Maine GOP Platform Hijacked By Tea Party: 'The Inmates... Are Running The Asylum' (VIDEO)

The great state of Maine: it's like America's Nova Scotia! Only now much, much crazier now that the Tea Party has managed to get its hands on the platform of the Republican Party of Maine. Over the weekend, at the Maine Republican convention, a majority of the gathered delegates voted to scrap the state party's old platform and replace it with whatever 99 theses Tea Party activists were planning to staple to the walls.

As Maine Politics reports, "The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories." Or as Frum Forum's Jeb Golinkin puts it: "The inmates... are now running the asylum."

David Weigel has a copy of the platform document, and man, it is a doozy! Here are the important highlights:

* Creeping Tentherism: The platform directs "the State of Maine to join with other states in asserting our 10th amendment sovereignty rights which protect us from unconstitutional government intrusions." Which is a fancy way of saying "people should not have health care."

* Mandates a "Read The Bill" Act: The platform authors say this will "restore clarity," as well as "eliminate the corruption associated with side issues, earmarks, pork or riders." Mind you, they don't want to eliminate the "side issues, earmarks, pork or riders," just the "corruption" associated with it. (Which presumably disappears by reading bills!) Hey, even a Tea Party activist has got to get paid by special interests!

* No Fairness Doctrine: Like President Obama, the Tea Partiers are against bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. But they are against it the hardest!

* No EFCA: Or, as they put it, no Employee Free Choice Elimination Act, or EFCEA, pronounced "eff-KEY-ya." This is a fancy way of saying, "Let's not have unions, or fair workplaces."

* ACORN, yargh!!: The Maine Tea Partiers are very concerned that poor people might organize and vote for things, so they will destroy ACORN or anything like it! "Prohibit any public funding of advocacy groups such as ACORN, no matter what it or its affiliate organizations rename themselves. Also, they want to scrap the "motor voter" initiative, which allows people to register to vote at the DMV, because that's way too convenient.

* No more treaties with the foreigns!: The platform calls for the rejection of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty," which makes some sense, seeing that our territorial waters are slowly becoming our "Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

* Roll up the illegals: The platform calls for arresting and detaining illegal immigrants "for a specified period of time" before deporting them. No indication on what they will do with these undocumented immigrants during that "specified period of time."

* Super Christianism: The platform seeks to "Reassert the principle that 'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'Freedom from religion." Which means Mainers had better like religion, because they'll be getting a buttload of it.

* Bailout for heterosexual marriage "Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman." Some forms of big government intrusion into the personal lives of citizens are okay.

* No idea what this means at all! "Return to the principles of Austrian economics." Basically, worshipping Ludwig von Mises and/or Leontopodium alpinum.

* Let Ron Paul destroy the Federal Reserve: With torches!

* Defeat cap and trade and climate change scientists: With whatever torches are left over from that time Ron Paul destroyed the Federal Reserve.

* Healthcare is not a right: "As a compassionate society we will aid those in need." For example, Maine has many beautiful woodlands in which you can crawl off to and die, here's a Google Map, go Galt, sickie!

* And of course...: Eliminate the Department of Education, one world government, and "Dirigo" -- which either means the Maine state motto or the Maine state healthcare system.

Now, does any of this really matter? Maine's GOP Chairman Charlie Webster basically says no: ""Platforms are a way for the activists to express their opinion, and as far I'm concerned this document is fine... candidates don't run on the platform specifically. They run based on individual issues, and what the people in their areas want."

Still: Good luck navigating these waters, moderate senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe!

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Comments

[CJ1]

02:49 PM on 05/23/2010

"Read the bill". Is that like the , "Pet your cat daily" bill? "Hug your kid?" ""Pay attention to the commercials when you watch tv." law?
I thought these people were against superfluous, unenforceable, and ridiculous laws...oh, I get it. Except if they are their idea.

[scatback]

06:37 PM on 05/22/2010

The GOP has become the party with the fringe on top.

[CJ1]

02:37 PM on 05/23/2010

LOL!!!

[Aquinnah1]

06:54 PM on 05/14/2010

Not only is the platform wacky, but the people who drafted it - the GOP convention delegates from Knox County, Maine - vandalized a middle-school classroom when they met there during the convention. I'm not making this up. www.eightfits.blogspot.com

[xjdigger]

10:38 PM on 05/12/2010

Part 2
This platform may not be perfect but it gives us a very good agenda to campaign on. Next caucus we will hold strong and advance more until we have a government system that operates by the constitutional law. This is our goal. As people wake up from their apathy they stand up and have been supporting this. I suggest that those who are interested should look at what we are doing here in Maine and do the same for your own community. This is a National patriot movement to take back America, and it is not just Tea Party, Ron Paul, Glen Beck, or any single group, it is all of us which ever group we are working from. Find a group and support it and work hard..

