Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Tea Party carricature

Jonah Goldberg resurrects a weak but recurrent theme in his LA Times article; that the silent conservative majority has awakened. He borrows a bear analogy:

In March 2010, liberal columnist Peter Beinart argued that, for decades, Democratic politicians treated America's innate conservatism like a slumbering bear: If you make no sudden moves and talk quietly, you can get a lot done. But if you wake the bear, as Democrats did in the late 1960s and early '70s, the ursine silent majority will punish you.

Goldberg: A bear of a problem for Obama -- latimes.com
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:50:20 UTC

One could spend several articles exploring the implications of progressives as man slinking inside the lumbering conservative bear cave, but we will leave that to reader imagination.

Certainly Beinart is not the first writer to notice that voters have been asking for smaller government since Jimmy Carter, and maybe before that.

What is more perplexing is progressive portrayal of the bear as racist, stupid and fearful. Maybe we don't need to leave the bear analogy up to our imagination after all.

Negative progressive labeling of the Tea Party has always been perplexing since it alienates such a significant portion of the population. More mystifying is that the caricature is so far from reality. Some of the most popular Tea Party speakers are black, and some of them are now sitting in Congress. Herman Cain is running for President.

The Progressive narrative often suffers from its disassociation from reality. We suggest this one is particularly harmful and may eventually smear their own brand beyond repair.

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