
Ask HN: Election Day tomorrow, what do geeks think of the Tea Party? - eduardo_f
I'm from Spain but I've been living in the US for the last two years (starting up here after Master's degree). I can't vote and I don't follow politics very closely but I like to keep abreast of recent developments. I just read this on the WSJ:<p>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578200086257706.html<p>I find mass-media quite polarized regarding the Tea Party, so I'm interested in the opinion of people here who I usually agree with on many other topics (tech, startups, etc).
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Towle_
A short history of the Tea Party:

It was started as a libertarian-minded movement with a Ron Paul flavor to it.
Initially, the right- and left-wing mainstream media were unsure of how to
cover the Tea Party. Their ideology of libertarianism was foreign to the two-
party landscape, and the movement had no visible leader.

Eventually, the Tea Party gained enough momentum that non-libertarian
politicians (most notably Sarah Palin) saw it as politically useful and
started speaking at rallies. These politicians were not libertarians, however;
most were neo-conservatives. They echoed some of the familiar Tea Party
rhetoric, only what was politically palatable and made sense to the two-party
world. The rest of the libertarian ideology was thrown in the trash.

Because of her familiarity to the public, both sides of the media identified
Palin as the de-facto leader of the Tea Party. Her ideology replaced the
movement's. The complex story of a decentralized, leaderless, libertarian-
inspired grassroots uprising was replaced by the simple story of Palin leading
a bunch of people who hate Obama.

Of course, you are what the media says you are. The rallies themselves began
to draw more and more Palin crazies, after they were told it was her movement.
Those are the people you see on CNN holding up the often-racist, always-
illogical signage.

And that's how the Tea Party went from enlightened to bigoted.

~~~
philwelch
The actual libertarians I know tend to think of the Tea Party as kind of a
retarded little brother to the libertarian movement. That's probably not the
most tasteful analogy.

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eof
I wrote this on the tea party about a year and a half ago:
<http://www.geoffgolder.com/node/16>

My core values are inline with the Tea Party, however, it has evolved into
something it originally was not, and something I don't really respect.

It's outside of the scope of this post, but if you really want to understand
the tea party situation, you really need to understand the difference between
a religious-conservative and an intellectual-conservative.

Most liberals won't sense the difference and thus disregard (arguably more
logical) libertarians as they can't distinguish them from the vast majority of
religious-conservatives. This happens at a _very large_ scale.

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kls
It's all over the board over here. I fear we are Balkanizing. We just cant get
down to the common sense issues like economy, life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. We get wrapped up in the telling other people what to do issues.
The tea party wants to get all of the old guard out which is a noble goal but
the special interest groups are already trying to infiltrate it's ranks. Until
lobbyist and money men are barred from access to politicians you can be
assured that nothing will changes in American politics. Unfortunately the only
ones that can bar that access are the politicians themselves, so don't expect
that to change until we have a revolution or Balkanize and when I say
revolution I mean the kind with guns and guerrillas. That won't happen until
people are starving so I don't see much changing in the US for a while.
Anyway, I think the Tea Party started off with all good intentions and then
they became a political machine.

~~~
zbruhnke
unfortunately I completely agree with you here ... allowing Sarah Palin to
become the face of the tea party (at least in my opinion) was the beginning of
the end of it being a noble movement. They have turned into a group of
strictly far right wing activists and lobbyists who care more about political
agenda's than the state of our union.

We need serious term limit and campaign donation reform to be able to bring
this country back to any visions of grandeur and unfortuantely without someone
with Bill Gates or Warren Buffet money running the type of people who can
bring that type of change would never be elected.

Our country is stuck in a two party system in which a third party is either
absorbed by one of the political machines or left to rot all on its own.

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philwelch
A large group of very angry, not especially thoughtful people influenced by
demagogues and rabble-rousers like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

As a political cynic who doesn't invest much thought in political issues, I
consider them the same as any other populist movement: until they start
rioting or shooting people, they're not really interesting enough to look up
from my code to take notice of.

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curt
I have big hopes for the tea party, as a libertarian when government "helps"
it hurts. You look back through history, most bubbles/recessions were caused
by horrible government policies. The unions, big business, big finance, and
government all use law and regulations to gain and maintain power. For example
I had to shut down my last business when the industry leader hired a bunch of
lobbyists to write legislation that caused my costs to increase so much I
couldn't stay in business.

What I'm hoping for is an even playing field where everyone plays by the same
rules. If you're wealthy you hire a lobbyist to get you a tax loophole or
waiver. There's a big difference between a small business owner making $500k a
year and Google. The small business owner pays a 35% tax rate while Google can
hire an army of lawyers to game the system for a 3% tax rate. Why not get rid
of all the deductions and have flat 10% tax rate. The government would raise
the same amount while increasing the economy's growth rate and helping
business save millions they currently waste on lawyers and accountants.

One set of simple rules for everyone. That's my hope.

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cmelbye
You can't seriously hope that reform like that will happen under the current
state of the tea party. It's turned from a grassroots libertarian movement to
Palin's branch of the Republican Party.

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Isamu
The Tea Party is interesting as a grass-roots movement. They started off
fairly ignored, then they were noticed and ridiculed, and finally regarded
with alarm. They are now in the phase of being co-opted by personalities.

But there isn't much clear policy that binds them together.

I find the fear-mongering towards them to be silly. This is the face of
democracy, and it is rather telling to see who finds this threatening.

~~~
tdfx
The co-opting of the Tea Party movement by the "personalities" is what I
personally find threatening. I identify myself ideologically as libertarian of
the progressive flavor (which, from what I've read, is what the Tea Party
originally claimed to be), but I still would not go within 50 miles of a rally
being sponsored by Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin.

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oomkiller
Pack of fools regurgitating views they get from the media, without any actual
solutions.

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variety
modern-day brownshirts

