The Western New York Tea Party: Rebuked
Carl and the Conservative Fusion Party
This tea party crowd, which accuses everyone who doesn’t think like they of being “sheeple”, circulated a list of Conservative Fusion Party candidates for whom to vote, without explanation or argument. Just a straight “C” ticket. There is no thought there, just blind following and demands of ideological purity. Politics is, at its heart, a game of compromise. When you foreclose that possibility, you’re bad for America, and you’re going to lose, sooner or later.
Astorino’s WBEN-Mentum
Local delusional hate radio, which was so deep in the tank for Astorino that it became self-parody, spent all afternoon yesterday using callers to its own radio shows as a representative sample of the electorate. It claimed that Cuomo suffered from an enthusiasm gap, and predicted a wild and unexpected win for its chosen candidate. Last week, during what’s supposed to be the straight morning news program, Astorino’s daily schedule was a news item. Cuomo’s schedule was not given equal time.
WBEN is not “NewsTalk” or “News Radio” or, God help us, the “Voice of Buffalo”. It is a right-wing talk radio station; Limbaugh & his clones, all day. It’s not even the official organ – the Komsomolskaya Pravda – of the Republican Party anymore, having firmly aligned itself with Lorigo’s Conservative Fusion Party and the tea party. Everything that this crew falsely accuses the Buffalo News of being, it is.
Not only did Cuomo win with ease, Erie County went for Andrew Cuomo for the first time. It was never even close, and people should think about where they get their information.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYh5ORUe25o]
Str8t Talk About Weppner
For a year that brought about a nationwide Republican wave, Brian Higgins did quite well, thankyouverymuch. Higgins will return to Congress with yet another mandate – 69% versus 31% for the tea party.
In a what, now?
Kathy Weppner lost, and so far none of her (or her shills’) social media accounts contain anything except venom, vitriol, and victimhood. Don’t be surprised – this is a woman so self-absorbed and obsessed with portraying herself as a victim, she couldn’t even muster a “thank you”, instead denigrating and insulting the students who asked her relevant questions at the St. Joe’s debate.
The loss left her somewhat speechless,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEcLmIjSwaw]
Some tea partiers thought that hers was a “brilliant” campaign. I guess, insofar as it was the most popular WNY comedy act in recent memory. But she only just outperformed the last two tea party activists who ran against Higgins, and she ran a campaign based on resentments and urban legends.
Weppner is the very embodiment of the low-information talk-radio caller / Buffalo News commenter who regurgitates Twitchy and Fox News talking points. Her wealth and shamelessness enabled her to mount what was, in the end, a nasty and whiny vanity campaign. Maybe at least she can now return all of her radio and blog archives back online for everyone to read.
Panepinto & The Law of Unintended Consequences
Did you need more evidence of how – despite their deep gun fetish – the tea party can’t shoot straight?
It rejected Republican Mark Grisanti and instead backed Kevin Stocker. Stocker rejected the tea party – its titular head Rus Thompson especially. So, the tea party’s own candidate rejected them, they had burned all their bridges with the establishment’s Grisanti, and all of this led to a Panepinto win and a Democratic pickup in the state Senate.
Great job, guys! Congratulations, Marc Panepinto!
Republican Pickup in Cheektowaga
Hah.
Paladinocrats Lose
You don’t go from being a Paladino stooge one day to being a Democrat the next. Johnny Destino was a homophobic Paladino stooge a couple of years ago, and ran this year as an endorsed Democrat. The voters rejected him.
In NY-27, Jim O’Donnell was MIA. He complained that he couldn’t raise money, but that didn’t stop others from doing it for him, but he refused. What really irked me was that he was rude or dismissive to people who offered to help him out. He was prone to outbursts of anger, and simply didn’t bother to do even the free, little things that could have earned him some free media – or at least a Facebook share.
We also learned on Sunday that O’Donnell was an aide for the 2010 Paladino campaign. If you’re going to strike out in politics, and you scan all the races available to help out, and you land on the homophobic promoter of racism and pornography, don’t come asking Democrats for support without disclosure and vocal rejection. I wrote my own name in for NY-27, but perhaps for the first – likely last – time, I wished Team Collins good luck. At least Collins is honest and consistent about where his loyalties lie.
Anyhow, thanks for reading.
I find it interesting the number of representatives that ran unopposed, many of them being bench warmers that have basically done nothing during their tenures other than being a vote for their party (ie DiPietro, Peoples, Corwin etc)….
I can’t even get that Youtube to play. It runs without sound for about two seconds and then says “an error occurred.” I wonder if Clownshoes is already trying to scrub it.
