Chait examines the current state of the GOP post-shutdown "The Shutdown Was Not a Failed Strategy. It Wasn’t a Strategy at All". In particular, the tea party movement is scrutinized and Chait concludes it is a tilt at windmills, hopeless, bunch of fanatics and is the same as the Ayers Weathermen!
"But the shutdown was the tea party’s attempt to stop Obamacare in roughly the same sense the Days of Rage was Weatherman’s attempt to stop the Vietnam War. you’ll see familiar echoes of the recent events in Washington: far-fetched scenarios, confessions that the effort was worthwhile even if it was doomed, even the Gadsden Flag. Its adherents may have wanted to believe they would achieve their goal, but the lack of any plausible path by which the end might follow the means did not trouble them.
The demonstration of outrage was a form of politics well suited for a movement that views itself as a hopeless minority in a democratic process rigged against them. It is a (not the, but a) logical culmination of a movement that loses its now-or-never moment. Everything that has happened since then in Washington: the backlash against Republican efforts at accommodation, the ever greater frenzies of protest, the rejection of traditional notions of compromise and attainability — this is what never looks like."
What Chait is incapable of comprehending is that that a given situation may be worth opposing, with utter vehemence, even if the weight of popular opinion is, mistakenly, in favor of it, but that opposition can be constructively negative and non-violent.
Beyond the ludicrousness of comparing a totally peaceful movement of middle Americans, which includes many seniors incapable of such physicality, Chait's Weathermen comparisons are nonsensical and shortsighted.
Firstly the tea party acts on principle. Unlike the bizarre young radical leftists, the tea party has seasoned conservative political operatives/thinkers in its ranks e.g. Jim DeMint-these are hardly bomb throwers.
Secondly, and most importantly, the tea party adherents don't see themselves as an "hopeless minority" in some sort of doomsday scenario. Everything that was done before and during the shutdown was aimed at increasing tea party support over time through dedication to principle.
This is exactly the scenario that the founders of the Republican party undertook in the 1850's when they were an "hopeless minority' in the eyes of the Democrat's (and Establishment Whigs for that matter). The "now or never" moment concluded for the GOP Establishment with the Romney campaign, the future is with the conservatives no matter how long it takes to build the movement and bring it to electoral fruition.
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