With the mid-term elections looming, it is clear that the Tea Baggers’ populist, anti-Obama energy is being channeled into the the formation of a new national political party. With funding from wealthy right-wing extremists, including the Koch brothers and others, political operatives like former House Majority Leader-turned lobbyist Dick Armey have masterfully astroturfed the Tea Baggers into a new power base comprised of the most easily duped and manipulated segment of American society: poorly educated, white Southerners and their counterparts in other regions.
The objective of the astroturfing is to organize working-class opposition to government regulation of the sources of corporate wealth — energy, health care, the media, etc. — and roll back and eventually kill government policies and programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Civil Rights protections that help, yes, working class Americans. It could be said that the corporate oligarchs are attempting to create a 21st century version of the Dixiecrat Party, which, in 1948, had a platform that is nearly identical to Tea Bagger positions today: local control, shrinking the federal government and — although this goes unstated, it’s there in the optics at the rallies — racial segregation.
The connections between the corporate oligarchs and their rent-boys like Armey are relatively easy to research. But Tea Baggers themselves are oblivious to their roles as the pawns in this new power grab. They have been kept in the dark because, over the past decade and more, conservatives have trained their base to trust only right-wing media outlets like hate radio and Fox News, and these outlets scrupulously avoid reporting on who is pulling the strings and why.
For regular Americans, however, the connections are hard to miss. In the weeks leading up to the Koch-funded Freedomwork’s Tea Bagger rallies last summer, for example, right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News gave the rallies hundreds of hours of free promotion. On the day of the rallies, Fox covered the live events wall-to-wall, frequently displaying racist anti-Obama signs on its air without comment. Just last month, Bill O’Reilly, the senior propagandist at Fox, did a segment cheerleading the formation of the Tea Bag Party (TBP), citing a poll that found that 41 percent of Americans favor the TBP over Democrats (35 percent) and Republicans (28 percent).
“Well, look,” O’Reilly told his panel of TBP supporters — no representative of the other parties were included to make the discussion, you know, “fair and balanced” — “if you want a viable third party, you got to break it down. I mean, you just got to kick the door in like [1992 third-party candidate Ross] Perot did and other people did.”
There’s even a Tea Bagger social-network group on Murdoch’s Wall St. Journal website promoting the formation of a national political party because — speaking of easily duped — the GOP and Dems are too cozy with corporate interests:
This is good news for the nation. Both the Republican and the Democrat party have been serving the private corporations for a long time. Everyone sees what has happened to this country are [sic] both their watches; they have failed. Leaving, or not running again is best for the USA. The ststaes [sic] need to fill out the proper forms and certify the TEA polictical [sic] party in their state. Do it, stop talking and blogging about it, actually do it and register a few TEA candidates for 2010. The time to act is now, not later. Returning to the American Constitution is correct, turning away from corporation bylaws is correct, watching these unAmerican kickbackers leave in [sic] good for the country. Jorge Lovenguth TEA Florida
At least one state group has made it official. Last November, right-wingers in Florida filled out the paperwork to register the TBP as an official political party in the state.
Around the same time, organizers announced that Tea Baggers would be holding a convention, Feb. 4 – 6, in Nashville. As it stands now, Sarah Palin has agreed to address the mob as the keynote speaker for the closing-night banquet. (There will be bibs.)
Palin is, of course, most famous for quitting and/or not showing up, and one pro-Tea Bag insider (he says he believes that “Palin and the grassroots Tea Party efforts are forces for good”) reports that Palin will be paid as much as $100,000 for the gig.
This calls into question the legitimacy of the Tea Baggers’ meeting in Nashville. Is it a step toward the birth of a national racist political party, or is it just a for-profit mass meeting to shake down America’s most hapless half-wits — a political version of an Amway convention?
If it is the former, it represents the first time a putative front-runner presidential candidate required payment to address her party. If so, it also shines a light on the astroturfing of this movement. If the Tea Baggers were a legitimate grass roots movement, they could have easily invited Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., a whackjob easily as looney-tunes as Palin, who would have spoken for free.
Writing back in November, even the Tea Bagger sympathizer is suspicious about the real purpose of the convention:
The schedule mentions break-out and discussion sessions with no topics, no list of moderators, etc. It’s unclear what anyone will be doing in Nashville for three days other than waiting for Sarah Palin. On top of that, the planning looks to be very poorly done.
The conference sessions, whatever they may be, end at 12:30 PM Saturday afternoon. There’s nothing happening again until the banquet at 6 PM that night. In most cases, all that will achieve is driving up participation costs due to the need for another night in a hotel. Attendees traveling any distance to the event would be all but forced to travel home on a Sunday. That may be fine if one is looking to maximize revenue for the area and some hotels. But it doesn’t seem to take Tea Party goers interests in mind at all.
But if the past is prologue with Palin, the controversy over whether she’s being paid to speak to her followers will soon be shoved aside for the eternal question about her: Will she show up, or will she quit the event before Feb. 6?
Problem is, the tea baggers are leaning WAY too far to the right.
Grow some brains, modify your views and talk some sense and maybe you’ll gain some traction, teabaggers.
