Starts at 39 seconds
“Most of them [The Tea Partiers] are those who want to be organized by the left, these are people with real grievances… Those are the things the left ought to be organizing them around… But the left is not offering them anything. [The Tea Partiers] aren’t talking about abortion rights or religion, they’re talking about straight economic populist issues. If there was a functioning liberal left, that’s what they’d be organizing on.”
Tip: Dave Riley. Via Dandelion Salad
Maybe it’s different where I live. But in the north-east, Teapartyers do talk about religion and the horrors of abortion (and gay marraige). Sure, they quip about the government taking “their money” and giving it to unemployed “welfare queens” (yes, they’re using that phrase again) and wallstreet bankers. But the crux of their “solution” is to drive out the politicians, and the special interest groups (except for their own of course), like those darn gays and abortionists.
No… really. So, maybe there’s another set that don’t tie their financially conservitive beliefs to God, gays, and guns. But where I live, they’re all in a nice little knot.
Apparently Woody’s not in one of the five northeasternmost states that passed gay marriage laws recently. Even my home state, NH, notoriously conservative but never quite neocon, passed one– perhaps the best of the bunch. And there’s no shortage of teapartiers there.
Out here in UT, religion isn’t much part of it. There’s a sizable gay community, and I’ve never heard abortion mentioned. (Saw an anti-abortion protest in Victorville, CA last week, though.) Guns, sure, we’ve had that discussion. Sleazy politicians, REAL-ID, NAIS, bailouts, foreclosures, deficits, unemployment, the 10th amendment, and did I mention sleazy politicians?
There is so much opportunity for a new left, but y’all seem to be stuck in the old left. Too bad, because that won’t sell. We don’t need labor unions– too many of us are self-employed and want to stay that way. We don’t need land reform– we’re growing your food on it already. And we sure as Hell don’t want to become proletariat factory workers, or we would have moved to the city (or stayed there when we did).