constitutional principals, jobs, small government and low taxes; rather than religion, culture wars, gays, guns and God. But now we know--even though some self-proclaimed Tea Partiers may not know--that the Tea Parties are funded by big corporate billionaires. We know that the social conservatism IS paramount. We know that the tea baggers are just Republicans with a cutesy--and oddly, gay new name.

"Birthers" are a brand of conservatives who believe--contrary to all common sense and actual facts--that President Barack Obama is ineligible to be President. They think he was born elsewhere, or that because his father was, that he isn't a "natural born citizen," and is thus not really President. All of the setup, rationalizations and pretzel arguments behind this theory are a) wrong and b) a smokescreen for saying "that black dude in the White House won't fit in my brain."

The funny thing is, NewsBusters, an arch-right-wing "watchdog" website is trying to say that conflating birthers with tea baggers is some sort of faux pas. In reality, there is quite a bit of overlap, and very little daylight between the two groups. There are some tea baggers who aren't birthers, and some birthers who aren't tea baggers. But trying to work them out in a diagram would be a major project. These aren't merely different branches on the same tree. They're different leaves on the same branch.

[Excerpt]

ABC's Stephanopoulos Paints Tea Party With Birther Brush

ABC's George Stephanopoulos still doesn't understand the difference between the Tea Party movement and the birther movement.


On the March 17 edition of "Good Morning America," the former Bill Clinton campaign operative characterized Donald Trump's political maneuvering as an attempt to court the Tea Party by pandering to birthers. . .

Read more (if you can stomach it) at: NewsBusters

No comments:

Post a Comment

Have something to say to us? Post it here!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...