E.J. Dionne Merits Another Fisking...

...insert your own joke here.

The tea parties are nothing new. They represent a relatively small minority of Americans on the right end of politics, and will not determine the outcome of the 2010 elections.

The last time I fisked him, Dionne had inhaled deep the spirit of Arlen Specter. Now, he appears to be channeling Baghdad Bob. The willful denial of reality becomes almost pitiable.

In fact, both major parties stand to lose if they accept the laughable notion that this media-created protest movement is the voice of true populism. Democrats will spend their time chasing votes they will never win. Republicans will turn their party into an angry and narrow redoubt with no hope of building a durable majority.

So both major parties lose, and . . . how does this work, exactly? I mean if Democrats lose, then Republicans win, but if Republicans lose, then Democrats win, and oh, I've gone cross-eyed.

Mayhaps a third party will triumph, one critical of both and passionately proclaiming a politics distinct from the tedious business-as-usual that have hitherto reigned. If only such a grassroots group could be found.

The news media's incessant focus on the tea parties is creating a badly distorted picture of what most Americans think and is warping our policy debates. The New York Times and CBS News thus performed a public service last week with a careful study of just who is in the tea party movement.

That's right, the people who brought you Rathergate and the release of the names of covert agents in Afghanistan have looked into these weird people in the interests of total and complete objectivity. Trust us.

Their findings suggest that the Tea Party is essentially the reappearance of an old anti-government far right that has always been with us and accounts for about one-fifth of the country. The Times reported that tea party supporters "tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45." They are also more affluent and better educated than Americans as a whole. This is the populism of the privileged.

Instapundit basically called the emergence of this argument ahead of time, so I won't bother with the sudden narrative shift from "stupid mouth-breathing rednecks" to "privileged fatcats." But note the way in which Dionne denies the relevance of of a movement based on race, gender, age, social standing and educational level, and does so in the guise of telling an "authentic" populism from a false one. The concerns of one-fifth of Americans? Screw those honkies!

And the poll suggested something that white Americans are reluctant to discuss: Part of the anger at President Obama among tea partiers does appear to be driven by racial concerns.

Suggests to whom? Beltway journalists who can't give up a narrative? Intellectually empty devotees of statism desperate for a strawman? The Obama Administration? Mental patients?

Saying this invites immediate denunciations from defenders of those who bring guns to rallies, threaten violence to "take our country back," and mouth old slogans about states' rights and the Confederacy.

It's the strawman thing, then. Let me just deal with these in list form:

1. Yes, some folk have brought firearms to rallies. It has resulted in zero acts of violence by tea-party folks (tea-party opponents, on the other hand, well just ask Ken Gladney).
2. Tea party folks have not advocated violence to "get their country back." The tea party movement is non-violent. It's never even brought up except in the minds of tea party opponents (see above). There have been various quotations of the rhetoric of Jefferson with regard to Revolution and Liberty, and a general "What Would Sam Adams Do?" spirit to the proceedings. But Jefferson's views on Revolution and violence are at least as nuanced as Malcom X's. It's not a threat to make note of these things.
3. The fact that states' rights has become virtually inseparable in the minds of the Establishment from the Confederacy and segregation indicates just how needed the tea party movement is. Let me be clear: to advocate limited government, to advocate a devolution of power away from Washington to the state and local authorities may have been code for something in 1965, but not in 2010. The Right in this country have moved on. The Left has not.

So let's be clear: Opposition to the president is driven by many factors that have nothing to do with race. But race is definitely part of what's going on.

Dionne demonstrates his Zen Mastery of Doublethink. What is the purpose of putting these two statements together? Is the first intended to qualify the second, or to provide rhetorical cover for it? You decide.

The poll asked: "In recent years, do you think too much has been made of the problems facing black people, too little has been made, or is it about right?" Twenty-eight percent of all Americans -- and just 19 percent of those who are not tea partiers -- answered "too much." But among tea party supporters, the figure is 52 percent, almost three times the proportion of the rest of the country. A quarter of tea partiers say that the Obama administration's policies favor blacks over whites, compared with only 11 percent in the country as a whole.

I am at a loss to determine what this is supposed to indicate, other than a group of people with one set of policy priorities (limited government, national debt) considering another set of policy priorities (the problems facing a single ethnic group) less important. Would a poll of African-Americans on the problems facing their community be as lopsided when compared to the rest of the country? And what precisely does this have to do with the tea-partiers overall message?

So race is part of this picture, as is a tendency of tea party enthusiasts to side with the better-off against the poor. This puts them at odds with most Americans. The poll found that while only 38 percent of all Americans said that "providing government benefits to poor people encourages them to remain poor," 73 percent of tea partiers believed this. Among all Americans, 50 percent agreed that "the federal government should spend money to create jobs, even if it means increasing the budget deficit." Only 17 percent of tea party supporters took this view.

Ah, here it is, and lo and behold, the movement is challenging the dominant viewpoint on  the relationship between citizen and state. This being the reason the movement exists. Patriotic dissent? Nope. Evidence of  privilege.

Asked about raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 a year to provide health care for the uninsured, 54 percent of Americans favored doing so vs. only 17 percent of tea partiers.

Odd, then, that Obama's attempt to do just that isn't more popular. Deuced odd.

This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the tea party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole.

And right on cue, the bogey-man. Never mind that Dionne just said that this movement is really not new, but old as the fever swamps of Mississippi; we have our propaganda culprit, and we will denounce him. Pillories don't just build themselves.

The right-wing fifth of America deserves news coverage like everyone else, and Fox is perfectly free to pander to its viewers. What makes no sense is allowing a sliver of opinion to dominate the media and distort our political discourse.

Are we all clear on this? Reporting in good faith on a peaceful movement of dissenters that is making its presence felt nation wide = allowing them to "dominate" the media. The sky is falling. The long, dark night of Fascism is drawing nigh. The cow is out of the barn and hitchiking down I-95.

Democrats face problems not from right-wingers who have never voted for them but from a lack of energy among their own supporters and from dispirited independents and moderates who look to government to solve problems but have little confidence in its ability to deliver.

A lack of confidence that causes the lack of energy of their own supporters, and which feeds directly into the critique and mistrust of government which the tea parties trade in.

A Pew Research Center study released Sunday is thus a better guide than the tea parties' rants to the real nature of this nation's discontent. It found that only 22 percent of Americans say they can trust the government almost always or most of the time, "among the lowest measures in more than half a century." This mistrust extends beyond government to banks, financial institutions and large corporations.

All of which stand on the rostrum of anger just below President Obama at every tea party. If Dionne ever sauntered outside the WaPo cafeteria and did a little journalism, he'd know that. Is it really supposed to be a threat to the tea parties that 22 percent of Americans trust the government?

So, yes, there is authentic populist anger out there. But you won't find much of it at the tea parties.

Gotcha. A movement, rising spontaneously from the people, that expresses all of the authentic populist anger you describe will not be the locus of authentic populism. People who say things should not be sought to say the kind of things that they say.

I mean, at least Baghdad Bob had the courage to tell bald-faced whoppers. This spinning is just pathetic.