What a scam the “Tea Party” movement is.
Already this populist movement that supposedly opposes official Washington, bailouts (especially the bailout of Wall Street), government interference in their lives (i.e., the fear the guns might be taken away from them), and a re-birth of traditional American values (i.e., a thinly veiled white supremacy agenda), is getting into bed with the most cynical, Big Business supporters, Wall Street lackeys and lobbyist money chasers known to man: the RNC. Can’t wait to see how this plays out:
About 50 leaders of the grass-roots “tea party” movement will meet in Washington on Tuesday with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other top GOP operatives to discuss campaign strategies and conservative principles.
The key phrase there is “to discuss campaign strategies” in my view. The “tea party” organizers have fooled many of its supporters into believing Obama is the face of an authoritarian socialist fascist police state which wants to tax them to death (despite lowering taxes on 95% of Americans), deny them their right to their guns and their religion (a complete fabrication) throw money at Wall Street (conveniently forgetting it was Hank Paulson, Ben Bernacke and George Bush who came up with TARP in the first place), and take away their health care while killing off grandma and grandpa (lies so audacious it’s hard to believe so many people fell for them). However, the reality is that these so-called tea party leaders are all Republicans in populist clothing.
Want proof? Here’s the people who managed to capitalize on Rick Santelli’s rant against the oppression of rich Chicago Commodities’ traders: “John O’Hara of the Heartland Institute and J.P. Freire, then of The American Spectator.” And who can forget Cheerleader Emeritus Glen Beck and Fox News prodigious efforts to recruit people to this most un-grassroots of movements.
For it is a movement largely generated from the top down by Republican operatives such as the conservative astroturf organization run by former GOP Congressional leader Dick Armey, Freedom Works”. Freedom Works has played the most prominent role in organized tea party protests against health care reform and the Obama’s plans to stimulate “green” alternative energy technologies, which just happened to benefit Dick Armey’s corporate clients: health insurance providers and Big Oil.
Which makes these statements by Republican leaders regarding this little tete-a-tete hardly surprising:
Steele, House Republican leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and other party leaders have said recently that winning over tea party activists is critical to the GOP’s hopes of regaining congressional majorities in November. But Republican leaders have been careful not to try to take over.
“I’m not looking to co-opt the tea party movement,” Steele told reporters in Hawaii last month during the RNC winter meeting. He added: “I’m looking to work with activist citizens who are mad, who are frustrated and angry about the direction they see the country going.”
Here’s what Steele and Boehner really meant:
“Now that we created this core group of activists from whole cloth based on lies and false outrage generated about Obama’s evil socialistic goal to destroy America, we plan to make sure the tea partiers are on board with helping Republicans take back Congress this Fall by giving them the talking points they need to keep fooling Americans into thinking the GOP really cares about them.”
Any so-called Tea Party activist who thinks otherwise is just so lost in the miasma of ignorance, lies and half-truths the radical right conservatives and their allies in the media have fed them that they are essentially angry automatons unable to think for themselves. All you have to do is point them in the direction you want and off they will go, facts be damned.
The conservatives have done a masterful job in re-directing all the inherent anger, prejudice and ignorance of this predominantly white, middle class movement against the Democrats and President Obama. And Democrats, for whatever reason (and I know most of you can supply a number of reasons), have allowed the radical right’s message of hate to obscure the truth and control our public political discourse.
You have to give the crazies who run the GOP’s political machine this much: they couldn’t govern the country and nearly drove America over a cliff into a second great depression when given the chance, but they sure know how to place the blame for everything that went wrong on their political opponents and convince a large group of Americans to ignore their own failures and the failures of policies their own misguided ideological faith implemented.
They may not have the answers, but they sure as hell know how to demonize Democrats and marginalize the solutions offered by progressives and liberals. They play hard ball better than we do, and the “Tea Party” movement is just one more example of how they game the system to their advantage. And as long as so many Democrats act like spineless jellyfish, or kowtow to Big Business in the hopes of obtaining those corporate dollars for themselves, the longer we will continue to see the majority of this country’s citizens continue their downward spiral into economic serfdom.
