quote:It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn't sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn't ponied up. Inglis' task: Get them back on the team. "They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.
As he tells this story, the veteran lawmaker is sitting in his congressional office, which he will have to vacate in a few months. On June 22, he was defeated in the primary runoff by Spartanburg County 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who had assailed Inglis for supposedly straying from his conservative roots, pointing to his vote for the bank bailout and against George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. Inglis, who served six years in Congress during the 1990s as a conservative firebrand before being reelected to the House in 2004, had also ticked off right-wingers in the state's 4th Congressional District by urging tea-party activists to "turn Glenn Beck off" and by calling on Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to apologize for shouting "You lie!" at Obama during the president's State of the Union address. For this, Inglis, who boasts (literally) a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party, losing to Gowdy 71 to 29 percent. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven "demagoguery" that he believes will undermine the GOP's long-term credibility. And he's freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.
The week after that meeting with his past funders—whom he failed to bring back into the fold—Inglis asked House Republican leader John Boehner what he would have told this group of Obama-bashers. Inglis recalls what happened:
[Boehner] said, "I would have told them that it's not quite that bad. We disagree with him on the issues." I said, "Hold on Boehner, that doesn't work. Let me tell you, I tried that and it did not work." I said [to Boehner], "If you're going to lead these people and the fearful stampede to the cliff that they're heading to, you have to turn around and say over your shoulder, 'Hey, you don't know the half of it.'"
quote:During his primary campaign, Inglis repeatedly encountered enraged conservatives whom he couldn't—or wouldn't—satisfy. Shortly before the runoff primary election, Inglis met with about a dozen tea party activists at the modest ranch-style home of one of them. Here's what took place:
I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
Later, Inglis mentioned this meeting to another House member: "He said, 'You mean you sat there for more than 10 minutes?' I said, 'Well, I had to. We were between primary and runoff.' I had a two-week runoff. Oh my goodness. How do you..." Inglis trails off, shaking his head.
While he was campaigning, Inglis says, tea party activists and conservative voters kept pushing him to describe Obama as a "socialist." But, he says, "It's a dangerous strategy to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible...This guy is no socialist." He continues:
quote:The word is designed to have emotional charge to it. Throughout my primary, there were people insisting that I use the word. They would ask me if he was a socialist, and I would always find some other word. I'd say, "President Obama wants a very large government that I don't think will work and that spends too much and it's inefficient and it compromises freedom and it's not the way we want to go." They would listen for the word, wait to see if I used the s-word, and when I didn't, you could see the disappointment.
quote:When he returned to the House in 2005, Inglis, though still a conservative, was more focused on policy solutions than ideological battle. After Obama entered the White House, Inglis worked up a piece of campaign literature—in the form of a cardboard coaster that flipped open—that noted that Republicans should collaborate (not compromise) with Democrats to produce workable policies. "America's looking for solutions, not wedges," it read. He met with almost every member of the House Republican caucus to make his pitch: "What we needed to be is the adults who say absolutely we will work with [the new president]."
Instead, he remarks, his party turned toward demagoguery. Inglis lists the examples: falsely claiming Obama's health care overhaul included "death panels," raising questions about Obama's birthplace, calling the president a socialist, and maintaining that the Community Reinvestment Act was a major factor of the financial meltdown. "CRA," Inglis says, "has been around for decades. How could it suddenly create this problem? You see how that has other things worked into it?" Racism? "Yes," Inglis says.
quote:After winning six congressional elections since 1992, Inglis is now a politician without a party, a policy maven without a movement. And in a few months, he will be without his present job. He has no specific plan yet for his future. He mentions looking for "private sector opportunities" in a sustainable energy field—or an academic or think tank position. Becoming a lobbyist is another option he has started to mull.
Inglis is a casualty of the tea party-ization of the Republican Party. Given the decisive vote against him in June, it's clear he was wiped out by a political wave that he could do little to thwart. "Emotionally, I should be all right with this," he says. And when he thinks about what lies ahead for his party and GOP House leaders, he can't help but chuckle. With Boehner and others chasing after the tea party, he says, "that's going to be the dog that catches the car." He quickly adds: "And the Democrats, if they go into the minority, are going to have an enjoyable couple of years watching that dog deal with the car it's caught."
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BB, fseoer2010 is almost certainly not reading your admonitions. It's a spam account; ban it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: BB, fseoer2010 is almost certainly not reading your admonitions. It's a spam account; ban it.
I've also seen him/her post at least once normally. He also quoted my statement about alts, so I feel like he/she is doing this on purpose.
