04/11/2010 / UNITED STATES
Poster comparing Obama to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Originally posted on Founding Bloggers.
Poster branding Obama a communist. Originally posted on Founding Bloggers.
Tea Party anti-tax poster. Posted on Wikimedia Creative Commons.
Tea Party-goer: 'Obama not invited'
Protester at a Chicago Tea Party rally, originally posted on Founding Bloggers.
Having lost the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, US President Barack Obama has reached out to newly elected opposition representatives, calling on Democrats, Republicans and Tea Party leaders to “stop squabbling” and “figure out how we can move forward together”. Wishful thinking?
The Tea Party movement is a grass-roots American conservative/libertarian political movement that emerged to campaign against the Washington establishment in general and Obama in particular. Some, but not all, Republican leaders have backed the movement, which was seen as something of a wild card in the November 2 midterm elections. A host of independent Tea Party-backed candidates were elected to office on promises to reverse or halt key measures backed by the Obama administration. Republicans also made big gains in the Senate, but Democrats were able to retain a slender majority in the upper chamber of Congress.
We asked our Observers whether or not they think Democrats and Republicans in the new Congress will be able to bridge their differences and pass bipartisan legislation, or whether the Democrats' electoral beating has heralded the end of the Obama era.
“Tea Party leaders were not elected to work with Obama, but to stop him”
Jim Wilkinson is a business owner in Mercedes, Texas. He is a Tea Party member and a founder of TexasBorderFence.com, a website that calls for building a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.
I think I speak for a lot of Tea Party members here when I say that I have no desire whatsoever to work with President Obama. The Democrats are the losers in these mid-term elections: they have to work with us, not the other way round.
Tea Party leaders were not elected to work with the Obama administration, but to stop the harm they are doing to this country and to change things in Washington. We don’t want them to roll with the rest of the establishment, be it Republicans or Democrats.
There are three main points I expect the new Congress to change: first, we want them to reverse the healthcare reform that Obama has put into place. Secondly, we want them to dismantle TARP [the Troubled Asset Relief Program in which the government purchases assets and equities from weakened financial institutions]. Third, we want a return to the Bush tax plan, which involved no future tax hikes.”
Tea Party members organised a series of rallies around the country in protest at the Obama administration's "big government" policies. Some of their posters are personal attacks on the president:
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“The Senate will stop the House of Representatives from wreaking too much havoc”
Tim Williams is a sports journalist in Washington, DC, and the author of the blog Behind the Camera. He is a Democrat.
Unfortunately, I don’t think members of the newly elected Congress will be able to work together. The representatives who were elected under the Tea Party banner are so incredibly rigid in their beliefs that it will be almost impossible for even the more conservative Democrats to find common ground with them. The incoming House leader, John Boehner, campaigned for months on making Obama a one-term president. If that is their main agenda, it’s hard to see how any Democrat can work with them!
If Obama is as smart as we know he is, what he’ll do is take the opportunity to sit down and tell opposition representatives: ‘this is what we want to do. Are you on board?’ He’ll propose a series of positive, popular measures, which Republicans and Tea Party representatives will be hard-pressed to explain why they are opposing.
For measures like health-care reform, which are unpopular with the country’s more conservative wing and Republican leaders have pledged to dismantle, I think we can count on the fact that the Senate still has a Democratic majority to stop the House of Representatives from wreaking too much havoc. I’m sure they will do some damage, hopefully not too much.
I don’t think losing the mid-term election signals the death of the Obama presidency. Other presidents have been there before, including Bill Clinton, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and they were all elected for a second term. Obama’s team has only been around for two years: that’s not enough for them to bring about the change they
promised.”
On October 30, Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans gathered in a massive rally organised by liberal comedian Jon Stuart on the Washington DC Mall to respond to Tea Party Protests. The event was called the "Rally to Restore Sanity". Here is a selection of posters from the event:
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Poster mocking the conservative anti-tax stance. Photo posted on Flickr by Michael Foley.
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Poster referring to a controversial Arizona law toughening immigration measures. Photo posted on Flickr by Michael Foley.
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At least one poster in keeping with Obama's conciliatory tone!
Comments
I notice that the only ones
Submitted by Anonymeq (not verified) on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 07:35.I notice that the only ones on here who are using personal attacks are democrats and liberals,are they afraid to talk about the issues?
ha
Submitted by Rainphase (not verified) on Wed, 10/11/2010 - 18:29.No teabagger personal attacks? Look up, my friend. Obama as Hitler and/or Stalin? Half the right wing thinks Obama is the antiChrist and the other half believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, including birth certificates, that he isn't a U.S. citizen.
