- Joined
- Oct 30, 2004
- Messages
- 95,963
- Reaction score
- 35,164
I very much disagree that fiscal conservatism (or any coherent definition thereof) was their defining issue. The seeds of the movement were budget doomsdayers in the mold of Ron Paul, but that was never definitive of the movement: right away it became blatantly apparent that spending/borrowing had nothing to do with the movement and that it was all about identity politics, CT's, and self-interested "muh taxes" people who insisted that they (old white people living off of a bloated pension from a job they got with a high school degree) were subsidizing lazy blacks with their taxes.
Started with complaints about a proposal to bail out homeowners, but then it quickly became all about deficits and taxes (opposing concerns, of course, but no one accused them of knowing what they were talking about). Like I said, the CTs and racial resentment were certainly there, but they're there in the Evangelical movement and other factions on the right as well. The deficit screeching is what differentiated them.
The audience missed the best line: "You don't need to work blue. You'll never play the big rooms with that crap- ask Redd Foxx."
Yeah, that's the line (and exchange) that worked for me in the piece. The audience was laughing at the dumb insults.