Tea Party Elected Jimmy Carter

so says Jimmy Carter.

From Andy Barr of Politico today:

Jimmy Carter says he was elected president in 1976 by many of the same elements that fuel the new tea party movement.

“I don’t have any criticism of the members of the tea party,” the former Democratic president said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

Carter then claimed “a lot of those same people, 30 years ago, were the ones who put me in the White House.”

He distinguished, however, between the grassroots activists that he says helped elect him and the tea party, by arguing that the current crop “doesn't realize that they are financed by oligarchs, in the oil industry primarily.”

Carter also predicted that Democrats were sure to lose the House in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

“That's almost a foregone conclusion,” he said.

But, he said, he hopes Republicans won’t be able to take control of the Senate, too, adding “I don’t think they will.”

That's an interesting turnaround coming from Carter, who called the very "tea party" people who descended in Washington DC in September 2009 "racists" for opposing America's first black president.

Tweet

NYT: Tea Party Movement Draws on "Long-Ago Texts by Dead Writers" (= AUSTRIANS!)

Hey hey hey... Is New York Times finally getting it?

Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts
(Kate Zernike, 10/01/2010 New York Times)

The Tea Party is a thoroughly modern movement, organizing on Twitter and Facebook to become the most dynamic force of the midterm elections.

But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.

It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon. Recommended by Tea Party icons like Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, the texts are being quoted everywhere from protest signs to Republican Party platforms.

And what are those texts by dead writers? They are 'Austrian' dead writers:
(Links go to Lewrockwell.com's pages that list their books.)

Frédéric Bastiat
Friedrich Hayek
Ludwig von Mises

If they haven't done so, Tea Partiers should also read:

Henry Hazlitt
Murray Rothbard
Tom Wood
Thomas DiLorenzo
Ron Paul
Peter Schiff

And of course much more at:
Lewrockwell.com
Ludwig von Mises Institute

The NYT article seems to correctly identify the Tea Party Movements as movements "built around ideas rather than leaders".

Ding ding ding ding...

That's what Ron Paul's movement was all about for 2008 election: self-organizing, around ideas. Instead of waving and screaming in ecstasy at the sight of their dear leader like Democrats did, Ron Paul supporters went nuts when Ron Paul said the Federal Reserve must go.

And o horror of horror, as New York Times reports, these "Teabaggers" (as liberal blog writers derisively call Tea Partiers) are actually "studying" these dead men's books!

Doug Bramley, a postal worker and Tea Party activist in Maine, picked up “The Road to Serfdom” after Mr. Beck mentioned it on air in June. (Next up for Mr. Bramley, another classic of libertarian thought: “I’ve got to read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he said.) He found Hayek “dense reading,” but he loved “The 5000 Year Leap.”

“You don’t read it,” Mr. Bramley said, “you study it.”

Across the country, many Tea Party groups are doing just that, often taking a chapter to discuss at each meeting.

Doing what? People actually studying and discussing the ideas other than those of John Maynard Keynes and Paul Krugman? What heresy!

NYT is even starting to recognize that there's Glenn Beck's (and Sara Palin's) version of Tea Party and there are other versions, not the monolithic right-wing fringe movement sponsored by Koch brothers as mostly portrayed in the MSM like New Yorker magazine.

Tweet

The Ruling Class on the Run

Fun to watch.

Here's Lew Rockwell's take on the hysterical Jacob Weisberg.

Here's Pat Buchanan's take on Karl Rove and GOP establishment.

And here's the thin-skinned Barack Obama's plan for the Tea Party (as if there is a single monolithic party...) to help Democratic candidates. How? By painting them as "extremist". (From Obama's position, anyone else would be "right" and "extremist".)

But it does get Larry Kudlow giddy with renewed hope that this is a revolution that will bring back American entrepreneurship and it is bullish for the economy and the stock market.

Have you read the paper by Angelo Codevilla yet? It's for the rest of us, unless you are a ruling-class wannabe.

And if you want "radical" and "extreme", here's Lew Rockwell's plan for total makeover of the US in 30 days.

Tweet

Scott Brown Won Because GOP Stayed Out

This cartoon on Boston Globe cannot be more inaccurate.

One, GOP didn't do much at all to have Scott Brown elected. And two, it is a wish by many liberals and progressives to portray the so-called "tea party" as controlled by the extreme right wing of GOP. It's amusing how they spit the word "teabaggers", usually with a snear, at anyone who opposes their dear leader, but it is just their wish nonetheless.

(And remember, the Red Coats and loyalists threw the word "Yankee Doodle" at the rag-tag army who dared defy their dear leader, the British Crown.)

11.4% of the registered voters in Massachusetts are Republicans and 37% Democrats. The majority, 51% believe or not, of registered voters are not affiliated with either party - in other words, independents. (Read this pre-election Boston Globe article.) Scott Brown won by winning them.

Republican National Committee didn't even bother campaigning for the guy because until about a week ago he was no doubt considered by the Committee to be a lost cause. A Republican taking the seat that was occupied by Ted Kennedy for over 4 decades? Not a chance.

Scott Brown won because GOP stayed out of the race. Let that be a lesson for the GOP leadership. He ran, as far as I gather, on a libertarian platform: smaller government and fiscal responsibility. GOP didn't bother to spend money on him until the last week, when the turn of the tide became noticeable even for the party leadership.Then it scrambled to claim Brown as their champion. That was funny to watch.

Many of Ron Paul supporters seem to be dismayed, with one supporter saying "Scott Brown is a pro-Torture, pro-War, pro-PoliceState, pro-ForeignOccupation, pro-DroneAttack, pro-CIA Neocon shill and hack."

That may be, I do not know, frankly. Those discriptions equally apply to the defeated Democratic candidate, as she embraces Obama's policies.

But that's not really the point. The point is that Brown has proven that someone can be elected to office without the traditional party apparatus. Brown was supported by the grass-roots "tea party" people. As Christian Science Monitor called it, it was "the tea party's first electoral victory", a party that is not even a party, really. That should scare Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Tweet

Boston Tea Party

says Drudge headline.

Martha Coakley conceded the election to Scott Brown.

Scott Brown: 52%
Martha Coakley: 47%

with 79% of precincts open.

Tweet