Tea party problems: Low attendance, credibility problems plague Bachmann, T-Paw

Could this be right? That even the Tea Party extremest won’t buy what they are selling?

One can hope.

Your silly its too early to tell yet. Obama still has over a year fulfill his empty promises. You only wish the teaparty would be quiet. Teaparty is where patriots like conservatives and independents go.

You can go to san francisco and rally with the rest of the liberal media brainwashed democrats. Obama was just there asking for money like a hobo who never had a job. Wait a minute… Obama never had a real job! Hahaha

I know the progressives will both love and hate hearing this. Groups like TEA Party Patriots have done a purge of member -leaders who are not unquestioning GOP Loyalists.

The energy and buzz of the tea party in the past was from the free thinkers who challenged not only the Progressive Democrats but also the Progressive Republicans.

And with all the enthusiasm of the free thinkers gone, the tea party is left with a punch of unenthusiastic leaders and members who are just following the same old GOP script.

There principals of limited constitutional government, free markets and fiscal responsibility have been soft pedaled… They put on a little show and then back off when their Republican handlers tell them to.

And in purging members, they ignore their own constitution, bylaws and Roberts Rules and the Rule of Law.

And these are the same folks who represent that they will make sure our elected officials with follow the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

We true, grassroots tea partyers are not blindly loyal to the Republican Party.

And when we see the Republican operatives turn groups like TEA Party Patriots into Republican astroturf, we withdraw our support.

As the Coffee Party has problems with the Progressive operative astroturf invading their group, National tea party organizations have problems with GOP operative astroturf invading its their groups.

My advice to my fellow citizens, stick with small local tea party or coffee party groups as is your taste. Think for yourselves and reject attempts to subvert your self determination.

True American Patriots put Country before Party.

Those were my thoughts.

Don Mashak
The Cynical Patriot
http://twitter.com/dmashak

Marie,

The whole Tea Party has been a sham from the word go. The one true Tea Party was the fundraiser for Ron Paul in late 2007/early 2008 but Paul’s supporters included anarchists, libertarians, neo-hippies, etc, who supported Paul’s views on reducing the military presence and occupations throughout the world, his pro-marijuana legalization stance and his views that the Fed should at least open up its operations to public review.

He was denounced as a quack by Huckabee, Rudy “9-11″ Giuliani and Mitt “I was for government healthcare before I was against it.” However, GOP operatives took notice and in August 2008, a GOP operative named Zack Chritsensen registered the first TP domain and same day, Eric Odom, a GOP lobbyist with ties to the energy sector registered another TP domain.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/04/the-tea-party-movement-whos-in-charge/13041/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Odom

This means that there already were contingency plans by certain GOP
and corporate lobby operatives to form a “grass roots” protest movement in the event of an Obama election victory.

Add in the hands of Koch Industries, Dick Armey and astroturfer extraordinaire Sal Russo, who coordinated Pentagon funded counter-protests against Cindy Sheehan in 2005-06 and how could anyone with a brain not know the whole thing was a GOP front?

The Tea Party IS astroturf; brainchild of Koch Industries, the largest private oil/gas conglomerate in U.S; Freedom Works, headed up by Dick Armey; which receives funding from the health insurance companies and also has received money from Phillip Morris, SBC Global and MetLife.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?printable=true#ixzz0xcAvDCvc

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/06/in_glitzy_shadows_a_health_reform_foe_lurks/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081502696.html

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1497377

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/12/tea.party.express/index.html

The whole Rick Santelli channeling Howard Beale was a planned publicity stunt to leverage upcoming contract renewal negotiations.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/was-santellis-tea-party-rant-planned-in-advance/1475937/

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rick-santellis-faux-rant/

And yet, there were people who actually believed that with all of the big corporatist dollars flowing to the movement or groups and with all of the major players having blood thick, made man (or woman) ties to the GOP that this was actually some independent, non-partisan, non-ideological movement? Their whole economic concept is nothing but warmed over Bush/Cheney casserole: tax cuts for the rich and coroprations, deregulation, cut spending (except for the Pentagon, Congressional pensions, farm subsidies) and no mention of REAL liberty like drug legalization, ending the prison business (55% of Fed prisoners are in for drug offenses and 21% of state inmates are incarcerated for drug related “crimes”) or ending the Patriot Act or the War on Terror (stupid jingoism. Terror is a state of mind; terrorism is a tactic). What specifically did the Tea Party ever offer that was not simply regurgitated Republican/evangelical/neocon vomit? Name ONE point where there was any significant distinction.

