Rightwingers try to console themselves that Brown actually voted with Democrats on something.
Closer to home, Marjorie Aron-Barrons give Brown an attaboy for exercising some independent thought.
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Filibusted
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 6:16am
It appears the Repubs don't have their 41-vote superminority quite so sewed up.
Maybe Brown didn't drink the kool-aid after all.
Surprise! I expect his position as the new 60th vote is going to give him as much power as Queen Olympia. With power comes pork; it's a good way to steer towards reelection.
Not so fast.
By anon²
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:35am
While I do applaud him for some independent thought, this is what it is, tax breaks.
Let’s see where the ink falls when it comes to defecate reductions, which is going to be painful for both parties. Does he do the right thing and work on tax increase and spending cuts, or are tax increases always evil and don’t you dare touch my Medicare as he platformed on?
At least so far he's showing he's not going to be beholdened to the bonkers wing of the party. It's as if 30,000 teabaggers cried out in agony!
Rough Age
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 11:15am
If the Government can manage to eat a little less, defecate reductions should be a natural result. It's a rough age we're going through, to be sure, but it doesn't have to be painful.
That was a crappy typo
By Dave
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 3:37pm
That was a crappy typo, for a few reasons. First, because it opened up the thread to all manner of scatological puns. Number two, even spell-checker can't help you eliminate those with any sort of regularity.
Shit Happens. I really need
By anon²
Wed, 02/24/2010 - 9:20am
Shit Happens.
I really need to stop posting before my morning coffee. That and work has blocked firefox, thus spell check.
You weren't paying atttention
By JeffC
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 7:43am
To anyone that actually paid attention during the election, this isn't a surprise. Get over yourselves, please.
No Jeff, it is a surprise.
By mixylplik3
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 10:20am
No Jeff, it is a surprise. Politicians have a hard time following through on things they say before being elected. Of course, you already knew that because you're so smart.
It's one vote
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 7:47am
I have to say, I fully expected Brown to be a dutiful party-line robot, but this wasn't exactly a tough one to go rogue on. The GOP was holding up a jobs bill like a spoiled kid taking his football and going home. It's an egregious example of their just-say-no-to-everything, whether-it's-good-for-the-citizenry-or-not policy, which stinks. Let's see whether Brown plays the dutiful GOP soldier or really wants to get things done on the bigger pieces of legislation.
And to prove the point above,
By anon²
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:40am
And to prove the point above, watch the final vote on the bill.
As far as I know this was just the vote to get passed the filibuster. Look for the final vote where 1/2 the GOP votes for it, because they don’t want to be on the wrong side of the right thing to do.
I'll say it again, the GOP is a deeply unserious party with no intention of governance. Kudos to Brown for not joining the nihilists.
Sen. Scott TeaBag Brown
By Anonymous
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 7:55am
Brown threw the teabag crowd under the bus long before this vote when he dismissed them as part of the reason he was elected.
With this vote he proved he was more interested in getting re-elected than being a dutiful Republican.
Don't worry Republicans, he did it to get re-elected. He hasn't gone all libral. See? He still has the truck. It's just that now there are a re a few teabaggers and a few Republicans stuck to the undercarriage.
Dutiful Republican?
By Jody
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 8:16am
I, for one, am HAPPY to see a politician NOT being a Dutiful [Fill in Party Here]. It's such horse crap to elect people to represent you, who ONLY vote in lockstep with whatever a few people in the party decide they should.
I didn't vote for the guy, BECAUSE of the shameful way the GOP has been acting the past few years, but this one act of his may have turned me around on him, at least for the time being.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if it wasn't all about voting for whatever your party supported, and actually representing the will of the people who elected you? I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be the point.
at least for the time being.
By Anonymous
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 5:48pm
.
I think there's room for a
By central squared
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:32am
I think there's room for a few more. One can never have too many teabaggers stuck to your undercarriage.
I was paying attention during the election...
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 8:31am
And I think it was possible to listen to every word that Candidate Brown uttered without having a clear idea how he would effect actual policy. His was a classic populist campaign built on platitudes and generalities with a lot of slick marketing wrapped around it. A policy wonk, he is not. That may or may not be a good thing: the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this particular vote is one very tiny bite. He has otherwise toed the GOP party line to date.
90% better than 0%
By Dave
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 10:57am
I pretty much agreed with Howie Carr's take on this last night...
Brown replaced the moonbats Jacques and then Kennedy(Kirk), so he'll take the guy he agrees with about 90% of the time over the moonbat he disagrees with 100% of the time.
School yard political insult
By Marc
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 1:48pm
Hi Adam,
I'm not sure you are aware of this: the reason the term teabagger is used by people with an animus towards the tea-party movement is because tea-bagging refers to a specific sexual activity, and in this political context it's basically a school-yard insult. I'd like to humbly suggest that it is demeaning to yourself, your blog, and your readers to continue to use the term in this fashion, and I am surprised that you would choose to do so in the case that you were already familiar with it.
Of course, you can use whatever political insults you like - it's your blog. But remember that in the near future, after years of normalizing the use of this sort of school-yard insult when discussing people who are still, in reality, your neighbors, you'll probably find yourself shocked and appalled when the shoe is on the other foot. School-yard insults are a level playing field after all.
