The New Republic

The closing paragraph reveals that Jon Chait Still Just Doesn't Get It™. In the first sentence, Chait speaks of "Tea Party activists." In the closing paragraph, Chait asks about "Republicans." But these are not two separate groups; Chait confuses the issue by using different names for the same people. The question is whether the Teabaggers, who are now the decisive vanguard of the Republican Party just about everywhere, are crazy enough to challenge Snowe. And the answer, obviously, is "yes." (Kidding, BTW, about Chait not getting it.)

- rhubarbs

May 10, 2010 at 12:51pm

In the real world (i.e., outside the U of Chicago economics department), aren't "Austrian Economics" basically socialism? I mean, Austria has had a mainstream Western European socialist economy since it regained its independence after World War II. The Austrian eagle on its coat-of-arms even has a hammer and sickle, for pete's sakes!

- wildboy

May 10, 2010 at 12:53pm

Look at the sea of graying and balding heads. Filming Tea Party events is great stock footage for "Revenge of the Oldsters!" (forthcoming, 2010).

- Tilghman

May 10, 2010 at 12:58pm

I was wondering why the Convention wanted to repeal the Treaty on the Rights of the Child, so I went and looked. The horror. The sooner the Treaty - with its overtones of World Government and Black Helicopters - is repealed the better. I refer, for example, to this monstrosity set out in Article 5:

"States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention."

This is clearly an attempt by the United Nations and International Law to require abortion and provide for mandatory sterilization. Article 6 goes even further (as if it were possible):

1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life. 2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.

This is as close as it is possible to get in interfering in the right of States to provide for the death penalty, to establish literacy requirements for voting and to re-institute (color-blind) slavery. And then we go to Article 7, the very heart of the Treaty on the Rights of Children. This is what I call the Obama provision. It is clearly written to make sure that a Kenyan usurper becomes President of the United States and to create an Islamist paradise for the benefit of UN officials:

1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. 2. States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.

And the thing goes on and on, heaping indignity upon indignity. I'm moving to Maine.

- icarusr

May 10, 2010 at 1:01pm

Fascinating. It is a public demonstration on how a group of fanatics can completely derail an organization in a very short time. So is this a trend? Are we going to see many more states where the T-brained drag the Republican party even further into the fringe? Will they get to put up their favorite, completely un-electable, fringe-whacko for November? Anyone revising the number of seat the Demo's lose/Repub's gain from this little revolt in Maine (if it trends national)?

- dirque

May 10, 2010 at 1:16pm

Jonathan Chait gets everything better than you do. There is of course an overlap between the Republican Party and the Tea Baggers but there are plenty of activists who resent the party trying to coopt the movement. You should read Mark Lilla on the Baggers in the current New York Review of Books and then you might understand that the Republican Party and the Baggers aren't one and the same entity. Or maybe not, given that it is you which is the subject here. The Baggers are a rag-tag group of discontented people, including some who support health care reform. They are far more defined by what they are against than what they are for. They have been aptly compared to the Perotistas of the 1990s.

- liberal reformer

May 10, 2010 at 1:19pm

Sorry lib ref, you don't get it. Whatever the Tea-baggers really are, they almost all will vote Republican and the Repubs as a whole are currently being led by the Tea-baggers.

- drofnats1

May 10, 2010 at 1:32pm

"There is of course an overlap ..." Ah, the soft tyranny of the mealy-mouthed passive construction. Within the last 72 hours, Teabaggers have literally taken over two state Republican Party organizations. That's not "overlap." How on earth does someone who regards himself as either a liberal or a reformer wind up as an apologist for the most radically anti-liberal, anti-reform ideological movement in recent American history? And making his apologia using demonstrably false assertions of fact and obviously ridiculous analytical analogies? As to the Lilla piece, I am not surprised that libref fails to notice the sloppiness with which Lilla slips between descriptive and proscriptive in his analysis. I'm a casual Lilla fan - I'm an enthusiastic devourer of Isaiah Berlin, so an interest in Lilla comes with the territory - but this has been a fault of Lilla's for most of his career. It is a mistake Berlin rarely made - and a mistake that undergirds most criticism of Berlin.

- rhubarbs

May 10, 2010 at 2:07pm

You are a piece of work, barbs. There is nothing mealy-mouthed about making distinctions, except perhaps to a Virginia know-nothing. A Venn diagram could usefully be employed to demonstrate the overlap and the non-overlap. Your description of the Lilla article, which I read yesterday, is just batty. I would like to see you write anything that comes within a mile of the quality of that article by Lilla. As for Isaiah Berlin, nothing you write gives any evidence that you are a Berlin fan. Sir Isaiah was a subtle thinker, which is alien to you, You are a rah-rah person, cheering on the Democratic Party and bashing the opposition. God knows that the current Republican Party merits a great deal of bashing because of its truculence and idiocy, but even then, it is good to take a step back once in awhile. It is just entertaining as hell to read the tiny little minds out here puffing themselves up, imaging in one instance, that a grasps politics better than J. Chait, or b, who recently called Harold Bloom an "imbecile", or c, who fancies himself smarter than the Nobelist for economics, Paul Krugman. Great entertainment, I say. Next I half expect we will have someone pop up, asseverating that he is smarter than Isaiah Berlin.

