reflectivepundit

CNN: Tea Party Network

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Not Fox News but CNN has been most eager to cover and embrace the so-called Tea Party and its darlings—if only to shore up its shrinking audience size and counter the rating slide to third place behind cable rivals Fox News and MSNBC.

CNN looks more and more like the Tea Party Network.

Following the overly generous coverage of tea partiers’ crude take-overs of town hall meetings during the 2009 health reform debates and of tea party candidates’ hate speech during last fall’s campaign, CNN was the only network to air “live” congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s “Tea Party response” to President Obama’s State of the Union speech earlier this week.

It was quite a spectacle to watch Wolf Blitzer who sounded more like a cheerleader than an anchor as he stood before a count-down meter that hyped Bachmann’s nearing appearance. Here is an excerpt from the newscast:      

BLITZER: But I want to take a quick break. We're awaiting Michele Bachmann to deliver the Tea Party movement's official response to the president's State of the Union address. Stand by. We'll have it live right here after this.

BLITZER: Now Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota, she's about to deliver the Tea Party movement's response to the president's State of the Union address. We're going to bring that to you live as we've brought the official Republican response, as well from Paul Ryan. And then we'll have more analysis.

Anderson Cooper has now joined us. Anderson, as we await Michele Bachmann, this is one of those nights when we get to see a wide spectrum of thought, a lot of lofty comments. But not a whole lot of specifics. Actually, in past State of the Union speeches, I think the difficulty for speech writers is it often does become a laundry list of items. I think President Obama made an effort to paint in broader strokes throughout the speech.  I'm interested in hearing what congresswoman Michele Bachmann has to say.

Eric, how do most Republicans feel about the fact that she's even doing this?

[Eric] ERICKSON [Redstate.com blogger]: I think most Republicans, actually, are upset that she's doing it. I think they're upset with those of us I guess now just seeing and covering this for free and giving it attention.

BLITZER: All right. Hold on a second, Erick. Let's listen to the congresswoman.

Erickson got it: Bachmann and Tea Partiers managed once again to get a hell of a lot free media exposure thanks to the news media, especially cable networks, most of all CNN.

Members of Congress: Worried About Their Safety—Not Ours

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords has understandably shocked her colleagues in the House and Senate and heightened their fear that they, too, could become assassination targets.

But instead of showing a united front in tightening gun control laws to keep the most lethal weapons and ammunition out of the hands of people who do not hunt deer or pheasants but rather human beings, Democrats and Republicans alike ponder measures that would provide greater security exclusively for members of congress and some other government officials.

Representative Peter King (R-New York) proposes a law that would prohibit carrying a gun within 1,000 feet of members of Congress or other “high-profile” government officials. Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana) wants bullet proof Plexiglass between the congressional public gallery and the floor; his colleague Robert Brady (D-Pennsylvania) wants to make language or symbols suggestive as threatening violence against all federal officials a crime.

While anxiety on the part of Congresswoman Giffords’ colleagues is understandable, it is unacceptable that almost all members of Congress think merely of their own protection and not at all about common sense laws that would go a far way in increasing the safety of all Americans.

Today, most members of both parties defer to the National Rifle Association and this well-financed organization’s aggressive lobbying schemes. Democrats used to be more supportive of gun control measures than Republicans in the past but they have since surrendered to the NRA and its power to influence the outcome of elections in many parts of the country.

One of the exceptions here is Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York) who represents a district that is close to my own congressional district on Long Island. In the mid-1990s Mrs. McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son seriously injured when a gunman fired a semiautomatic weapon on passengers in a commuter train.

Representative Giffords’ Attacker: A Criminal or a Terrorist?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

According to evidence presented by law enforcement officials in court, Jared Lee Loughner planned the assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) well in advance. While little about his motives has been revealed so far, there cannot be any doubt that the attack was politically motivated. He left a trail of anti-government rants, often complaining about the Federal Reserve and the fact that the currency is not backed by gold and silver.

Right-extremists, among them militia groups, are among those who insist that a gold or silver standard would be the only way to assure a stable currency. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that the Tucson shooter shared other causes and grievances of the right-extremist milieu—predominantly directed against the “unpatriotic” liberal and moderate enemies that do share their extreme ideas. For that, he did not have to attend actual meetings of so-called patriot or militia groups or even know any of those movements’ activists.

Today, the Internet is most instrumental of spreading extremists’ propaganda and winning over followers to extremist causes.

