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New York has a few dozen tea party groups, with a few thousand activists involved. So it's not a major tea party state, though, give them their due, the tea party types did have some impact on the GOP picking up six Congressional seats last year.
But their favorite statewide candidate, Carl Paladino, lost in a landslide to Andrew Cuomo, who, as governor, has proposed reducing state spending for the first time in 16 years, capping property taxes, laying off 10,000 state workers, and letting the millionaires' tax sunset.
Cuomo's plan has the support of wealthy NYC people, Senate Republicans, the state Conservative Party, and Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP operative who managed Paladino's campaign.
Caputo met with 50 or so statewide tea partiers five weeks ago in Oneonta, and argued that tea partiers should support the obviously conservative parts of Cuomo's budget.
It did not go well, and the sniping continues.
Details, plus a threat against Obama, below. |
The contemporaneous report in the Oneonta Daily Star found little support for Caputo, this quote was typical:
"We weren't happy, and I'm speaking for most of the people who were in the room," local Tea Party member Tim Schorer of Hartwick said. "It made me wonder whose side he was on during the campaign."
A week ago, the Syracuse Post-Standard interviewed Joanne Wilder, coordinator of the Central New York Patriots, who had nothing good to say about Caputo:
I don't take Michael Caputo seriously. ... I've heard from people that went to the meeting, that it was a screaming match, a yelling match, and they were upset that Michael Caputo was even there, stating what he was stating. ... He got up and pushed Cuomo's budget. A lot of people were very angry.
Caputo got his chance at rebuttal yesterday in the Post-Standard, and did not hold back.
On the Oneonta meeting:
I was asked to speak as a guest. I knew a lot of people from the Paladino effort and many welcomed me. At one point, everyone was talking about what they're now doing now. I stood up and said, "I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm putting out a letter tomorrow supporting the Executive Budget, and I'd like to read it to you." And I read it.
I said the Tea Party needed to get behind the conservative elements of the Executive Budget, because if you don't support the conservative policies of a Democratic governor, you have no credibility to criticize the liberal things he does. I would say 60 percent of the people there said, "No way!" But 40 percent said, "That's possible." It opened a discussion. But nobody threw me out, nobody was yelling at me. What happened is, afterwards, the revisionists went to work ... a small group of toxic types set out to vilify me.
On being "thrown out" of the Neptune Diner, where the meeting took place:
I would be upset if they would not let me back in. But it wasn't me that was thrown out. It was the Tea Party, because they stiffed the waiters.
They left a less-than-10 percent tip and the manager went over and said, "We would appreciate it if you don't come back." I saw the waitresses. They were visibly upset, because they had been working like crazy, and the Tea Party folks stiffed them.
On tea party extremism:
For every 50 to 100 Tea Party folks who are there for Constitutional principles, one is there simply because we elected a black President. There are wonderful, incredible people in the movement. But when we were at a Tea Party event in Broome County, a leader of that local Tea Party got close in the bar and, to me, quietly made a threat to the President.
(Re: some tea partiers' charge that Cuomo is paying him) The charge is atrocious. But conspiracy theories are common in the Tea Party. I'm just happy to have one named after me.
Caputo is generous in saying that there are "a small number of toxic people" in the tea parties, and that only 1 or 2 percent are motivated by racism.
Some tea party leaders are pretty toxic and/or racist -- e.g., Mark Williams, Judson Phillips, Dale Robertson, Mark Meckler -- which is presumably attractive to their followers.
And, in this instance, the inability to recognize that Cuomo's budget more than halfway meets the tea party's alleged fiscal conservatism is another example of how fundamentally extreme the tea partiers are.
In New York, that means more extreme than the Senate Republicans, the Conservative Party, and the Murdoch New York Post -- which is pretty far out on the right.
And really, is anyone surprised that tea partiers are not just far-right wingnuts, but also lousy tippers? |