[BlackTom]

11:35 PM on 05/12/2010

bunch of dumb rednecks
Don't you come to my house trying to "take your country back"
This here is my country, and you ain't takin' nuthin'.
You just go on,and try to make a good life for you and yours. Tough it out, walk it off, and suck it up - you lost, now you gotta wait and try again.
However- the more you go out of your way to marginalize yourself with extremism and stupidity, the less votes you will earn, and the longer you will have to wait to try again.
You dummies are wrecking your own party.
Now go sit down over ther while the growups talk.

[bannorhill]

11:05 AM on 05/13/2010

So it is dumb rednecks who push the "read the bill idea"?

[mixpiklix]

04:24 PM on 05/18/2010

hey have you read the constitution or does your knowlege come from fox news. Oh ya America never left you did bucky.

[xjdigger]

10:38 PM on 05/12/2010

Now Listen up this is important.

It is hard to figure out what kind of people you are. You are pretty gullible to believe the news reporting when it comes to anyone trying to correct government problems. The main stream news I have seen has been so ridicules, and does not represent what has happened in Maine.

This new platform is not from a tea party or any particular organization and it was excepted by 80% of the delegates and I am one of them. We fought hard against the established order who tried to derail this. Many of us worked for years on trying to make changes to our corrupt Maine Government system that had no respect to the constitution and the citizens they represent. The Republican and Democrat leaders are the same group of people controlled by special interests. We who brought this platform forward, gathered together in many communities and got the caucus positions to pack an off year with a record crowd to take our party from those who do not respect anything but greed and corruption. We also did this without the propagandized news media system.
(Continued)

[mercuryhermes 01]

11:52 AM on 05/20/2010

The tea party is not a particular organization - it is a turf roots (some would argue grass roots - but I've looked at the statistics too thoroughly to buy that) movement on the Right that is trying to reenergize a portion of the Right for the Republican party. Taking the ideas that we have heard from the tea party - and comparing them to the Maine platform - regardless of how many delegates voted for it - it is in fact, a tea party document.

The tea party represents - according to the most generous estimates based on people's responses to repeated surveys -- a bit less than a quarter of Americans -- about the same sized group as are represented by the various progressive organizations. Not surprising, politics tend to balance.

(continued)

[mercuryhermes 01]

11:52 AM on 05/20/2010

(part 2)

On the Left, despite grousing by some Leftists, there is respect for the Center -- leading to a coalition. On the Right, there is no such respect. Increasingly moderates feel alienated from the Republican party because of the control exercised by the fringe. Question that? Let's think -- Brown won MA after an abysmal campaign by Coakley. I predicted after her media interview in which she disdained the voters that Brown had won and he had. He understands that, having infuriated the tea party since his election by voting against their interest three times, including by breaking two Republican fillibusters for the Democrats. On the other hand -- in northern NY the tea party favored candidate lost an election for a seat held by the Republicans since 1872. That's right. 1872. Now, in PA the anointed tea party candidate (or read candidate of the Right) lost an election to a Left-Center Democrat (do you understand the variations? no offense, but it helps) convincingly (by nearly 10 points) in a district where Obama has a 35% approval rating and which John McCain carried. The Republican party itself had tacitly acknowledged that if it had any hopes in November, it had to win this seat now - and it lost it badly despite spending a tenth of the cash on hand of the national in an attempt to win it.
(continued)

[abruzzo]

05:32 PM on 05/12/2010

Time for Collins and Snowe to go Independent - Sanders and Liberman have it right...so does Crist. Republicans are toxic now.

[moxieme]

01:29 PM on 05/12/2010

LMAO!!!!!

[picaman]

12:06 PM on 05/12/2010

They can keep their Tea; I prefer Coffee anyway and I prefer it BLACK.

[darcdante]

11:50 AM on 05/12/2010

What I get from this article is that HuffPo hates the 10th Amendment, doesn't think congresspeople should read the bills they sign, and wants to force people to listen to sucky liberal talk radio hosted by Al Franken and Al Colmes. Um...you're really attacking tea partiers on THESE issues? The Fairness doctrine never passed because it's stupid an unconstitutional. The vast majority of the American people are against it. And the 10th Amendment is the freaking law! How DARE they assert their rights under the Constitution!!!

[myblueohio]

12:19 PM on 05/12/2010

You don't speak for the vast majority of American people. You speak for an ever shrinking band of politically ignorant far right wingers who wouldn't know the full meaning and ramification or the Constitution if your were to actually read it. And then go back to Supreme Court decisions on the applications of the constitution. Federalism swas scrapped when the Constitution was ratified.

