REVEALED: DONALD TRUMP’S INGENIOUS PLAN TO DESTROY THE TEA PARTY

Guest political commentary from Team Def Political Shenanigans Analyst Lucky Bensonhurst.

BREAKING: Donald Trump admits he’s just fucking with the media
"Birther" rants revealed to be part of an elaborate plan to discredit the Tea Party and the ultraconservative movement by adopting their weirdest political arguments and talking about them non-stop as though he were serious.

I’m joking, of course. Possibly. I have a side bet with Senator Al Franken that Trump doesn’t seriously believe the Birther conspiracy and is only using it as a way to clandestinely sever the GOP’s relationship with the more batshit elements of the Tea Party by forcing them to choose between batshit or real issues like the economy.

Whatever The Donald is really up to, there has been talk that the Tea Party's wild ride is just about over. Some recent trends to consider:

1. The Tea Party saw lower turnouts at this year’s Tax Day rallies.

2. Glenn Beck finally became too weird even for Fox News, ostensibly (according to Dana Milbank) because the economy is getting better and Beck’s tales of Socialist Economic Doom don’t carry as much weight as they used to.

3. Tea Party conservatives have overreached themselves with the budget bills attacking public employee unions, which turns out not to be a popular thing (which would be fine except that popularity is kind of a requirement to win elections – well, most of the time) and the Arizona birther bill that even Jan "Round Em Up" Brewer couldn’t bring herself to sign.

4. The Donald’s Birther rap is forcing serious Republican presidential hopefuls to address it, even though they’d just as soon not dwell on it as a campaign topic, but damned if polls aren’t now indicating that two-thirds of Republicans either believe Obama is a foreigner or might as well be, so who do they need more: the moderate swing voters or the Tea Party and its conspiracy nuts? And is there a way to have both?

Good times, eh, Jim?

Okay. The decline of the Tea Party is likely wishful thinking, if only because the GOP has embraced them so tightly that they’ve become harder to drop like 3rd-Period Spanish out of mere political convenience. Also, while the Birther thing may be delving too far into fringe conspiracy territory, these are the same people who in the last couple of years have accused Obama of masterminding Socialist govt takeovers, death panels, collecting email addresses for enemies lists, concentration camps created with census data and facilitating Sharia law as the law of the land, among other things.

Demanding to see his long-form birth certificate is entry-level batshit that sounds reasonable in comparison. Also, it has not escaped my attention that many of my conservative friends have already transformed the argument from “Obama is not from America” to “Obama is hiding something or he would have produced the LFBC already – WHAT IS HE HIDING AND WHY WON’T HE JUST SHOW US THE LFBC?” (see what they did there?). So I don’t know how the Birther question could make the GOP look any crazier by association than it already does.

On the other hand, the sight of GOP politicians squirming at the question does indicate that they wish The Donald would talk about something else, though I suspect that’s less about fear of looking crazy and more about it being a non-productive topic. Indeed, the end result of Orly Taitz being right about Obama’s birth status is, at best, President Biden.

And who the hell wants that?

L. Bensonhurst

CHARLIE SHEEN IS THE NEW OBAMA (OR MIGHT AS WELL BE)

Guest political commentary from Team Def Political Shenanigans Analyst Lucky Bensonhurst.

Typical.

The digital ink was not yet dry on my previous piece about the Tea Party when I got a smug-yet-angry email from William Rivers Pitt at Truthout, who was furious at my little joke about Donald Trump pretending to be a Birther, informing me that it was no laughing matter, that Trump was a deranged and dangerous lunatic, and if he was a distraction from anything it was Barack Obama pretending to be a Progressive and kicking his base in the teeth by selling out the movement, and if I were a real journalist, I’d be writing about THAT and warning everyone.

Ha ha. Good one, Bill.

Of course, Bill Pitt never forgave me for that crack I made at the White House Correspondents Dinner about how much I hate the term “Progressive” to describe the Hard Left because it’s not only a cave-in to the GOP’s efforts to make “liberal” and “Damn Commie” the same word, but also annoyingly pretentious. So he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Still, why not? It’s true that the Hard Left is getting fed up with Obama’s centrist compromises (by their standards, at least), and some feel the only way to get the party back on message is make it clear that the Democrats’ liberal base shouldn’t be taken for granted by getting someone to challenge Obama for the 2012 nomination.

Which is worth blogging because it highlights an interesting difference between the Hard Left and the Tea Party conservatives: leverage. The Tea Party has enough pull with the GOP to be taken seriously (at least up to now); the Hard Left doesn’t have nearly the same pull with Democrats.

Part of that has to do with the fact that Tea Partiers have run some successful campaigns with their own candidates against trad Republicans on the GOP ticket at the state and Congressional level. But it’s more to do with the fact that the Tea Party is better organized and better funded, and has managed to tap into existing angst over the economy (and The Islams). It’s also had its own major cable news channel from Day 1. All the Hard Left has had were KO (who is now gone), Maddow and blogs.

Glenn Greenwald makes another good observation: namely, the Democratic Party can afford to ignore the Hard Left because they will never ever vote GOP in a million years – not after they’ve spent so much time denouncing the GOP as the Women-Hatin’ Race-Baitin’ Poor-Killin’ War-Mongerin’ Greedhead Fascist Bastard Evil Evil Evil Party. When yr only reason to support a party is because the alternative is far, far worse, you get the democracy you deserve.

Voltaire said that. Or maybe it was Dutch Schultz. I forget. Either way, unless the Hard Left wants to back third-party losers like Ralph Nader again, they need some way to convince the Demos to take them seriously.

But challenging Obama for the 2012 Demo nomination? Well, good luck with that, Jim. How well that goes depends on whether the object is to pull Obama hard to the left or swap him for someone else. The former is risky because Obama already has a track record for pandering to the Left then ignoring them, and the latter has happened successfully only once in American history (and that was before we had voter primaries).

The Hard Left will need at least two things to pull off an Obama defeat: (1) Obama’s popularity will have to drop to Bush-II levels in the next eight months, and (2) the appearance of a champion who is not only willing to stick to the Hard Left agenda and never, ever compromise, but also charismatic enough to out-charisma Obama.

So far, their best bet is probably either Dennis Kucinich (in which case they’re doomed) or Charlie Sheen (in which case they’re also doomed, but it would be a more fun campaign).

Yes. Why not? I’d like to see Sheen and Trump get the party nominations in 2012. And deep down in yr heart, you know you would too, because deep down you know it wouldn’t really make that much of a difference. Not anymore.

L. Bensonhurst