So today we heard on the media (MSNBC) Richard Wolf

say what I posted yesterday and another DU'er posted the day before. The Tea Party is effectively a third party.

Then we have a historian from Yale say the same thing I have been saying, This Congress is as functional as the one in DC oh around the Civil War.

Yep... I am happy, really... but this is the truth. And there is a certain real danger here, a really bad danger here.

We are dealing with... RADICALS. Say it after me, we are dealing with RADICALS. And you really cannot negotiate with RADICALS.

By the way... yesterday we saw the GOP effectively split, Some in the leadership might be realizing why the John Birch society (a kogh creation too) was sent to the child's table back in the 1950s.

Both are hard right conservative groups that clashed with the conservative establishment. From what I can tell, the core ideas of the Tea Party are little more than a doubling down on conservative fiscal principles with sprinkling of RW populism. The core ideas of the John Birch Society were completely nutty conspiracy theories about world government and Communist plots.

Of course, you have conspiracy theorists in the Tea Party (notably in the Ron Paul wing), but that in and of itself isn't all that significant. Conspiracy theorists are all over the place and they often make a lot more noise than their numbers warrant (actually, that's a good analogy for the Ron Paul movement in general).

I think they were sent to the kid's table because their ideas had relatively little appeal, even among conservatives, and they tarred conservatism with the brush of nuttiness. That's the same reasoning behind the 9/11 dungeon here, btw. Skinner and co. are understandably reticent to allow their showcase of progressive people and values be diminished by close association with Truther bullshit.

Different issues, but the very same net result.

The Tea Party just effectively blocked a major legislative initiative of the Republican establishment. Boehner and co. mustered just about all of the political capital they could to get the votes in the House (and promised who knows what behind closed doors) and they still couldn't get it done. When did the Birchers exercise anything like that kind of power?

kept them at the kid's table... which was my point.

Your comment is like saying that there is no difference between liberals and the Communist Party because "different issues, but the very same net result".

It is intellectually lazy (and mistaken) to not recognize the profound differences between the Tea Party and the Birch Society. Superficially, they both promote a "conservative" vision of what should be done in our country BUT (and this is an enormous BUT) -- the Birch Society does not recognize a legitimate alternative competing public policy option to the ones it favors. The JBS demonizes all of its opponents and usually characterizes them as disloyal, subversive, unprincipled, or traitors.

Most Tea Party adherents do not share the JBS predicate regarding their perceived opponents supposed lack of patriotism or loyalty to our form of government.

It is one thing to recognize a legitimate (albeit mistaken) opponent -- competing for public support.

It is quite another thing to propose that all opponents should be regarded as ENEMIES -- undeserving of respect or civility.

One of them kept pressuring me to read the literature. And TP people are racist to the core. Don't think for a minute that it's just fiscal stuff they're concerned with.

and both are devoid from reality... that is as far as they go. But the John Birchers were KICKED out of the party by the intellectual establishment. These guys, due to the shellacking of 2008 were embraced and now they have become a serious problem.

And plenty here (including myself) did not predict this kind of Tea Party independence last November when these intransigent Freshman were elected. Part of my point was that the conservative establishment back then had the ability to kick the Birchers to the curb because they were at best a marginal presence. Today's Republicans certainly don't have that luxury, as you rightly put it.

we even blogged about it.

But plenty others believed that the Tea Partiers would be subsumed into the Republican establishment and would lose their independence and willingness to buck the party. Others took it further and argued that the Tea Party was nothing more than an astroturf showpiece. I balked at the second idea but I tended to agree with the first. And on the first point, I've been proven wrong . . . at least for now.

Superficially, the Tea Party might seem to adopt common themes or objectives with the Birch Society.

I suppose it is a natural human tendency to conflate similar things and pretend that they are identical. The JBS itself has been guilty of that practice over the years.

One way of thinking about this is:

All human beings have blood but if you are given the wrong blood type, you die.

Similarly, many people, causes, or movements may superficially appear to be related or comparable to each other -- but, in reality, they often have irreconcilable differences which render them incompatible with each other.

Ultimately, Tea Partiers will reject the JBS because of the many noxious ideas which underlie JBS dogma.

For example: I doubt many Tea Partiers would agree with the idea that most of our national leaders and government officials over the past 80 years have been traitors or Communists -- as the JBS believes.

Nor do I think most Tea Partiers would agree with this comment in the May 2008 JBS Bulletin:

"Just as the John Birch Society showed in the 1960's that the communists basically ran both the civil rights movement and the KKK, the strategy was nothing new. The former was used to transfer power to Washington DC in the name of civil rights and the latter provided a pretext for transferring power to Washington. You cannot get a really good conflict started unless you control both sides of the argument."

Similarly, based upon polling, it is clear that most Tea Party movement adherents admire/respect Ronald Reagan. By contrast, the Birch Society thinks that Reagan was a "phony conservative" who was under the control of "Insiders" (a term the JBS now uses instead of Communists). In fact, the current President of the JBS (John McManus) once said that if Reagan were nominated by the Republican Party it would be evidence that Reagan was "a lackey" of the Communists.

Most Tea Partiers seem to admire Sarah Palin. By contrast, the JBS is very suspicious of Palin. They have posted articles on-line which insinuate that she may also be controlled by "Insiders".

Most Tea Partiers do not despise almost all the Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates during the 20th century. The JBS does.

No.

they have an ideology. they have a parallel organization, they have party orthodoxy in ways that the Progressives do not.

Don't get me wrong, we need to do this ourslves, but at this point these guys are functionally a third party. On the bright side, the virtual long knives are out... and to a point... We have a no longer functional government