The reason the Tea Party is now wanting to distance themselves from Bachmann is likely that the movement’s upper echelon, the political hatchet men like Armey, Russo and the bag men like the Koch Brothers can see the winds shifting and see how
poorly she performs. Her laughable grasp of Revolutionary history in a cynical attempt to pander to New Hampshire voters, her brazen lies or lack of facts in her State of Union response regarding the Founding Fathers and slavery show she is the wrong horse to bet on. So, NOW they want to disavow her because she has shown that the whole thing is intellectually and philosophically bankrupt. When Dick Cheney on NATIONAL TV said deficits don’t matter, where was the Tea Party? When Bush tried to hide the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan by not having them funded through the budget but through shell game special appropriations, where was the Tea Party? When Bush started a war and occupation of a sovereign nation without getting an actual declaration of war per the Constitution and it turned out to be false reasons that kept shifting with each explanation, where was the Tea Party? Where is their outrage that GE paid no taxes in 2010 and Exxon also dodged taxes? Where is their outrage that investment and capital gains income is not subject to FICA taxes? Or that companies that offshore not only avoid corporate income taxes, they often duck FICA taxes because if they hire foreign workers on foreign soil, they don’t have to kick in to the U.S. Social Security and Medicare system. Where is the TP’s outrage there? Or that U.S. defense spending is 10 times more than Russia and 6 times more than China; mostly in defense contracts and hardware that is useless in what experts call 4th Generation War, which is urban and rural insurgencies carried out by tribes, clans and plainclothes citizens that use classic hit and run tactics but modified for the modern era; where?

The Tea Party was never anything more than the modern Brownshirts: low class, low information, rural/small community white social conservatives, whipped into a frenzy by upper class corporate elites and old regime hangovers that “their” country, “lily white Christian America” was “stolen” by George Soros, ACORN and SEIU, code for Jews, foreigners and minorities. Just like the Nazis whipped up a similar sector of Germany that the government did not lose WWI but the Jews stabbed the nation in the back, thereby causing Germany to lose WWI and be humiliated at Versailles. The Tea Party cannot accept the facts that:

A: John McCain & Sarah Palin LOST

B: George W. Bush’s policies and the concept of financial deregulation in
general were the key contributors to the recession

It has to be that minority moochers stole the election from good, hardworking white Christians.

I hope years from now, textbooks give the Tea Party the same treatment as the Klan, the Nazis and the Stalinists; extremist scum who hated anyone for any perceived difference or affront.

Bachmann & Pawlenty were not the inspiration for the formation of the Tea Party, that is why they do not draw many people. They will draw some, but they are not going to rock the house.

The Tea Party was inspired and formed out of Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign grassroots supporters, the first event being that giant record breaking fundraiser for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign held in 2007 on the anniversary of the original / historical Boston tea party. Ron Paul draws enormous and extremely enthusiastic crowds. When you’re at one of his events you can just feel the excitement among the crowd, you can literally feel the energy in the air. No other candidate does this anywhere near as well as Ron Paul does.

Sarah Palin owes the majority of her popularity to the fact that John McCain picked her to be his VP. Palin was not the inspiration behind the founding of the tea party, but she did play a very big role when she got involved with the tea party movement and helped to bring the movement to the next level. That is why Sarah Palin often draws crowds similar in size to Ron Paul, because the tea party receives a lot of support from Palin (even though she has charged huge speaking fees to the group).

Anyhow, Dr. Ron Paul rocks the house when he participates in events, so if Pawlenty and Bachmann want more people to talk to they’ll need to make sure Dr. Paul is there as well to draw in the crowds.

It is beyond me how anyone can believe that crippling our government and surrendering our sovereignty to corporations will in any way protect a single liberty.

This is not surprising. These events are being peddled by neocons, not libertarians. Real tea party patriots are more interested in what Ron or Rand Paul have to say, what Jesse Ventura or Gary Johnson have to say. Bachman, Pawlenty, Palin and so forth are just rebranding Bushies who the corporatist neocons are trying to slip in under the radar screen, just like they did with Obama.

Um duh, it’s because Pawlenty and Bachman are lame candidates, facsimilies of real conservatives, but not real conservatives. Media manufactured replicas of true conservatives: talking smaller government and lower spending, but diddling around the edges rather than implementing real reform.

