Quote Originally Posted by Hound View Post
Tea Party/Republicans/Conservatives/Liberals/Democrats/Progressives
Wow, where do you get this "bat-shit crazy" (to use your words) spectrum from?

Are you trying to say social conservatives (pro-church, anti-abortion, yadda yadda yadda) are closer to self-proclaimed liberals like Al Franken or Barack Obama than to "mainstream" Democrats? or that Republicans like Chris Christie are further from Democrats like the late Sen Patrick Moynihan than conservatives like Pat Buchanan? I seriously doubt self-proclaimed conservatives like Sean Hannity would agree with you that they're more centrist than Chris Christie or closer to liberals like Nancy Pelosi than Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp.

In the first place, self-proclaimed "progressives" today are nothing more than liberals (i.e., anti-Western Marxists) trying to escape the classification they polluted 20 years ago. They are as related to Progressives of the Bull Moose Party in about the same way Democrats today are related to Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party.

Since the Tea Party drew in fiscal conservatives from both Democratic and Republican camps (admittedly more from the Republican camp but there are precious few fiscal conservatives in the Democrat Party anyway so it may well have been a higher proportion of Democrats), you could make an argument that the Tea Party was more centrist than even eastern Republicans like Chris Christie.