I believe that Palin is in it for the money. She was paid $200,000 for a speech in China, at least $100,000 for going to the MOA in Minnesota, at least $100,000 for a speech at some right to life event in Indiana, and she will be paid at least $50,000 for speaking at some bowling alley in TX. I see nothing wrong with her being paid for her time, but having to be paid to speak to people who may be her potential constituents is crass. These are the people she expects to vote for her if she runs for president in 2012. It just doesn’t make much sense. The cheapest ticket is @ $349.00, more if a participant wants to attend the dinner event. It just doesn’t seem as if Palin or the organizers have thought about anyone’s pocketbook, except their own. IMHO, it is disgraceful to take so much money from one’s own party members to attend such a poorly organized event. At least some of the conservatives are beginning to speak out about having to pay her to speak at any event she attends.
The reason Palin gives for not attending CPAC has to do with the ethics of one of the organizers. For her to use ethics as a reason for not attending any event is rich. The Branchflower Investigation found her guilty of ethics violations , but she immediately set out on a course to lie and distort the report’s conclusion when she was on the campaign trail in 2009. I read the report. Steven Branchflower concluded that she was guilty of ethics violations for using state government resources and personnel to try to get her former brother-in-law Mike Wooten fired from his job as an Alaska State Trooper. Wooten was once married to Palin’s sister Molly. Branchflower further concluded that Todd Palin, an unelected individual, was deeply involved in state business. Todd would sit in on meetings involving state issues in which sensitive information was discussed, and he was involved in trying to get Trooper Wooten fired.
Let’s take bets now on how many people they claim are in attendance. Let’s see, the world’s population is 6,795,200,000. So I’ll start the bidding with…7,119,500,000.
I’m going with 7,119,499,999 — on the assumption Palin won’t show.
The Douchebag Movement lead by the Tea Bag Patriots could easily become a major national political party provided that they can suck in the entire knowledge available keynote speaker Sarah “The Uninformed” Palin. She should pay people to listen to her not the other way around. Dumb is as dumb does. If the Douchebag Movement wants to get out of the dog house it needs to look somewhere else for knowledge not from the bottom of the knowledge chain.
If the Tea Bag Party starts off tripping over their own feet it’s their own fault. Look at their pick for the convention key note speaker! Was I the only one that saw Sarah Palin fail miserably on network television during her interviews in 2008? Wake up people. She doesn’t know more than a house cat.
John McCain aide Steve Schmidt said in a “60 Minutes” interview that Sarah was not accurate in her remarks during the campaign. “There were numerous instances that she said things that were — that were not accurate that, ultimately, the campaign had to deal with. And that opened the door to criticism that she was being untruthful and inaccurate. And I think that that is something that continues to this day,” he said.
Do any of the TeaBaggers realize what “teabagging” is? I mean some of them might have actually peformed the teabagging sex act at some point in their lives and don’t even realize what it’s called and why.
I know my comment will probably be flagged but Sarah Palin would suck a shaggy bear’s dick for a buck! She is nothing but a right wing whore!
Why would we flag you, j davis? Did you say something out of line? I didn’t notice.
It’s a little offensive to bears, but we’ll let it pass.
Love that outfit! LMAO!
And they want to know why everybody thinks they are racists? Look at the kkk outfit she is wearing and you can’t tell me, that outfit is not trying to send a message. Maybe with her lack of knowledge, she didn’t know what the kkk outfits looked like. Probably too cold for those southern boys to venture way up north and since she didn’t tell Katie, that she reads Southern Living…. well there you have it, no exposure to the kkk. LMAO.
That doctored photo is funny as hell. Who cares if she got paid $100g’s. When you aquire the status she has you get to enjoy things of that nature. If only she was VP now. Maybe we would be on the path to economic recovery. Instead we ri8dicule her for not being in office to fix our nations problems. next election you people need to go vote!
Supreme Court – Multinational Corporations do “Victory” Dance.
The Robert’s U.S. Supreme Court decision changing the interpretation of the Bill of Rights from meaning “We the people” to mean “We the multinational corporations” on January 19, 2010 will live as a day of infamy in the history of our (what was our) Constitution. In one day, the Supreme Court has set themselves up as the “Fathers of a New U.S Constitution” and moved Americans from a “Representative Democracy” of individuals to a “Corporate Plutocracy” representing the rich and powerful.
Congress is in the bag, of course, and will not move to overrule Robert’s Supreme Court. The time for Justice and action passed by when impeaching Bush for War Crimes and nullifying his appointed (planted) neoconservative Supreme Court Justice appointees was possible. What George W. Bush and the Trilateral Commission blew-away of our American Democracy and Independents “Free (sic) Trade” in 10 years; it will take at least 200 years of struggle (probably 500 years) and millions of American lives to regain.
Today, the seemingly driver-less steam roller of Bush right-wing “your either with us or you are the enemy” unethical opportunist (no one can be identified as the driver) are on an itinerary. Follow the money, mass media propaganda, slander attacks, bullying threats, CASH-root organizations (most Tea Baggers) and their Totalitarian agenda become apparent. 2010 is going to be one ugly year. The Dupes August assault on the Capital and our Constitution will be spectacular; followed by “drill baby drill” and mass “exportation” of Natural Resources to pay National debt.
The 2012 doomsday propaganda is right-wing Totalitarian Trilateral Commission (New World Order) propaganda, designed on fear and destiny resignation to render you hopeless with no willpower to resist as multinational corporation bankers take away your (our) American Freedom, Independence and Democracy.