That is precisely the reason why FBI director Robert Mueller told reporters yesterday,

 “The ubiquitous nature of the Internet means that not only threats but also hate speech and other inciteful speech is much more readily available to individuals than quite clearly it was 8 or 10 or 15 years ago.”

In the hours and days after the massacre, the perpetrator has received many labels by public officials and by reporters and media commentators, among them madman, crazy, disturbed, alienated, deranged, unbalanced, and the likes.

Was the attack, then, the insane act of a mad young man?

As far as I am concerned, the premeditated attack that killed six persons and wounding a dozen others was an act of terrorism by definition. Terrorism means after all the deliberate, politically motivated targeting of civilians or non-combatants.

It is interesting, though, that neither the statements by officials nor by news personnel and analysts have called the incident an act of terrorism and/or the shooter Jared Lee Loughner a terrorists.

On the “Morning Joe” show this morning I heard somebody note that there was nothing political about the incident.

Of course it was.

Strange, that the chattering class has far less of a problem calling similar acts of violence inside the United States “terrorism,” when the perpetrators are identified as Muslim Americans.

Take the Fort Hoods shooting more than a year ago, when U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan killed 13 persons and wounded more than two dozens. Or think of the would-be Times Square bomber Faizal Shahzad, a naturalized citizen, who hoped to kill as many people as possible.

Tea Partiers and Republicans: Misunderstanding the U.S. Constitution

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After reading my previous post that labeled the loud reading of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the U.S. House Representatives insisted on by the new Tea Party Republican majority as “political theater,” my husband joked that one of the books he gave me for Christmas may have been the wrong choice. After all, it was Jack N. Rakove’s “The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” Jim was indeed joking since he knows that many of the books lining the shelves in my home office are dealing with one or the other aspect of the constitution, not to mention that I frequently reread passages in the constitution and chapters in the Federalist Papers that I keep next to my desk.

Strangely, Tea Partiers just like hate groups of the extreme right variety want to give the impression that they are the only ones who know and appreciate and defend the constitution, its sources, its history, its meaning during the more than 200 years since ratification.

Problem is that they have it all wrong when they cite the constitution as evidence for their charge that the federal government’s exercise of power transcends by far the authority granted by the document and the original intent of the framers—at the expense of state authority. 

Conveniently forgotten here is that the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia came about because the Articles of Confederation provided the federal government with no meaningful authority except in the areas of foreign policy and war. That everything else was left to the states, including taxation, made for a dangerously weak confederation.

There was no way to simply revise the Articles and come up with a viable kind of “united states.” For that, a completely new constitutional design was needed.

In Philadelphia, the Federalists, led by James Madison, put their stamp on the U.S. Constitution.

In case the Tea Partiers do not know—or do not want to know--, the Federalists were the ones in favor of a strong national government, whereas the Anti-Federalists favored state rights.

And the subsequent struggle for the ratification of the Constitution was won by the Federalists—not the Anti-Federalists.

Political Theater: Tea Party Republicans as House Majority

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This week, the Republican Party will become the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. In reality, it seems more like a Tea Party take over. Thus, the changing of the guards in the House will be celebrated by a recital of the full-length U.S. Constitution by TeaParty Republicans. This political theater will not be a one time shot. Tea Partiers have prevailed with their demand that every new piece of legislation in the House must be justified by citing a relevant constitutional authority. Otherwise, any proposed bill will be a non-starter.

Compare this coming theater in the Congress with the following 2010 campaign posting on the WeReadTheConstitution Site (http://www.wereadtheconstitution.com/) that listed among its sponsors the conservative Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity: 

“WeReadTheConstitution.com was formed in order to promote the reading of the Constitution in its entirety by as many Americans as possible. The Tea Party movement has stimulated a widespread interest in our founding documents, principles and ideals. We're organizing a nationwide series of local events celebrating the United States Constitution on September 18, 2010. Across the United States ordinary citizens will be hosting or attending local gatherings at public places and backyard barbecues where they will read aloud the entire text of the United States Constitution. It is a profoundly moving exercise that will take less than one hour.”

So, the new majority in the House is poised to return the federal government and its policies to the “founding principles” of our republic. They will need an army of inventive constitutionalists to reject or support legislation dealing with contemporary problems and issues based on the document’s content.

But, then, with old timers in Tea Party garments and new comers with original Tea Party intent, the new majority seems more likely to stick to political theater and attack narratives than bother with complex legal discourse. After all, conflict and confrontation promise media attention.