Tee hee. I watched a bit of the Tea Party Nation event on C-Span while I was snowbound. It was pretty entertaining, in a "These Romans are crazy" kind of way.

Workingstiff wrote:

This may be a stereotype, but I didn't think many of these guys believed in evolution.


Yeah, but the funny thing is these guys are the same ones that say "An eye for an eye" when it comes to the death penalty and "survival of the fittest" when it comes to health care, with no irony whatsoever.


And Bruno's Greenfleeves gag made me dribble tea down my chin.

Seen at a Rick Perry (Governor of Texas) rally -


(which also had that deep thinker Sarah Palin in attendance)

Mor(ans) here.

To be fair, if I were a parent in Texas, homeschooling might not seem like a bad option. Especially the current state board of education.

OJ must be really terrified.

articles.aish.com/Juice.jpg

Seen on Boing Boing: Teabonics.

To be fair, excretions is a difficult word to spell.

It's only natural that Mayor Stranczek would oppose immigration. Imagine what kind of country the USA would be if its forefathers had let all kinds of forinners in.

Tell that to "America's best small-town mayor".

BTW, from that story on his retirement it looks like the photo is more than three years old.

I'm not sure about it. It means any Tea Party excess can be blamed on liberal infiltrators.

Actually, I am sure about it. I think it's a dumb idea.

I think it's potentially a smart idea if you don't publicize you're doing it. Hitherto, teabaggers blaming their excesses on liberal infiltrators looked like batshit paranoia (or calculated dishonesty, if you will), and it would continue to look that way to most people even if there were in fact infiltrators.

Plus, the publicity the excesses themselves get would seem to far outweigh the publicity their complaints about bogus excesses get.

Plus, it would be a hoot.

"He said that by making the tea parties sound like a gathering of crazy people -- his group's goal -- the movement will lose its power."

Eh? They already sound like a gathering of batshit mad loonies. Why muddy the water around whether the madness is real or fake?

So... are they saying that the Very Silly candidates could split the Silly vote?

Yeah, I share the reservations of Etienne and LLR about this. It just seems to give them an easy get out whenever something really mad or reprehensible is said or done.

One reason why it could work is that there are a lot of genuinely crazy, dangerous people in the movement who will be saying things sincerely that sound a lot like what an infiltrator might say. So that could lead to lots of erroneous accusations flying around at meetings and ultimately a complete breakdown of trust between genuine members. In that way, the movement could be seriously compromised.

Time spent blaming infiltrators for corrupting your message is time spent not being in control of your message. Republicans pull the same kind of shit on Democrats all the time.

The guy thinks it will cause the media to pay less attention to the teabaggers - I think he would be wrong on that. Fred Phelps of 'God Hates Fags' fame gets plenty of media attention despite being way outside of the mainstream. Even so, supposing the cat's out of the bag and the media is talking about infiltrators trying to out-crazy the crazies - how does that not highlight the basic craziness of many ordinary teabaggers?

It might give the tea parties an easy rhetorical out but I think most uncommitted people would be inclined to suspect that the plants wouldn't be doing this if there weren't already a stench clinging to the movement.

The main potential advantage is what Hof spells out, dividing them against themselves. I would think it would be fairly easy to disrupt meetings with some straight-faced lunacy.

Oh man, this is brilliant. The perfect thing to do, as a poster on the linked site says, is not to send any infiltrators at all.

Several good points there, Bruno. You may just have convinced me.

sw2boro wrote:
Oh man, this is brilliant. The perfect thing to do, as a poster on the linked site says, is not to send any infiltrators at all.

Ooh, I like it! Talk up an infiltration campaign and then do nothing. Diabolical.