Pull head out.

Seth,

Gary Johnson, who was a 2 term governor of my state of New Mexico, met with one of the Tea Party groups in New Hampshire last week. While they liked his views on spending, they said he lost them the minute he spoke about legalizing marijuana.

So, while the one true and original tea party that came out of the Ron Paul event in early 2008 supported marijuana legalization, along with ending the asinine wars on terror and drugs, that was an eclectic group of traditional conservatives, often called paleocons, anarchists, libertarians and even some people normally of the Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich persuasion (I know a rabid Chomsky and Kucinich leftist who supports Ron Paul). The Tea Party as we know it are Republican counter-revolutionaries or Contras; the hangovers of the Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush periods like Dick Armey; astroturfer extraordinaire Sal Russo, who carried out Pentagon funded “counter-protests” and of course the corporate dollars flowing from Koch Industries, FreedomWorks, which gets funds from Verizon, SBC Global, various health insurance companies and that they have given Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Christine O’Donnell a platform on which to advance their own political or personal aims.

Zera Lee, you are absolutely right. However, the Tea Party leadership is following a script that began with Nixon in 1968; the Silent Majority argument. That argument over the years has been given a populist makeover. Populism in the past was associated with left leaning figures like Huey Long, Fred Harris and William Jennings Bryan and even Jackson and Jefferson; opposed oligarchic concentrations of wealth and power among a few. After the 1970s, the right broke with the realpolitik conservatism of Nixon and the traditional Goldwater/Taft conservatism and embraced a conservatism that was more along the lines of Latin American oligarchic/military states: tilt balance towards the wealthy/big business, diminish the rights of labor and unions and have a hand in glove relationship to religion and the military industrial complex. However, they needed to couch their goals in populist terms so they appropriated certain language and symbology and gave it a rightward beat. Trust fund babies like the Hunt brothers and asset speculators like Mike Milken and Charles Keating were now “job creators” and “small businesspersons.” Working Americans became code for lower and middle class rural, evangelical whites concentrated in the South/Appalachia and the rural/lower Midwest and west. Unions were villified and companies like Wal-Mart extolled as virtues even though Wal-Mart displaces the GOP’s mythical small businesses and has higher percentages of employees on state assistance of some kind than many other employers of scale. Anyone who has a college degree or advanced degree and criticizes these positions is deemed an “elitist” who looks down on working Americans. Yet, take a look at Kochs, godfathers of the Tea Party movement; both have Master’s degrees from MIT in engineering. Right populism, like its Latin American counterparts and earlier European fascism seeks to attain and retain power by scapegoating. In the case of Palin and her ilk, ACORN, SEIU and Soros “stole” the elections and “their” country; code for minorities, foreigners and Jews. It is always “others” who seek to steal lily white small town Christian America away from said “working Americans.”

Seth, Jesse Ventura is also another smart and engaged person but the modern right tries to denigrate him as a steroid infested washed up ex wrestler because he defies their cartoon mentality about ideology: fiscally responsible but willing to spend money on social programs that benefit the poor; social liberal that supports gay rights and abortion and questions the narratives given us by the government about JFK, Watergate and 9-11. The Foxbots constantly criticize Ventura yet never dispute any facts or bring any facts to the table. He also points out, like anyone with a brain, that cutting social programs like Social Security, education, unemployment, etc is not going to put a dent in deficit but rather closing down bases in 240 nations (also supported by Dr. Paul and Gov. Johnson) and ending the war on drugs.

Years from now, the Tea Party as we know it will be viewed just as today’s historians view the KKK of the post Reconstruction South; the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party. The Tea Party will be viewed as the obnoxious and would be terrorist arm of the GOP and the corporatocracy.

Those silly middle-class folks dressed up in quaint three-cornered hats and waving those “Don`t Tread On Me” flags are slowly waking up to the reality that they`re doing the bidding of the moneyed interests and, at the same time, shooting themselves in the foot.

“Count” Paul Ryan`s middle-class-killing budget is a perfect example of this. Shouldn`t be too difficult for the `baggers, most of whom look like they`re less than 10 years away from retirement, to figure out some day they may need a program like Medicare, just like their parents and uncles and aunts do.

Instead, their masters want to let it die on the vine. For what? So that folks like Paris Hilton and Raj Rajaratnam can get a -bigger- tax cut? Foolish `baggers!