[darcdante]

12:33 PM on 05/12/2010

Why do people always assume I'm a "right winger"? Let me tell you some things about me: I voted for Obama, I support a progressive tax, I support gay marriage, and I keep a copy of the Constitution on my desk (and yes, I've read it).

So you can call me names, or you can realize that I'm far from being a traditional right winger. Do I think the Right is correct on some issues? Yep. And they're wrong on some too. The second paragraph of my post apparently got cut off where I said that marriage comment was at least a right one; because if the right is going to clamor for small Government then they shouldn't try and impose their view of marriage on people.

But the Fairness doctrine is idiotic and a completely violation of the 1st Amendment, and yes...most people believe that, not just us "ignorant right wingers."

[carmenjonze]

08:07 AM on 05/15/2010

Too bad all the secessionists, originalists, constitutionalists, and other bigots all cling to the 10th Amendment like the bunch of parasites.

[Stephen Leverett]

11:16 AM on 05/12/2010

As usual anyone who does not totally agree with a liberal is given a nasty label like "inmate".
The manicured among will never understand the value of calloused hands the chant "I'm Spartacus!"

[WhyBecause]

11:57 AM on 05/12/2010

The type of work should have nothing to do with criticism. All degrees of work rely on each other in some way or another. Teapartyers like to project themselves as this ideal working class who "never got nuthin from no one" but the real criticism is based on the underlying nature of their rhetoric. They don't offer realistic solutions to anything, if they even offer solutions at all. They act as if every decision made by the government is aimed squarely at them and that the president's sole purpose in life is to take away their freedoms. This of course is without touching upon the gross level of misinformation they spew on a regular basis that can easily be fact checked. Every American loves his freedom, you don't need to hoard guns and dress as paul revere to show that. It's easy for each side to point to the other and call them 'sheep' and too many people are guilty of that, myself included. But I think the biggest frustration with the teaparty is their unwillingness to listen or offer practical solutions. Their ideas maybe grounded in something real, but they have yet to take into account the context of our times. Everyone hates paying taxes, but unless you're ok with privatizing every aspect of the country, welcome to how society runs.

[picaman]

12:04 PM on 05/12/2010

fanned

[myblueohio]

12:22 PM on 05/12/2010

Fanned and faved. You should post that a few more times and on different threads. One of the most intellectual retort to the teabaggers I have read to this point. Thank You.

[Raccoon1]

09:56 AM on 05/12/2010

They found and opened a time capsule from the 1850's, right?

[carmenjonze]

08:09 AM on 05/15/2010

More like 1750s.

[dollbaby]

09:11 AM on 05/12/2010

If you register to vote when you n you get your license you should have documentation of who you are....I know in MD we bring ID and proof of address. I guess the people at the court house can spot "ILLEGALS better if you register there. they can tell by the shoes.

[treadway123]

10:59 AM on 05/12/2010

This is happeing all over the united states. I tell ya, it's because the black man is in washington, an the stupid Republicans have started the ball running on loseing the Republicans party all together by letting the Tea Party group in! Man it is sad!

[dollbaby]

09:05 AM on 05/12/2010

Wasn't that a group of primarily older white men or was I looking at the wrong video?

[nick1936]

08:35 AM on 05/12/2010

They The Teabaggers are protesting Taxes but under Obama Taxes are the lowest they been since President Harry Truman in 1950. Now for the real question why were taxes the lowest under @ Dem President's and Higher under the REPUK'S who theme is to lower Taxes???????

[dollbaby]

09:09 AM on 05/12/2010

the teabaggers are protesting race, specifically the president's race, minorities, and the poor

[bannorhill]

01:47 PM on 05/12/2010

Please cite one example where they are protesting race. Just one.

[bannorhill]

01:49 PM on 05/12/2010

The biggest issue for the tea party movement is out of control government spending. They know that sometime we will have to pay for the trillion dollar deficits we now have.

[Angie Tyne 1]

02:06 PM on 05/12/2010

I actually remember a small number of people protesting every April 15th. The problem is that this very small group has been hijacked by the GOP trying to salvage itself. If you want examples of racism just do a google search.
http://www.google.com/images?q=tea%20party%20racist&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&oe=utf8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

[Selmer1]

02:23 AM on 05/17/2010

Right... NOT! The biggest issue with the CRET!NS calling themselves "Tea Party Patriots" is our democratically elected hard working President, Barack Obama. Your
raison d'etre is the seething hatred for our President. Crawl back into your stinky little
burrows you bunch of confused, hate-filled DICKS. Get!

[Denni]

08:27 AM on 05/12/2010

...are running the asylum and have thrown away the keys! No one gets out alive with that crew.