These tea party people....

I don't care who the video is by, it shows the Tea Party supporters behaving despicably.

Claig do you think it is right that millions of women every year are unable to access basic antenatal care, putting them at high risk of pregnancy-related complications. And that the US has a very high maternal death rate (double the UK) because of lack of healthcare?

Is that OK?

The UK, with our NHS, doesn't do too well on maternal death rate. But that was probably kept quiet, it might have harmed their election chances.

Pregnant-women-more-likely-to-die-in-UK-than-Poland

Isn't Sarah Palin a leading advocate of the Tea Party? 'nuff said

@claig. Subscribing to the constitutional opening statement that 'all men are created equal' resulted in a country where segregation, poverty and prejudice flourished. Rights were not enshrined in the slightest. Equality finally exists at a legal level but the legacy of 200+ years is that equality of opportunity is still denied to many. Standing in society and life-chances are determined at birth and there are few routes to escape. If "freedom from oppressive big government" means being left to your own devices to sink without trace then the 'rights and liberties' of those particular US citizens are not worth a candle.

I'll say again. The Tea Party are pushing the 'Mom & Apple Pie' buttons. They are selective in which parts of the constitution they choose to uphold and they are as beholden to the big businesses and banks as any other politicians in the US system.

bullet234 that video is by progressohio, and it is the same old progressive scare tactics again. The progressives are desperate, they know that their progressive media is not working to fool the people of the United States. That's why the progressives are resorting to the thing that they know best - scare tactics.

amnesty report on maternal healthcare in the US.

Again, call me old fashioned. But for such a wealthy country to leave people to die in pregnancy and childbirth in this day and age is nothing short of scandalous.

Of course the right would argue that it's their own fault.... I just don't- understand it.

The people all over Europe, just as in the United States, are in the majority right wing. That is why right wing newspapers sell more than their left wing counterparts with the likes of Monbiot writing for them. However, our media is predominantly left of centre and that distorts the voting outcome.

Someone on another site linked up to this clip showing supporters of the Tea Party.

We know that the French health care system is better than ours. I have heard US broadcasters in shock at our health system, where people are refused treatment and drugs which could save their lives because they live in the wrong postcode area. They don't want to be hostage to government dictats and cutbacks which might mean life or death. There are stories in the press of how UK citizens travel for treatment in the US for life-saving operations that are not available here. Of course there are problems with the US system, but the Americans don't want to lose the good parts of their system.

Chil - centrist to us yes - and that's what we see as normal - far left to people for whom right is normal. IYSWIM.

Claig I believe in assisting disadvantaged people, providing healthcare and a minimum standard of living to everyone, a woman's right to choice with contraception and abortion. I do not believe that people who been dealt a shitty hand in life should be left to rot. Call me old fashioned.

People all over europe are not highly right wing either, that's a fantasy.

Chil1234, the Founding Fathers are not wooly crap. The Constitution of the United States is not wooly crap, it is the document that enshrines the rights of US citizens and guarantees their freedom from oppressive big government. The only people who could possibly think of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers as wooly crap are some progressives, who seek to undermine the rights and liberties of US citizens.

Regarding the NHS - looking from across the Atlantic - it's not the best advertisement for a national health care system is it? I'm sorry, but it's probably a case-study for the US in how not to do it.

@claig... 'upholding the values of the Founding Fathers'. That's just the point. They might as well say they uphold Mom & Apple Pie - people can't argue with that kind of woolly crap either.

The Tea Party are for the Constitution of the United States, they uphold the values of the Founding Fathers of the United States. They are for liberty, for freedom, against socialist regulation and control. They are for representative government that listens to the views of the people. They want people who represent them, not elites and mandarins produced by Harvard and Yale. They want their country back and they want their politicians to listen to the concerns of ordinary people. They are fed up of not being listened to, not being represented by the intelligentsia and progressive elites. They are like the original Boston Tea Party, they say "no taxation without representation".