- liberal reformer

May 10, 2010 at 2:24pm

"but there are plenty of activists who resent the party trying to coopt the movement." Yes, but that says nothing at all about the same activists seeking to take over the Republican Party - and this is what they have done. That is the issue, not Establishment cooption of the "movement". And, of course, the Maine Manifesto was not a Third Party run by "Perotista"-like insurgents; it was, rather, an active and hostile take-over of a barely-functioning though still breathing political party. Now, mainstream Republicans seek to contain and control the pitchforked mob; but their (the establishment's) cynicism got the better of them this time. As for Snowe and Collins, I hope they both fall victim to this rabble. Their supine support for the nay-saying of the mob-driven Republican minority in the Senate deserves the kind of thanks that only a Republican mob can give.

- icarusr

May 10, 2010 at 2:29pm

"It is just entertaining as hell ..." ad nauseum ... Man, you really are utterly besotted by "authority", aren't you? Once can respect Chait and still criticise him; a Nobel prize does not a seer make (I've met and dined and discussed with at least three, and I have not walked away mesmerised); and Bloom - like many another critic - makes a lot of idiotic comments. Chill and read - you might actually learn something.

- icarusr

May 10, 2010 at 2:35pm

Wildboy: "Austrian economics" refers not to the economic policies of 21st-century Austria, but rather to a laissez-faire school of economic thought developed mainly by some economists in Habsburg Austria beginning in the late 1800s; it's outside the current mainstream because of its tenet that markets are based on the subjective preferences of individuals and so are too complex to be modeled mathematically. Austrian School economists also tend to reject the labor theory of economic value, to oppose central banks and government regulation, and to advocate a return to the gold standard. Disclaimer: I didn't actually know any of this when I woke up this morning.

- frippo

May 10, 2010 at 3:09pm

Wildboy: But then maybe *you* knew that and I misunderstood your comment. I do wonder how many Tea Partiers advocating "Austrian economics" might somehow be confused into thinking that modern Austria is a libertarian paradise.

- frippo

May 10, 2010 at 3:11pm

I feel that what we have here is a failure to communicate. Such failure has always at least two parents, and here I am one. So let me attempt to add clarity: When a person capitalizes a phrase as though it is a motto and adds a false trademark notice at the end of said motto; and when a person later in the same text expressly states that he is "kidding" about the motto; in that case, the reader should assume that the writer has written in jest. The delicious irony is that libref's failure to recognize my teasing of Jon as teasing even though I overtly identified it as such is much the same as Lilla's failure to recognize the Teabag movement as what it is. Because aside from the fatal descriptive/proscriptive muddling in his text, Lilla also rather arrogantly refuses to take seriously the claims Teabaggers make about themselves and their specific grievances and policy preferences. Lilla has an axe to grind - namely, rehabilitating an article he wrote in 1998 that later events proved wrong. Not a big deal; it's only an article, and it's only the NYRB. But to grind his axe, Lilla must demonstrate that his failed analysis of 1990s political disaffection applies to today's Teabaggers. And demonstrating that requires wishing away just about every overt statement made by any Teabagger about himself or his movement. Which ties into Lilla's confusion of description and proscription. Even if Lilla's description of the sources and origins and intellectual/philosophical basis of the Teabag movement is correct - and it's not, but even stipulating that it is - his proscriptive conclusions about its political effects are simply batty. Regardless of its anthropological or sociological origins, a political movement is defined first by what claims it makes and second by what actions it takes. And the former necessarily presages and shapes the latter. In terms of practical effects, what a political actor says is of decisive importance and cannot be waved away by any analysis of deep or "true" motivations. The Teabaggers speak and act like radical paranoiac ideologues, heirs to the Bircher tradition, and public polling as well as demonstrated behavior makes clear that the movement (A) is composed almost entirely of enthusiastic Republican voters, if not always active Republican Party members and (B) reflects the views and preferences of the Republican Party's ideological conservative base.

- rhubarbs

May 10, 2010 at 3:25pm

libref: ". . . imaging in one instance, that [he] grasps politics better than J. Chait" Thus following in the footsteps of HD, Richard Aldington, and the young Pound, no doubt!

- ironyroad

May 10, 2010 at 3:27pm

What's going on in the GOP reminds me more of Barry Goldwater's 1964 coup than Ross Perot's third party. The positions expressed by the Tea Partiers may look radical right-wing, but I predict they will gain traction as did Goldwater's positions for better or for worse.

- NR114746

May 10, 2010 at 5:25pm

Barry Goldwater stood for something, as well as being opposed to liberalism. There were common threads to the beliefs of the Goldwaterites, far more so than with the Tea Baggers.

- liberal reformer

May 10, 2010 at 8:45pm

Frips: I'm willing to bet Wildboy knew of the Austrian school: "In the real world (i.e., outside the U of Chicago economics department)," ... :) ... but it is amazing that the Tea-Baggers did.

- icarusr

May 10, 2010 at 8:52pm

icarusr: Yeah, the "outside the U of Chicago etc." thing prompted the second comment, once it had sunk in. I see that Conservapedia has an entry on the Austrian School, and it's very short (not really very much longer than my comment above, and making sure to end by stressing the Austrian School's belief that socialism is inefficient even in areas commonly handled by the public sector), so that might help interested Tea-Baggers.

- frippo

May 11, 2010 at 12:03am