Despite Media Efforts, Tea Party Losing Steam
Rachel Maddow has been on quite a kick lately showing how little influence the tea party actually wields. And it’s true, in election after election, we have seen tea party-touted candidates going down against more establishment rivals. But that doesn’t keep their over-developed sense of self-importance from thinking that America is demanding their candidacy… like Joe the “Plumber” Joe told Yahoo’s “The Ticket” his thoughts on the potential campaign: “I’m not ruling anything out,” Wurzelbacher told The Ticket in an interview Thursday. He added that he thought it was an “interesting idea” and that people have been asking him to run for office since he confronted Obama four years ago. He’s spent much of his time since then on the speaker’s circuit, he said, encouraging others to run for office. “I like the idea of it — just regular Americans running. If a regular guy runs, right away the media’s going to attack him,” Wurzelbacher said. “What kind of education does he have? What does he know about this? My answer to that is, regular Americans aren’t experts, but dammit, look where the experts have gotten us. Maybe we need some regular guys in there. That’s what I’ve been doing the past two and a half years, just encouraging regular Americans to run. Tell the liberal media to go to hell and I don’t care what you guys say about me, I’m going to try to fix this country.” Sorry, but I see it a different way. I like my elected officials to be a bit smarter than me. Seriously, if the best we can hope for solutions for the ills of this country is a guy called “Joe the Plumber” who is neither named Joe nor actually a plumber, we’re all in a world of a trouble. The reason these candidates are not doing well in elections is because they are all so ill-prepared to be candidates, much less actually representatives of the people. Bumper sticker slogans may work well in campaigning. They’re less than adequate once in office and the American people are smart enough to be able to make that distinction. But that doesn’t stop the media from propping up these tea party candidates as these refreshing outsiders. And despite Wuzelbacher’s tired liberal media trope, nowhere do they question their bona fides, point out inconsistencies in their facts, or point at the huge amount of astroturfed money behind the tea party movement. And the media, despite the reality in front of them, will continue to give self-identified tea partiers far more influence than they’re due.
Despite Media Efforts, Tea Party Losing Steam
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on August 26, 2011. Filed under