The people all over Europe are the same, most are anti the EU bureaucrats and would agree with many policies of their American compatriots in the Tea Party. The difference is that there is far more freedom in the United States than in Europe. Here the Monbiots, the progressive intelligentsia, hold sway, but the US has a spirit of independence and that is why they believe so much in freedom, democracy and the Constitution. That is why they fear socialist regulation and policies that limit the rights of citizens born in the land of the free.

@ISNT... fundamentally, UK politics is very centrist. The main parties have very little differences if you look at them closely. It's more a difference of management style than philosophy or dogma - hence why the polling is always such a close-run thing.

"they want the freedom of choice"

Bollocks. When it comes to health-care, freedom of choice in the US extends only so far as how many dollar bills you have to make that choice happen. They may be against socialist rationing but they are quite comfortable with social rationing... the poor die and the rich live. For a nation that regards Darwinism with suspicion, 'survival of the fittest' is a popular concept.

Chil I'm sure they would say that the UK politics are "left and further left".

Makes me very pleased that even the tories would be unable to scrap the welfare state completely and get rid of the NHS as we are actually quite a nicey-lefty-socialist bunch of people. Even the mean ones

ISNT - I agree right wing political support is often driven by values (rather than pure self interest).

IMO - it's often a different flavour of 'fairness' from the left wing view of fairness - with more emphasis on social mobility and meritocracy and less emphasis on equality. IYSWIM.

@Claig.... The Tea Party are 'against' and that's a very easy position to occupy. We do not know what they are 'for'. They have no proposals on how to move their country forward beyond some vague ideas of individualism and protectionism. I wouldn't call them 'nutters' but I do think they are extremely naive.

The Americans are against socialist rationing, decided on by some bureaucrat. They fear they will not be able to receive life-saving cancer treatments as we do here due to postcode lotteries and decisions of faceless bureaucrats. They don't believe the bureaucrats have their interests at heart, they want the freedom of choice.

In the US the politics are not so much 'left & right' as 'right and further right'. I remember watching a round-table discussion on CNN around the time when Hilary Clinton was trying to push through a national health-care system during her husband's administration (early nineties?). The NHS model was held up as an example and one of the contributors was incredulous.... "You mean anyone can get treated? For anything? No matter how much it costs? And the state pays the bill? But what happens if everyone is sick all at the same time? Do they all have to be treated?..." It was clearly a completely alien concept.

Extend that to other things we tend to take for granted and their society clearly has very different expectations as standard... even among those you'd describe as 'left-leaning'

The Tea Party are the first real challenge to the globalisation and off-shoring of jobs carried out by both left and right. They are a real opposition, unlike the unions who never challenge and stand up for the working people.

The Tea Party are against Wall Street globalisation, against bailouts, against their jobs being shipped overseas and their standard of living declining. They are against fatcats and politicians who do their bidding.

They are against the globalisation consensus of left and right and against politicians blowing their earnings via taxation. That's why the progressives call them "nutters". They have no argument against them, so they resort to smears and insults as usual. But teh American people are wise to their tricks.

ISNT - yes the US is difficult for us to categorise. (eg - a secular society with high church attendance rate).

Chil - it is interesting if the Republican reaction to Obama is to move further to the right. The Tory reaction to Blair was (after they got over their 'rabbit in the headlights' impression) to hold ground and then move slightly left - I think.

The blue collar workers he's talking about (I think) were up in arms about healthcare which was being introduced by Obama... I don't think it is a given that the people who were opposing healthcare (there were a lot of people interviewed at marches etc) were tea party members... I hadn't heard of the tea party when those marches were happening although possibly they were already known in US. I assumed the people marching were "normal" republican types. And even some non-republicans who had got their knickers in a twist about "socialism".

Someone recommended this book to me recently here. It's about right wing politics and america and exactly these points - why people repeatedly vote for a party which does not act in their interests. it's a bit repetitive but the basic message is very interesting and has made me understand a little more why right-wing people think as they do (I used to just think they were evil TBH, this explains the logic to their thinking, even if it's still totally repugnant to me, it's not so utterly mystifying now).