Tea Party to Peggy Noonan: It's not rage but disgust!

"Comical: Journolistas Matthews and Joan Walsh hurriedly retape 7 pm broadcast to change Sherrod narrative," twittered new-media mama grizzly Dana Loesch early morning, linking to John Nolte's Big Government post "Who Got to Chris Matthews?: 'Hardball' Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed." The last throes of a dying Cultural Marxist meme?

By Sissy Willis of sisu

"For better or for worse, the profound cultural changes in American life during the past half century are testament to the enormous influence exercised by our cultural guardians," writes the estimable Lee Harris in a trenchant if slightly flawed analysis of "The Tea Party vs the Intellectuals" [via Isegoria, who excerpts Harris's totally excellent summary of Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, blogged here early and often]:

Intellectual critics of the Tea Party movement most often attack it for its lack of ideas, especially new ideas — and these critics have a point. But the point they are making reveals as much about them as it does about the Tea Party. Behind the criticism lies the implicit assumption that comes quite naturally to American intellectuals: Namely, that a political movement ought be motivated by ideas and that a new political movement should provide new ideas. But the Tea Party movement is not about ideas. It is all about attitude, like the attitude expressed by the popular poster seen at all Tea Party rallies.

Yes and no. We agree with Harris's point that intellectual elites assume "a new political movement should provide new ideas," but he's dead wrong when he asserts that "the Tea Party movement is not about ideas." He may have been spending too much time in the company of Northeast Corridor fuddy duddies, "polite company conservatives" like Peggy Noonan, whose latest lame WSJ effort, "Chris Christie, not the Tea Party, is the model for the Republicans," gets it half right. Papa grizzly/teddy bear Chris Christie is definitely "da man," but as our fellow Christie groupie, sistah grizzly Jersey girl Cubachi twittered this afternoon:

Actually, Christie went to tea parties across NJ. Peggy is obsessed with belittling tea parties.

The Tea Party is animated by grand old ideas — check out our posts "Tea Party 2.0: "Just be willing to work hard, and don't try to claim the credit" and "Cedra Crenshaw vs. King Samir Shabazz: The hand that rocks the cradle"? for starters, Mr. Harris. Even so, he gets it right in the end:

As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas — we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude — the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: “We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves.”

Update: Almost forgot to mention why it's almost over for the "increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses" of this world:

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Crossposted at sisu and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[Pasadena Phil]

I hope Glenn Beck reads this. Particularly the part about "The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations". He dedicated yesterday's show to interviewing the founders/leaders of the most important Tea Parties while suggesting in an oblique manner that the movement is seeking him out as their leader. "Many (anonymous) Tea Partiers ask me" is a clever device to introduce a self-serving narrative but he should know better. I suspect that he is misreading the inkblots or feeling left out.

Of anyone, he should understand that having no leader to single out and attack is our biggest strength. We are like water. We seep through every crack and just keep on coming. They can't pin any of their charges (racism, "potential for violence", etc..) on any one of us or any definable group of us. Let's keep it that way. Our numbers just keep surging. We are an "army of Davids".

The easiest way for us to lose traction would be to give our many powerful and entrenched critics a leader to smear. They could then extend that narrative to "as Mr X, so the Tea Party" and that is the last thing we need. These reports of disarray within the Tea Party is a fiction being perpetrated by the establishment, Dem and Rep alike. There are establishment leaders who are desperate to step in front of our movement for free without having had to earn their way. They can follow Rangel and "leave with dignity" while they can.

[gary gulrud]

"The easiest way for us to lose traction would be to give our many powerful and entrenched critics a leader to smear."

Good take, the faux conservatives, Frum, Noonan, Sullivan, ..., look even more vacuous railing against invisible reactionaries.

[valr]

The tea party movement is not about new ideas, it's actually about old ideas .. It's about our Constitution, limited government, free markets and Freedom .

[Philip McDaniel]

Good post...here are a couple of thoughts I had, maybe because I'm feeling cantankerous today:

Peggy Noonan -- a reed in the wind who has gone soggy at the roots.

intellectual elites -- people who buy expensive, name branded computers not because they are useful tools but because they are a badge of their eliteness.
chattering class -- a group that believes by talking incessantly they will be perceived as brilliant...sort of the million monkey's on a keyboard randomly typing will eventually write all of Shakespeare's plays philosophy.