Example: imagine that some issue involving "punching" votes onto ballots were to become a major lefty or democrat rallying issue. Since the democrat's symbol is the donkey, don't be surprised if your commentors start referring all democrats as "donkey-punchers" in common political discourse. ;)
Nice essay
By anon-a-rama
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 2:17pm
Now go look at some pictures from the earliest Tea Party events where people are carrying signs saying "Teabag the Dems".
They didn't get stuck with it because people are mean ... they got stuck with it because they don't know how to google.
Difference
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 2:34pm
The difference is that Democrats didn't come up with the term "donkey-punchers." You did, out of an animus to insult them.
The teabaggers, on the other hand, named themselves. And now they're steamed that people call them the name they made up for themselves. But too bad: they made their bed, let them lie in it. It's not the only dumb idea they'll have to live with.
There are some (like you, apparently) who would like to rewrite history and blame the teabagger double-entendre on someone else, but there are more people who were paying attention at the time.
So go ahead and set up another punch line - just don't get mad if people laugh at it.
You see?
By Marc
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 3:16pm
Hi Sock_Puppet,
According to your link, one person, on one website, used the term for one protest. Not knowing that the term had another meaning. Olbermann then popularized it with educated, well-meaning people sympathetic to his politics like yourself.
You see Adam, this is the sort of attitude that responds positively to your use of the teabag meme. I think you know as well as I do that if this is the level of discourse you want to have, you'll get plenty of it coming the other way, more than you will want, and you'll have only yourselves to blame.
I mean, not to belabor the obvious, but it shouldn't take a full demographic study of relative vulnerability to wedgies by political inclination, or an all-out red-on-blue spitball war, to make the point that school-yard conflict is not where the educated opinion-makers of the center-left really want to be.
the OED disagees with you...
By bandit
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 3:31pm
... the Huffington Post reported that the OED made the term "teabagger" a finalist for word of the year in 2009. the good folks at the OED believed that "Oxford's lexicographers are confident in their judgment that "teabagger" the political term stands distinctly apart from "teabagger" the vulgar term.
did one come from the other? yup, i'm sure it did. but words take on a life of their own, and they evolve. many words can have both a vulgar and a non-vulgar meaning.
i dunno. if i was a member of the tea-party movement, i don't think i would get so ballsy as to suggest that the word is overtly offensive. i wouldn't get my panties in a twist over it.
Nicely done
By Marc
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 3:43pm
I see what you did there - nicely done
Keep trying
By Sock_Puppet
Wed, 02/24/2010 - 9:57am
Keep trying to rewrite the history. It just won't work this time. Too recent, too many people were there when it happened.
And are you making some kind of threat to bring a wingnut DDOS if Adam doesn't kiss your ass rhetorically?
Besides which, it was really Shusterwho made the most hay out of teabagging's double entendre.
Let me make this simple
By Marc
Wed, 02/24/2010 - 2:32pm
Hi Sock_Puppet,
Look, I don't know if you are a very angry dude or what.
Let me make this very simple for you.
Your point is that because the tea-bagging term originated innocently (with those who didn't know the sexual reference), that constantly hurling it against your friends and neighbors simply because they disagree on some political issues is cool. I do not agree with this, and I don't think that Adam, in his heart, is likely to agree with this either.
My point is that since tea-bagging became a school yard insult (after the vulgar reference became well publicized), there is no need to hurl it constantly whenever a republican is mentioned. To do so marks you as an immature jerk, with whom no polite difference of agreement is welcome or perhaps even possible.
Take that as you will.
Friends and Neighbors?
By Sock_Puppet
Thu, 02/25/2010 - 6:14am
No, really, I have only sane, happy, constructive friends. No teabaggers. And my neighbors all seem pretty normal too, so I kind of doubt they traipse around with teabags on their hats shouting incoherent conspiracy theories.
I'll make this equally simple: You make your bed. You lie in it. Teabaggers invented their moniker, and now they live with it. That's a done deal.
As for wild accusations, we are all perfectly aware that not all Republicans are Teabaggers. Just as not all Conservatives are Republicans (and, conversely, many Republicans aren't Conservatives at all).
Scott Brown campaigned with the Teabaggers. That would lead one to concern that he might bring that sort of random rage and pointless grandstanding into the Senate. It's nice for all here to imagine, with his refusal to cast a symbolic "NO" vote against something most real conservatives would naturally support -- simply for the reason that it was proposed by Democrats -- that that won't be so. Those of us who voted against him will be content if he turns to out to be a genuine Conservative rather than an ideological Republican, let alone a wild-eyed Teabagger.
Is that really so hard for you to understand?
Sorry, but it is justified
By anon2
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:35pm
[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JthwHxdA-dc/SamI8EhvARI/...
You don't see Dem's going around looking for donkey punches.
I remember laughing about this
By bigdumptruck
Wed, 02/24/2010 - 1:31pm
I first saw reference to Tea Baggers on Fox News. I wouldn't blame the Demsfor this one - we just think it's damned funny.
Going by gut instinct, as I often do,
By anon
Tue, 02/23/2010 - 3:18pm
I don't trust Scott Brown one iota, really. However, that lousy healthcare "reform" bill certainly provided the momentum needed for Scott Brown to be propelled into office here in the Bay State...by a huge landslide!