Tea partiers are notoriously thin-skinned about criticism, as their response to the NAACP calling on them to call out the racists in their midst proved yet again.
But anyone who has said a discouraging word about the tea partiers anywhere has heard/read indignant protests and refutations, all along the basic, misleading, tea-party line that they represent "the will of the American people," blah, blah, blah, and therefore should not be challenged on anything they do or say.
Well, that's Not. Gonna. Happen.
I've been diarying about the local tea partiers around Albany, NY, for well more than a year now, and am inured to their junior-high insults and WATB complaints.
Which I got some more of this week.
(above, right -- photo of a clueless tea-partier sign from an outdoor town hall NY-20 Congressman Scott Murphy held last summer)
Details, below.
When I wrote a diary this week arguing that embracing tea-party extremism would become the Achilles heel of retired Army Col. Chris Gibson, the Republican/Conservative challenger to NY-20 Rep. Scott Murphy, I got the expected WATB response.
The wife of a tea partier with a senior Gibson campaign staff job (who had vied unsuccessfully for the NY-20 GOP nomination) was faux gracious about it:
I must say, I am truly honored to have finally made one of Devtob's blogs. For those of you who don't know Devtob, he is the resident liberal blogger who infiltrates all our groups and shows up at our events (incognito of course, he doesn't come out of hiding).
Unfortunately he is not as interested in intellectual honesty and debate as sensationalism and smearing. He is a party hack who would support a Democrat regardless of how corrupt, stupid or inept they are. He truly doesn't understand what many of us stand for: accountability regardless of your political party. Yes, I am a strong supporter of Gibson and when he is elected to Congress I will fully expect him to address his constituents and answer their questions and concerns. If not we will be out holding "where's Gibson?" rallies. It is important we remain consistent and true to our principles, or we become political apologists like our dear Devtob.
So lets all welcome Devtob to the Tea Party Patriots and hope that our good example will rub off on him!
FWIW, I have not infiltrated any of their many groups with few real members (Albany Tea Party Patriots, Albany Campaign for Liberty, Upstate Conservative Coalition, Albany 912, Oath Keepers, etc.) -- the same few dozen are the only active members of most/all of these groups.
I've attended a few of their events (not incognito, but not wearing a name tag either), read their public message boards, and found that they are mostly far-right John Birch Society Republicans.
Though they are trying to push the JBS back into the GOP mainstream, they do not appreciate anyone who reports about that.
And Mary Ziegler is a "strong supporter" of Gibson because she hopes that it will lead to a six-figure government job for her husband.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's how politics works.
But she's clearly self-interested when she promotes almost daily anti-Murphy street theater to the few dozen.
Meta point -- Mary thinks I do "blogs" at DKos, when DKos is the blog, where thousands of people like me post diaries. Another example of tea-partier cluelessness.
Another Gibson-promoting tea partier, Bill Claydon, joined in the faux celebration of a diary that mocked their ultimate political ineffectiveness:
Congratulations for receiving this honor from our dear Devtob. It was nice of him to help publicize this event and the fact that Murphy is not answering questions from average Americans this year. Yes, he did last year before flip flopping on ObamaCare and such. What a difference a year makes. Murphy supported many more pieces of legislation not covered in last year's town halls. Vague and fluff laden form letters that don't address constituents' points are not valid answers to questions.
snip
We could reply to Devtob's note on the Daily Kos blog. Oh, wait. He's been known to delete comments from tea party people. It's funny because on the Times Union tea party blog, his comments are allowed.
Devtob notes that with all the money Murphy has --- from big labor unions and Democrat politicians like Pelosi and Hoyer --- he can use this money to run ads attacking voters that are concerned about the direction of this country.
Okay, if Devtob is correct, that ought to play well and it will be fun to discuss these on the tea party blog and in national sites. Unless things change and Murphy finds time in his busy schedule, the conclusion people will draw is that he can't be bothered answering his constituents' questions face to face. But he has money to spend attacking these same constituents on television. Go for it, Murphy!
Let's deal with the "devtob deletes comments from tea party people" thing first. Claydon, like most tea partiers, has no clue about how DKos works.
Like all trusted users, I can hide-rate comments, but that does not guarantee their deletion from a comment thread.
Claydon is no doubt referring to a diary I wrote about a local tea partier's plan to "shut down" DKos, which resulted in the admins, not me, banning a couple of them.
That diary evidently led to the local tea partiers setting up a "transpartisan blogging for all" website, dailysok.com (get it?), that has not had a new post in six weeks.
Ironically, on the new tea party blog at the Times Union, all posters moderate their own comment threads, and some have chosen to not post critical comments.
We'll have to wait until Election Day to see if Murphy's inevitable attack ads about Gibson's far-right supporters, and the far-right positions Gibson has decided to adopt to appease the tea partiers, will work.
Since most NY-20 voters are not John Birch Society Republicans, I suspect Claydon and the Zieglers will be disappointed by the election results.
P.S. The "Achilles heel" diary ended with this postscript:
I use "tea partiers" instead of "teabaggers" out of respect for a couple of local tea party leaders who are good, though seriously deluded, people.
By e-mail, one of those tea party leaders responded:
Tell me please, which of our members have sunk so low as to garner something akin to "respect" from you that I may publicly humiliate them, then have them drawn and quartered, and then have the remaining bits run out of town on a rail.
I replied that if he could draw and quarter himself, that would guarantee the tea partiers a lot of free, though obviously not positive, press.