Examples that describe the Tea Party movement

[johan helge]

Because of a discussion, I'm lookin for examples that show what kind of movement the Tea Party movement is. This can be examples of e.g. their methods, how they are financed, and their policies. Thanks!

[Name removed]

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[NoSheep]

2. They are financed by corporate lobbyists-see article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/the-corporate-lobbyists-b_b_186367.html

[NoSheep]

3. Another article:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35785.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. They are a support group for people who flunked their spelling tests

in elementary school.

[WilliamPitt]

5. Here's a whole bunch I witnessed with my own eyes

http://www.truthout.org/palin-bags-boston-a-live-blog58556

[Alcibiades]

6. They are a political movement

But they are not new. Part of the lie that has been perpetrated by the media is that they describe the Tea Party Movement as something new: it isn't. These folks take their ideas from folks such as John C. Calhoun, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, John Birch and Lester Maddox. Whether they are motivated primarily by racism is beside the point: it is part of their kit and kaboodle. Their emphasis on small government, devolution of political authority to lower levels of government and "state sovereignty" are all hand-me-downs from earlier reactionary movements in the south.

It is certainly a multifacteted movement. Just as at any anti-war protest, you will see members of the Socialist Workers' Party, the Spartacist League, civil rights activists, feminists, greens, liberals, moderates, Quakers, gay rights activists, etc., so too at a Tea Party event you will find libertarians, fundamentalists, racists, John Birchers, neoconservatives and assorted morans. It is both grassroots and astroturf. The grassroots element of the movement consists simply of every reactionary activist who was enraged at the loss of the 2008 election. To a degree that we probably understate, this movement would have happened if ANY Democrat had won the presidency, as we saw with the rage on the right against Clinton. These folks do what they are told, believe what they are told to believe, and are mainly characterized by their impotent rage.

The more interesting, and probably more dangerous, part of the movement is the astroturf, fake grassroots element. The Tea Party Express, which began before the tea party movement, is simply a rebranding of "Our Country Deserves Better," a GOP-backed outfit that seeks to delegitimize the president.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35785.html

There is a lot of anger on the right at the failure of Bush era big government conservatism. They feel betrayed, when they actually stop to think about it, by a supposedly conservative government that increased the deficit and the size of government, both of which the GOP establishment have maintained are bad. What the folks behind the Tea Party Express seem to be attempting is this:

1. Distract and redirect: instead of the obvious failure of unified Republican government to accomplish any of the supposed conservative aims, they seek to get their base angry about something else, namely the president and Democrats in general. They are supposed to forget that the same GOP congresscritters now opposing Obama are the ones who went along with Bush.

2. Make a lot of noise: A loud, vocal minority political movement can suck the oxygen out of the room and define the political debate on its own terms: instead of focusing on how to get the country out of this mess, we find ourselves addressing an increasingly insane litany of charges and policies emerging from the tea party, and from officeholding Republicans in places such as Arizona.

3. Rebranding: The middle-term objective is to bring about a rapprochement between the establishment GOP and the parts of the base angry at the failures of the Bush era GOP. They will say to the tea party people that they screamed and the GOP has listened. The GOP is new and improved, revitalized by the grassroots. None of them will remember that it was Paulson and Bernanke, along with Geithner, who orchestrated the bailouts they claim to hate, or that the GOP could have actually done something during the 2001-2006 era to do something about the issues that animate the tea party activists.

So, in summation, this is not a new movement, but the very same people who have formed the core of the crazy right for the last fifty years. What they began partly as a movement of anger at the failures of their own party has been transformed into one focused solely on the supposed failings of Democrats. In my opinion, the most effective tactic to oppose them will be ridicule, not to project on them some set of characteristics that may or may not fit, but to expose their actual ignorance, hypocrisy and absurdity, because they are ignorant, hypocritical and absurd. If this is successful, we may get to a point that no respactable moderate person in the US would consider voting Republican.