Final Proof The Tea Party Was Founded As A Bogus AstroTurf Movement

[applegrove]

Final Proof The Tea Party Was Founded As A Bogus AstroTurf Movement

by Eric Zuesse at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/final-proof-the-tea-party_b_4136722.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

"SNIP...............................


This analysis, promoting class warfare by aristocrats against everyone else (i.e., against the people who rely on those social programs), was developed by DeMint at greater length soon afterward in a lecture on May 8, 2001 at the Heritage Foundation, an organization that had been established in the late 1970s by Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors, and a few other dedicated True Believing aristocrats. Coors, in fact, was the head of Ronald Reagan's "kitchen cabinet" before Reagan became the U.S. President and obtained an official cabinet. As I have documented recently, the Kochs started in 2002 to pour millions into the Heritage Foundation, and this money funnel to Heritage continued up till very recently, when Jim DeMint was basically running the Tea Party from his perch there, and was even choosing the people, like Ted Cruz, to be funded into Congress so as to carry out the "Tea Party" operation. The Kochs and their friends have heavily funded the "electoral" campaigns of all of these operatives - including of DeMint himself, while he was in Congress, and now atop Heritage.

A much more extensive historical account of the origins of the "Tea Party Movement" can be found in three earlier reports that I did.

This is "democracy" in today's United States. The agenda of the Republican Supreme Court in Citizens United, etc., is to increase this "democracy" by removing the limits on campaign finance. Instead of one person one vote, we are increasingly moving toward one dollar one vote, which will leave the 1 percent of who own almost everything owning the government too. But is that democracy? Or is it fascism? And do Republicans and other conservatives know the difference between the two? And do non-conservatives even care whether they do? Because that's what we're getting more of, even if Republicans, or even liberals, don't care about it - and maybe even because they don't care about it.

Many journalists care so little about it so that, for example, Jacob Weisberg, the Chairman and Editor in Chief of the Slate Group, in a October 13, 2011 article titled "Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: Compare and Contrast," opened: "The Tea Party movement began on Feb. 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, the CNBC financial journalist who reports from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, ranted against the government bailing out homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages." He portrayed both groups as grassroots movements. He closed: "As spontaneous, unpredictable movements, ... they have more in common than meets the eye." Some in the press, such as Rupert Murdoch, cooperate knowingly with the Kochs and their friends. Others do it because ... because what? Is there an excuse for that? Should it even be called by the name "journalism"? Or perhaps instead: "propaganda."





...............................SNIP"

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R

[Cha]

2. Thank you, applegrove!

[freshwest]

3. Well done, will share. Thanks, applegrove.

[applegrove]

4. You're always welcome Freshwest.

[cantbeserious]

5. Kick And Recommend

eom

[loudsue]

6. I wish this kind of info could go viral.

I wish all those tea-talibaners could see how badly they've been manipulated.

[gopiscrap]

11. I wish it could go viral also!

[blue14u]

7. K & R applegrove

This is an excellent read!! tu

[sakabatou]

8. Many of us knew it was an astroturf group way back.

[applegrove]

9. I heard it way back on the DU too but

we are all on different learning curves and I like this guy's reporting so I put it up tonight.

[Brother Buzz]

15. Way back on the DU we saw it starting with Sal Russo's astroturf 'Recall Gray Davis Committee'

Then it was Sal Russo's 'Move America forward' ("Cindy Sheehan, you do not speak for us" tour), then it was Sal Russo's Tea Party Express.

This is the genesis of only one stripe of the astroturf teabaggery shit, but it merits a study:

Armed with a massive E-mail list, a bus with six to eight people, and a secret conduit to fund your PAC, you can move idiots.

Here's a piece on Sal Russo, King of astroturf (it's dated, but still pertinent):

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/support-the-war/content?oid=45067

[Blue_Tires]

14. +1000

[gopiscrap]

10. K and R

totally agree with this article

[ailsagirl]

12. kick

[HomerRamone]

13. kick

[HereSince1628]

16. If you don't understand that legislators are middlemen rather than political leaders

you don't understand the existential threat activist billionaires represent to government of, by, and for the people of the United States.

[Blue Owl]

17. AstroTurf -- made for treading on

[Pretzel_Warrior]

18. let's keep focused on this--the real enemies of functioning country

[Warpy]

19. Giving this a swift kick

More people out there need to see it.

And yes, the Tea Party was created out of a combination of Astroturf emails and the hysterical rantings of Glenn Beck, carefully orchestrated to reinforce each other.

It only took full root when the whole business was also reinforced by crooked preachers. I think that's why it never succeeded beyond a few meetings in bars here in NM.