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Mother Jones has a liberal slant so I would expect them to gloss over the biggest reasons why Inglis lost and focus on the anti Tea Party talking points
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I think (hope, hope, hope) that the Tea Party's current successes are matched, if they continue to be a substantial factor in elections and dialogue, to be just as good at motivating, well, everyone who isn't a far-right conservative as they are at motivating far-right conservatives, and that way they'll get the political a#$-kicking they so richly deserve. I'm just past tired of hearing about them. Good grief, they make me wish the British had made some arrests at the Boston Teap Party.
ETA: So what, are they misrepresenting Inglish himself, then? Say what you will about the guy, he's got rock-solid credibility as a conservative politician. You ought at least trust him.Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: I think (hope, hope, hope) that the Tea Party's current successes are matched, if they continue to be a substantial factor in elections and dialogue, to be just as good at motivating, well, everyone who isn't a far-right conservative as they are at motivating far-right conservatives, and that way they'll get the political a#$-kicking they so richly deserve. I'm just past tired of hearing about them. Good grief, they make me wish the British had made some arrests at the Boston Teap Party.
Most of the media, especially the liberal corners, will keep hammering away at the Tea Party forever in an attempt to marginalize it.
quote: So what, are they misrepresenting Inglish himself, then?
quote: Inglis said he wasn’t surprised by the loss. Inglis said he knew his vote on the Troubled Asset Relief Program to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions could cost him his seat, but he said he doesn’t regret it or his vote against the troop surge in Iraq.
quote: In recent years, Inglis' work to promote environmental legislation has occasionally angered conservatives, and his vote in early 2007 supporting the Democratic resolution opposing the "surge" in Iraq was a key reason he drew a primary challenge last cycle. He beat back that challenge with relative ease, but this cycle Gowdy was able to capture the frustration that many Republican voters felt toward Washington and direct it squarely at Inglis.
The Mother Jones article is simply more anti Tea Party rhetoric. You didn't hear this kind of backlash from most media outlets against MoveOn when Bush was President.
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quote:Most of the media, especially the liberal corners, will keep hammering away at the Tea Party forever in an attempt to marginalize it.
Yeah, and that couldn't possibly be because they're in any way objectionable, DarkKnight. It must be because they're liberal. For a moment there I forgot exactly how partisan you are.
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quote:Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that...efforts to boost bike riding are "converting Denver into a United Nations community...[that]...could threaten our personal freedoms."
quote:The Mother Jones article is simply more anti Tea Party rhetoric. You didn't hear this kind of backlash from most media outlets against MoveOn when Bush was President.
Probably because even at their worst, MoveOn isn't even remotely comparable, except to people who conflate equivalence in the grossest ways possible.
quote:Originally posted by aspectre:
quote:Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that...efforts to boost bike riding are "converting Denver into a United Nations community...[that]...could threaten our personal freedoms."
hahahahahaha
"Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes muttered a few more platitudes about socialism, continued helping assure that Democratic Party contender Hickenlooper wins as "that one not crazy candidate"
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Also, the tea party is actually actively helping me in colorado. I mean, they are actively doing me a favor, in a way that's like a pitch-perfect demonstration of everything I said about the tea party and game theory.
Tom Tancredo became the darling of the colorado tea party. Let's learn about Tom Tancredo!
quote:Tancredo has proved that he has quite a flair for the provocative statement and the dramatic gesture – and a knack for grabbing media attention.
Several years back, Tancredo said the U.S. ought to threaten to bomb Mecca and other Muslim holy sites. More recently, Tancredo expressed longing for a “civics literacy test” to be administered to all citizens before they earned the right to vote. He’s also big on impeaching President Barack Obama, whom he has repeatedly declared to be the biggest threat to the U.S., more dangerous even than al Qaeda.
During his short-lived run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, Tancredo made a splash with a TV ad depicting a bomb planted by illegal immigrants exploding in a mall and the slogan, “Tancredo – before it’s too late.” (He also put together a derisive video that portrayed his fellow Republican candidates wearing sombreros and attending cockfights, in an effort to slam them as soft on illegal immigration.)
This charming Definitely Not A Racist candidate sad he wanted to stand up to the mainstream establishment of his own party and stand up for the tea partiers! So he engaged in brinkmanship. Said he would split the vote and enter the gubernatorial race, so both the other conservatives better quit now. They didn't heed his call to back out for entirely his own benefit. So now colorado's vote is split between democrats, republicans, and tea party, so the democrat could breeze to victory on a comfortable plurality if he wanted.
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