Guessing about the future

[nancylebov]

Poll #4730

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15

View Respondents

What effect do you think the Tea Party will have?

View Answers

A disasterous move towards the right
6 (40.0%)

Not much-- they're too disorganized and ill-informed
6 (40.0%)

A useful effort to limit taxes
1 (6.7%)

A much needed regeneration of American politics
1 (6.7%)

Other (please explain in comments)
0 (0.0%)

I wish to complain about this poll
0 (0.0%)

Something to click
1 (6.7%)

I'm inclined to think that they'll get a few people in who will be so inept that the Tea Party will be discredited. On the other hand, I may just be tired of panicking.

Comments

[schemingreader]

Ha ha, I love that "tired of panicking" line!

I think they will push the country to the right, because as absurd and blatantly idiotic and racist as they are, they will make the more mainstream far right politicians look reasonable.

[theweaselking]

I want to check both A *and* B. And "I want to complain" should be a checkbox.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Most Tea Partiers have no idea how many of their talking points and how much of the infrastructure of their rallies are provided by as few as 3 billionaires who are using them, and who will throw them away when they're done with them. Ten, maybe fifteen years from now the Tea Party will be the subject of a question in a trivia contest, nothing more.

[chickenfeet]

What frightens me more than the Tea Party itself is the emerging alliance of TP money and the Islamophobe right in Europe. The racist/fascist right knows how to organise, knows how to stay just on the right side of the police while committing continual low level street violence and, by ditching anti-Semitism (for now anyway) isn't shooting itself in the foot so obviously that even the "respectable right" has to disown them. Look to see the same sort of balance of forces as in the 30s when conservative politicians and the state thought they could use the street fighting right for their own ends and look where that got us.

[chickenfeet]

I should add that I don't see this happening in quite the same way in the US. The US doesn't get political parties in the sense that the rest of the world does so the risk of anyone organising anything is small.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Most Tea Partiers have no idea how many of their talking points and how much of the infrastructure of their rallies are provided by as few as 3 billionaires who are using them, and who will throw them away when they're done with them. Ten, maybe fifteen years from now the Tea Party will be the subject of a question in a trivia contest, nothing more.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Why do you think the billionaires will lose interest?

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Because, by the next election or two, the tactic will be stale and they'll be using a different one?

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Or will have won.