It is gratifying to me to know how little WBEN means to WNY. Kathy Weppner ran a deceitful campaign, scrubbed her online history and couldn’t even bring herself to acknowledge her work on WBEN in her Amherst Bee bio. At least now she can go back to sitting on hold for hours on end waiting to share her brilliance with Rush and his dickoheads.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken
Glad to see Kathy and the TP nutbags sent packing. One can only hope they continue to be treated like the social lepers they are.
None of Weppner’s supporters even voted. They were too busy hiding from ISIL, Infected Poors and Ebola. I guess those talking points were more effective than she thought…..
The Tea Party movement started out with very good ideas. Then, it was corrupted by the Kochs and a cadre of small minded conservatives that are no different than typical Democrats and Republicans. They want to tell people what the can and can not do, even when it doesn’t affect others.
Um, no it didn’t. It was/is made up primarily of small minded people who can’t see past their own noses. The Cock brothers were just shrewd enough to see a group of horse-blinder wearing folk and easily whipped them into a frenzy of baseless anger and money donations and used their ignorance to further their own gains. The TP is nothing more than a bunch of low-intelligence tools who have done nothing but try to out-crazy themselves over the years.
The Tea Party started out by calling themselves Teabaggers. It’s all been downhill since then.
The Tea Party was started by a bunch of embarrassed conservatives who wanted to run away from the stench the Bush-Cheney years attached to the Republican brand. They pretended that the world began on Jan. 20, 2009 and they were echoing our forefather’s battle against taxation without representation without realizing that they were represented (mostly by Republicans) at every level of government for the past decade.
“The Tea Party movement started out with very good ideas”. Yea…like “we’re taking our country back” and “get your own health insurance cause I’m not paying for it”………
“Government hands off my Medicare”
Thanks for the info on NY-27. Those that enjoyed having some semblance of representation fro Ms. Hochul still need someone in DC that is not full of themselves. The search for a real representative for our district starts today.
I am ashamed to admit it but I am really looking forward to the bolus of schadenfreude I will enjoy driving home today as Tom Bauerle tries feverishly to spin his way out of the asssss whooping Team Klownshooz took yesterday. Oh and Russ Thompson — way to strategerize on Stocker. If you talked to the guy a bit first you might have figured out he’s not a batshit moron who’d run from you like you were an infected poor before trying to fit him for one of those nifty tri-cornered hats. Brilliant job.
poor Rus Nobody wants to play dress up with him anymore…..
Damn. When he came out of the closet he really charged. I wonder what sort of evening pumps he’s wearing.
Poor fellow…I wonder if he didn’t hear what the ‘low talker’ said when she asked him to wear that shirt.
I am sure Dan Maffei, Tim Bishop, Kay Hagen, Michelle Nunn, Mark Pryor, Martha Coakly, Anthony Brown, Pat Quinn, Mark Udall, Greg Orman …on and on and on…. are real happy to know that your group of clowns stopped another group of clowns
This is a LOCAL thread, genius. Not a national one or a state-wide one.
Duh Genius, last time I checked Cuomo is not at the state capital in Buffalo
Neither are any of the people you mentioned.
So what the FUCK is your point, troll?
And you are calling people stupid? Maybe you didn’t read what you wrote.
>>Not a national one or a state-wide one.
Cuomo is state, therefore it is not a LOCAL thread only.
Hey! What’s Nick Langworthy doing up there?
Some of the local campaigns got really dirty and the heat lasted into today with the Right Wing Nuts still blustering over Panepinto’s criminal record.
A couple of the nuttier ones insisted on calling him an ExCon.
Reviewing the election, today, a Democrat Strategist mentioned they did not seem to attract the less educated younger, white voters. Was he talking about the WBEN minions?
But I am really shocked that 30% of the Amherst Voters supported that Weppner creature. I saw some press releases and a couple of embarrassing press conferences. After the press conferences I thought the campaign was some sort of practical joke. I still do – but 30%?
But we have a big problem in New York, the rural – urban divide. It cannot possibly be the SAFE Act the Gun Nuts point to but such a divide is not healthy. There must be some sort of connections available.
Simple answer Hap…..most voter really have no clue who or what it is they are voting for. They just vote the party line. When Kimmel can go out and film/talk to dozens of people on the street and they don’t even know who the VP is, pretty much sums it up……
People just don’t grasp the depth of that observation.
I did telephone banks call calls for several elections, three times in the 27th Congressional District.
Early on we did reach people but as technology replaced human beings in the form of answering devices and learned develop quick and full responses within tight time frames.
I was doing Greece New York and it being decidedly conservative we are making a special effort. Once I reached a registered Republican named either Goldstein or Goldfarb, but it appeared a decidedly Jewish. I explained my mission and he interrupted me and explained “Sonny, I don’t care if Adolf Hitler, headed the ticket, I am voting Republican,” and hung up.
