”US press coverage has usually cast the Tea Party as an authentic expression of popular anger against Washington insiders. Anthony DiMaggio’s new book, Rise of the Tea Party, shatters such myths, demonstrating that the Tea Party has never been a genuine social movement or political outsider but rather an elite-dominated group that was closely linked to the Republican establishment from its inception three years ago. The Tea Party’s goal has been to aid a struggling Republican Party in its efforts to further roll back the social safety net and funnel more wealth and power from workers to the rich.” – Full Story is here.
I was living in DC when the conservative think tanks created the Tea Party, it was wild seeing such a controlled mind game come to life before my eyes, it was like watching a movie set of hudreds of thousands of people working in lock step, starting with an 8am meeting each day and not ending until Fox News did their early Am show the next morning, chipping away day after day, month after month, year after year, orchestrated like 500 fine tuned race cars, with each piston on each car cranking at the exact same second.
The GOP started ramping up the think tanks by the hundreds of thousands way back starting in 2002, they were WELL aware of the policies they were going to pass and the probable negative fall out from those policies (from the elderly drug bill to Iraq to gutting federal agencies like NASA, FDA, CDC and FEMA and because of what all they broke during the GOP control they were forced into trying to pull off the largest PR rebranding in the history of Earth (it worked). They literally had to rebuild the GOP to rebound from losing in 2006 and 2008 so Heritage Foundation, Focus on the Family, Murdoch, Rove, etc… starting taking big chunks of money from Church coffers too start scaring the sheep and to cover the other said of the PR move conservative think tanks and greedy freaks like the Koch Brothers, FreedomWorks and United Health came into the fold due to the massive escalation of drug and insurance prices and the Democrats probable eagerness to get that cost under control asap.
It’s sad that some people that originally joined the Tea party were diverted into an entirely different direction. By the time the 2010 elections came along Palin was getting $75k a day to ride around in a million dollar tour bus and the only issues being discussed were destroying socialist Obama’s government takeover of health care and he’s a Mulsim and not an American. And then an hour of cheap shots about Nancy Pelosi amnd San Franscisco. I went to many rallies and it was the biggest dog and pony show in American history, especially when guys like Glen Beck were brought into the “rallies.” LOL
If anyone questions whether or not the tea party was a “grass roots effort of the people” or a corporate controlled mind fuck all you need to do is look at how police arrived and attended the tea party events, even when tea baggers were told to bring their weapons the police STILL didn’t show up in riot gear, whereas during the Occupy movement we saw police tear gassing folks sitting in circles singing folks songs.
The “machine” that operates the tea party is obviously very close to the local Governments from coast to coast and law enforcement, there was absolutely zoo risk of anyone becoming “anti establishment” at a tea party rally even when tea party “patriots” were told to bring their guns.
That’s because 99% of the folks attending were subjected to months and months of conditioning via the conservative news and by the time the 2010 election rallies came along these tea party voters were tipping their cups full of corporate kol-ad for Republicans that had nothing in common with them, they were (and still are) reduced to mindless sheep and thinking for themselves didn’t cross anyones minds and if it did, the corporate sheep would quickly call them an “outsider!!” or a “liberal impostor!!! and they’d be removed from the rallies, most of them were actually Ron Paul supporters wanting the conversation to go back to ending the Federal Reserve.
Notice how the Loch Brothers, Chamber of Commerce and FreedomWorks, Focus on the Family, Heritage Foundation pumped TONS of dough into the tea party to move the speeches away from brining up the Fed.
Thanks to the Citizens United decision hundreds of millions from Saudi oil tycoons came into the US backing tea party candidates who not only would ignore the fed conversations, keep the GW tax cuts on place (which gives tax incentives to companies to LEAVE the U but also assured big oil that they’d stay anti-alternative fuel to protect big oil and as well as terror cells, ditto for the opposition to Prop 19 in California, 75% of the funding against the prop came from mexican drug cartels into 501c’s.
Look at how all of the greedy evil pricks like Dick Armey, Newt, Trump, The Kochs, Rove, etc…. make their money, through 501c’s and anyone in any country on Earth can donate whatever amount they want and they’re covered in the view of the highest US Court.
Democracy is all but dead in the USA.
Heck, the Koch Brothers and United Health took so much control over the tea party events that they were paying a PR firm a HUGE chunk of dough to create cheap looking signs to hand to folks at the “rallies” with the correct messages on them, mostly built around the myth that Obama was behind the bailouts, Government takeover of everything imaginable and “Obama-care was socialism at it’s worst and a job killer, then they were paying specific photos to tae shots of those signs to make sure the corporate message was front and center in the “news.”
– Anonymous
