Tea party movement

What do you think of its prospect in being a serious contender to the republican party?

It has basically already been hijacked by the Republican party.

the tea party is too radical to gain any kind of legitimate political clout. If anything, they'll just end up further dividing the republican party. after the republican party got crushed in the latest round of elections they've been fumbling around looking for some platform to sell to the dwindling supporters.
even after the tea party movement had its convention they still have no clear platform, except opposition to the current government and pro-life goals, which is not enough to build a party out of.

The tea party movement is just a bunch of right-wing radical idiots trying to make themselves feel better about their idocy.  Look at the "militias" cropping up right and right.  Radical right-wingers feel like if they're named after a Revolutionary event, then they're justified in their stupidity.  Lol the Democrats actually launched a Coffee party in retaliation.

>>4
Black coffee, or with half and half?
Also, what "militias?"

>>5
He's probably referring to citizen militias. But they've always been around, and they're nothing new.

Tea party has been taken over by republicans and neo-cons, just like I thought it would be. If it would have remained a more "independent" organization, I would have supported it. Now it has become a new, year round RNC that decides which republican candidate to support.

Who cares, we're all fucked anyway. Come on asteroids.

>>7
That's a pretty grim view you have there. But, sadly, you're probably right.

What this country needs more than anything is a viable third party, but the tea party is not it.  They're just an astroturf republican attack group.

Groups like this cause people on both sides to solidify their positions, and ensure that what little creative thinking happens in the political arena is directed at finding new ways to sell old ideas, rather than coming up with new ideas.

>>9
So how does a viable third party that loosens the positions of the two existing sides come into existence?

>>9
The trouble is all third parties are insular, when you really need to be populist in a democracy to win a significant amount of elections.

>>10
It may be that a third party will have to absorb a significant amount of the existing political machinery of one of the major parties to be viable.  America's early history was full of changes like this.  Tories/Whigs to Federalist/Anti-federalist to Federalist/Democratic-Republicans.

The only other way would be through campaign finance reform and free air time for third parties, which is a virtual impossibility at this point.

>>11
Very true.

Libertarian for the win!

>>13
obongo?

>>13
Ron Paul single handedly derailed the libertarian movement.

It's like..

Libertarians: Oh yay Ron is a cool kind of guy, not a social retard like Nader or a marxist like Chomsky, a prime candidate to really change america
Republicans: lol votes pls $$$
Ron Paul: IM AN EVANGELICAL REPUBLICAN TOO LOL, MULTITRACK DRIFTING
Libertarians: omg wtf you are going to maek crash stop omg
Ron Paul: brb adding donations from nazis to my coffers instead of directly passing it on to the united nigger college fund
Ron Paul totally derails, carriages fly off and crash open spilling cargo everywhere totally fucking everything
Libertarians: BLARGGAGAKKAK
Republicunts: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
Ron Paul: Felt good man! I did my bit for America! Ron Paul Revolution!

- DEMOCRAT-ic: you blow up sand-niggarows with that thing. Good.

- POPUL-ist: a bit liek fasce-ism. Goyim doin there own thing.
Not good.

>>15-16
^* African American

Protip: more than two parties in the US will never happen, unless we switch to a parliamentary system. Lern 2 game theory. A separate conservative and libertarian party only serves to split the vote and give the victory to the left. In a parliamentary system, you can form coalition governments.

>>18
What if enough people are sufficiently discontented with both parties?

The tea party is not a place for "people sufficiently discontented with both parties." There is no centrist party. If you jump from the middle to the tea party you are a fucking idiot.

What everyone seems to not realize is that the tea party is not a political party of any sort, just people from both sides of the aisle unhappy with the status quo. Problem is that's where they share the same view stops. After that, you've got many of them still in support of the Patriot Act, and don't want to change foreign policy either. The whole thing really lacks cohesion in general. If anything, it's just another reminder that the American Empire is in a irreversible decline.

But don't expect any major change from the tea party movement, all they're going to do is replace Democratic incumbents with Republican ones (e.g. Scott Brown) at the very least. There's actually a largely separate, more quieter liberty movement going on, and that will be the movement that makes some real change in Washington, but in all honesty, it's already too late. I see the United States dissolving like the Soviet Union did, because of economic issues, and of course spreading out its military too thinly. Sounds familiar? Yes, it's a repeat of Rome, and the British Empire.

>>21
What part of the US is an "empire?"  Every country we've gone to war with since--I'm not not sure how far to slide back but I'm thinking some time after Roosevelt's absurd Latin American "roundup," who hasn't kicked our asses (I'm looking at you, Vietnam), has not become an outlying satellite of the United States.  We've angered more of those nations that we've built than not since then and any repercussions have been mild.  There's even a great push to recede the size and scope of central government and make a realistic jump back towards a republic.

If you want to compare the Roman Empire to the United States, you would need to say that the destruction of that Empire to us would be a return to a republic.  The Roman Empire's age of decline isn't considered to have begun until the initial intentional division that created the Eastern Roman Empire and the Southern Roman Empire.  Splitting the military down this divide was what really broke the Empire because it left it have difficulties facing against the Germanic tribes and they broke against everyone else.  I don't argue that this thin spread of the US forces doesn't exist in the world today, but the part that isn't correct is to say that is what killed the Roman military.  The Roman military was defeated in a number of its thinly-spread skirmishes and that weakened its defense; the US army has shown itself to be able to hold its own even in such a scattered environment.  Secondly, succession rules of the Emperor broke down and subsequent Emperors were merely figureheads.  The Roman Senate was never appointed by or answerable to the people, save a lynching.  More importantly, the Roman Empire had undergone incredible physical expansion prior to these problems leading to these problems; the United States hasn't gained new territory since Hawaii.  The parallels can be drawn but the specifics don't exist.

I don't know enough about the former Soviet Union to draw any conclusions but I am affected by the specific interpretation that there was no dissolution.  Just handshakes and changing the signpost to say "Russia, publicly."

>>22
Perhaps it's more closer to the British Empire, but not in so much territory expansion, but our presence I'm sure feels like we're an empire to other nations.

>>22
the Eastern Roman Empire and the Southern Roman Empire
That should have been "the Eastern ... and the Western ..."