Many if not most people vote the party line no matter what or who is running. Look to that Grimm election in New York. When he goes to jail he may even have to resign while he is jail.
A lot of People don’t even look at the sheet they are voting on. They see D or R, pick their team and start coloring in all the same circles. So think of it this way, her 30% is comprised of pencil whipping voters and that Safe Act minority that worships Rus Thompson. I bet the pencil whippers are 80% of that number too
I know things change, But I am having so much fun today hearing about one lefty loser after another.
You’re just a treasure.
He cleans toilets in the Fox News studios,so don’t be too hard on him. They pay almost as much as a Wal-Mart greeter, because,of course, it is Obama’s fault.
Everything that happened in the election the other night was pretty much predictable as elections go. A bunch of Dems lost in a bunch of red or purple states. Low information voters voted against themselves as they always do…..so whats your point?
Are Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Colorado and New York Red states??? Governors, Senators and congressmen in these states lost badly. Dan Maffei trounced Buerkle in 12 and he got stomped and trounced even worse in 14 by a rookie. In NY super lefty Tim Bishop lost.
My point is I am enjoying hearing losers like you give twisted explanations that it somehow a bunch of ignorant people got lucky and won. They have people just as smart and just as dumb. People change leaders that are failing, sooner or later all ideological leaders fail and the country changes, it happened in 2008 and then quickly in 2010 and 2014 with an aberration in 2012.
You are just the flip side of the same coin of poor old Rus wearing his clown costume. No matter how hard you insult or push the fact of the matter is your party got it shoved down there throats worse the other party got ACA shoved down their throats.
Wow. If you got your news from this blog, you might not know that the Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate, lost even more seats in the House of Representatives, and lost 31 Governor’s races. You’d have no clue about the overview of the races in which Little Barry and the Clintons were heavily invested (hint–not a good day for them). But you’d be up to date on the latest lefty spin details on why this had nothing to do with Little Barry. (Something you could have gotten from Juan Williams two days ago.)
If you got your news from this blog, you’d be a fucking idiot because this blog isn’t the news.
Oh, and you’d find no mention that the GOP will now control 70% of the state legislative chambers in the US.
Because weppnerweppnerweppnerweppnerweppnerweppner.
No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t find a mention if the Democrats were in a similar position. What’s your point?
And you certainly wouldn’t know that 29 of the senators who voted for ObamaCare have now been sent packing.
Because weppnerweppneretcetera.
Yet the man who’s name is on the law is still in office, the preferred candidate of nearly 66 million Americans. Funny that
And you will be utterly amazed by the number of rounds of golf he will get in over the next 26 months — all the while trying to convince his golfing “partners” that 66 million Americans still think he’s relevant, whereas he is actually the karaoke singer who is the only one in the room who doesn’t realize his machine has been unplugged. Or, if you will, he is the Bay City Rollers playing a Indian casino and foolishly playing “Saturday Night” way too early in the set.
Bedenko is right this blog is not about the news. Its about continuing the delusion that the radical left agenda is working and using the word “fuck” in their grammar as much as possible when they disagree with you. I guarantee you that if the democrats had maintained control of the senate and had not lost so badly this would have been a post about national politics and how wrong the pollsters were and how stupid all republicans are.
Many comments here are about their genius insight that it was just a red state phenomena. But it was a drubbing in the deepest blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts. The republican message was not about Obama care, Economy, Immigration, Security, Shutting down the government, Gay Marriage on and on. It was about how much the democrat voted with Obama. You have never seen so many democrat politicians acting like they did not know who Obama was.
Enjoy it now hwhamlin, because one thing the wing nuts around here are right about is it will change especially if the republicans can not deliver.
You seem to be psychic. Where were you trained, and why is it you seem to think politics aren’t cyclical. After all, President Obama won twice and the Democrats are now positioned to give the Republicans a taste of their own filibuster-y medicine. Toodles!
Oh, we’ll just change the rules like Dingy Harry did. Tweedle-pip!
That would be awesome! 2/3 override is in the Constitution, though, so tough shit there.
Its about continuing the delusion that the radical left agenda is working…
When, exactly, was a “radical left agenda” even initiated?
Incidentally, this is the last post I’ll do as a contributor to Artvoice. I sent my resignation in today – 11/10/
It’s been a great run – I started in late November 2011 – and I’ll still write somewhere, just not sure where. Thanks everyone for reading & commenting. It’s been fun.
I’m forever grateful to Jamie, Buck, and Geoff Kelly for giving me the opportunity to write for them.