I'd love for the tea party to be up for a real policy discussion, rather than spreading lies, such as fiction about death panels in the health care bill.
here you go
Submitted by AmericanwithaJOB (not verified) on Tue, 21/12/2010 - 01:47.unless your from America you can STFU and number two Obama's citizen ship TECHNICALLY and TRULY is not valid he gave it up to go to school in Indonesia
and if your from america you probably need to get a job because clearly you are one of the misinformed americans who thinks people who make over 100,000 or 200,000 A)don't deserve their money and/or B) don't work for their money well i got news for you if he would have raised taxes on those people you would have screwed over many people because they have bills just like us and believe it or not the system gives everything to the poor so to send their kids to college is way more expensive because of people like you who tell the gov. their kid doesn't deserve financial assistance
Republican party is a party
Submitted by Unregistered user on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 16:24.Republican party is a party of HATE , racism , war and homophobia .
Republican party is a party of HATE , racism , war and homophobi
Submitted by republican (not verified) on Tue, 09/11/2010 - 10:46.Founded in northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party. It first came to power in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency and oversaw the American Civil War and Reconstruction.
Early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan "free labor, free land, free men."Free labor" referred to the Republican opposition to slave labor and belief in independent artisans and businessmen. "Free land" referred to Republican opposition to plantation system whereby the rich could buy up all the good farm land and work it with slaves, leaving the yeoman independent farmers the leftovers. The Party had the goal of containing the expansion of slavery, which would cause the collapse of the Slave Power and the expansion of freedom.[4] Lincoln, representing the fast-growing western states, won the Republican nomination in 1860 and subsequently won the presidency. The party took on the mission of saving the Union and destroying slavery during the American Civil War and over Reconstruction. In the election of 1864, it united with pro-war Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket.
The Republicans were so
Submitted by Rainphase (not verified) on Wed, 10/11/2010 - 18:38.The Republicans were so committed to racial equality that they opposed the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s and continue to oppose any program or law that would benefit the working class, including the Employee Free Choice Act which would help enable employees who wanted to unionize. It would be very nice if Republicans would remember their origins and apply them to the present day.
Learn some history, it was
Submitted by SJM (not verified) on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 03:42.Learn some history, it was dixiecrats (Southern Democrats) who opposed the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a Republican President who freed the slaves. It was a Republican President who integrated the schools in the 1950s. Even George W. Bush had more minorities in his cabinet than any other president save for Obama.
Unions are garbage and do more harm than good. What has unions done but make people freeloaders like in the rust belt. Unions infringe more on people's freedom to work.
Learn some history and study some economics.
Unions in the US are the
Submitted by Tom Jeffers (not verified) on Fri, 12/11/2010 - 06:38.Unions in the US are the obvious example of what socialism will do to this country. On a government level, they are what happened to the USSR and what will eventually happen to China. It is a no brainer that we need labor laws, but we don't need no stinking unions to cause more strife in our ailing economies that overprices it's services and pays an "elite" management group to lobby, receive pay-offs, procure monopolistic control over labor and vote the way the "wind" is blowing. Unions are Big Business hiding behind the poor worker who ultimately pays both coming and going.
TEA PARTY = CHRISTIANS TALIBANS
Submitted by Unregistered user on Sat, 06/11/2010 - 09:59.tea party is a racist and homophobic party
shame on them
On the contrary
Submitted by SJM (not verified) on Sat, 06/11/2010 - 14:37.It's not racist nor is it homophobic. I'm an atheist, an environmentalist, and more importantly I am hispanic and a libertarian and being a libertarian is why I am a tea party member. Though that statement in upon itself is flawed as one really can't be a "member" of an ideological movement. All kinds of people are involved in the the movement. We're sick of a bloated federal government and an ineffective congress that does things that are contrary to the constitution. We're tired of our nation being dragged into the welfare office because of poor fiscal policies. This movement is more about fiscal conservatives and ideological conservatives than it is about social ones. Though, it's not that there are not people involved that are racist or homophobic. People like that exist in every sphere of society. There's plenty of racist democrats by the way and I've known far more racist Democrats than Republicans. Probably because conservatives tend to judge a person on merit. Blue collar working class whites tend to be relatively racist. It happens, they compete for jobs with minorities usually. It's a fact of life. Those blue collar people tend to be Democrat. They're not socially liberal though.
You really should lay of the MSNBC is you're going to believe the propaganda on the Tea party. No, I do not watch FOX news nor do I like Glen Beck or Sarah Palin if you're going to use that in some kind of rebuttal.
-Seán