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May 20th, 2014
09:08 PM ET
Jones: The Tea Party has taken over GOP
Van Jones argues that the Tea Party has taken over the Republican Party. David Bossie, S.E. Cupp and Brad Woodhouse debate.
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Posted by CNN's Christina Manduley Filed under: 2014 Elections • Brad Woodhouse • David Bossie • Debates • Fireback • GOP • Politics • S.E. Cupp • Tea Party • Van Jones |
Meet the Hosts
Author, documentary filmmaker, historian, Speaker of the House (1995-1999), and 2012 Republican presidential candidate
Fmr. Obama Deputy Campaign Mgr. and W.H. Sr. Adviser, founder of Precision Strategies, fmr. Sr. Adviser to Maj. Leader Reid and Sen. Kennedy
Conservative columnist for New York Daily News, contributing editor at Townhall Magazine, commentator and author
Former Special Adviser for Green Jobs under President Obama, co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, author and attorney
The Tea Party is just the right wing of the Republican Party with anger-management issues. The Republican establishment spent years stoking the anger of its right wing, but now it has problems controlling the anger.
Is the Tea Party dead or are they now running the Republicans. I appears to be whatever way the democrats can paint them depending on which way benefits their needs at the time.
The American People deserve leaders that will honor the fact that they are elected by the Citizens of the United States of America to represent the interests of those citizens and the country itself and that They are NOT Elected By or To Represent the Global Market Place, Lobbyist, Foreign citizens or Illegal Aliens.
Maybe the American People want leaders who will stop selling us out to countries like Communist China, India and Mexico.
If more Americans would have listened to Perot back in 1992, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. The American people and the real American economy would have been much better off today! I and many other people, who were able to see through all of the left vs right BS, did vote for Perot, because he was straight forward and just used common sense. He cared about his country and the American people.
Sounds like the mentally lame is being challenged by the mentally retarded. Which is a real insult to the mentally challenged.
Like it or not many people see Tea Party candidates losing as a sign that the Tea Party is going away, when in reality that isn't necessarily true. Jones is onto something here. Like it or not the Tea Party has influenced establishment Republicans to move closer to fiscal & social conservative policies. Since the establishment has moved closer to the conservative values that has diminished the contrast between the two right wing groups.
If the tea party ever really had the following that they were ballyhooed to have, then why didn't they form a 3rd party? instead they opted to ride the GOP coattails!
Have they taken over the GOP?
Yes, they have.
But that is a problem. It's not a matter if their policies are correct or not, it's more an issue of non-inclusiveness and demographics.
The tea-party is trying to use the same arguments from the 80's. The problem is that when George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, Bush won just about the same percentages of each of the major racial demographics as Mitt Romney did in the last election.
60% of whites
11% of blacks
30% of hispanics
for bush
59% of whites
6% of blacks
27% of hispanics
for Romney
The difference... 85% of voters were white in 1988... where as only 72% were in 2012. That's why Bush got 426 electoral votes in '88 and Romney got 206 in 2012.
As long as the party's message continues using the process of generating anger about illegal immigration and government dependency (which many of their base turn around toward distrust or outright hostility toward blacks and hispanics), the GOP is going to be in trouble. The "mainstream" part of the GOP realized this after 2012... but they couldn't overcome the tea-party opposition to immigration reform (a VERY low hanging fruit for the GOP to address). The tea party has won the battle for the soul of the GOP... the mainstream guys are moving toward their beliefs.
And because of that, they will have harder and harder times in national elections. You can't just win the white vote 60-40 to win an election now.
Kurt, do you really think Obama would have won in 2012 had 145 million hard working Americans known they and their families were were being screw by OBAMACARE and his outright lies?
It should also be noted that voter turnout in the 2012 election % wise was the lowest it had been since 2000. Perhaps a lot of this could be attributed to novelty of Obama wearing off as he was down about 4,000,000 votes from 2008. Romney actually received 1,000,000 more votes than Mccain did in 2008. Romney was blah. Mccain was blah. Both Bushes were blah . Dole was blah. The GOP needs a candidate that the people WANT to vote for. The GOP has not had a strong candidate since Reagan. I realize Bush won via landslide over Dukakis... but that had more to do with the popularity of Reagan than anything else.
The conservative base, including so called "Tea party" candidates, have gotten extreme; and hence lost the centrist GOP support. The TP base made some sense; Goldwater, the founder of the conservative base, made huge sense. Unfortunately today's Tea party the extremists representing them didn't; so they lost ground.
I've voted GOP for the majority of my voting life – >40 years. However, once the tp disease took over and they became nasty, ignorant, bigoted, and racist, I left. I'm a moderate and now an independent. As long as that TP disease infests the GOP, never again will I vote GOP.
The TP doesn't give a damn about the middle class. They certainly don't give a damn about anyone but the 1%. They forget that this country has had its' best economies when tax rates have been higher on the rich and MUCH higher on corporations.
Our infrastructure is failing. Roads, bridges, etc are failing and yet the TP refuses to understand that this takes money to repair. You can't keep cutting and yet complain things are disintegrating before your eyes.
The tea party has gone down to defeat in almost all the primaries except Nebraska. I would say they are fading away, as the Republican establishment has reasserted itself through the ballot box. To suggest otherwise is to ignore facts.
A Tea Party take over? I don't think so. They will continue to divide the Republican party and cost them the next two elections, like they did the last two. The far left are making noises that are very similar. Mutual suicide?
*wishful thinking*