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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago.

The timeline is a bit of a mess here. 10 years ago it was 2014. The Tea Party protests were in 2010 and, as far as I know, were quickly co-opted by the mainstream GOP after contributing to its success in the midterms. It was a flash in the pan, basically. 10 years, ago, the GOP was already a post-Tea Party GOP. Also, weren't there periods/terms between 2010-18 when it had a majority in the Senate and the House? There was ample opportunity to do immigration reform.

The Tea Party wasn't coopted by the mainstream GOP, it became the mainstream GOP. When Ted Cruz could force a government shutdown and the Tea Party could force Boehner out of power, they're the ones with the whip hand.

Edit: Lest we forget, the big representative of the GOP 'Establishment' (a vacuous concept to be sure -- Trump is the establishment) this year, Nikki Haley, was elected as a Tea Party Republican, originally.

And, of course, Boehner himself was originally elected all the way back in 1990 as part of a micro-anti-establishment wave with particular bugaboos about corruption and the GOP Establishment being gentleman losers. But, of course of course, they actually were corrupt, gentleman losers when Boehner was elected, having not held Congress in 40 years, and there actually was genuine Congressional corruption he could attack, like the House Bank scandal. It's just an eternal cycle with the Republican Party.

Sorry, I meant that even ten years ago was already the post-Tea Party GOP.

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