Conservatives Hope Tea Will Spur the Second Coming of the GOP

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

Everyone seems ready to proclaim the death of the GOP. But conservative ideologues have managed to get a bunch of people all worked up about this tea party phenomenon, while pushing policies that would be detrimental to the overwhelming majority of the people going to these "parties."

The main item tea party organizers are rallying behind (because they don't want to associate themselves with the racist, gun-toting, "Obama was born in Kenya" crowd that is promoting these protests) is taxation.

Now -- just as a refresher -- let's recall that in his short time in office, Obama signed a tax cut for 95 percent of American people, the biggest middle class tax cut in history. If you watch videos of the tea party protests that have already occurred, I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I did: at least 95 percent of the people at these protests, if not more, earn less than $250,000 a year.

As usual, Paul Krugman made quick work of economic hypocrisy when he addressed the tea party phenomenon in his The New York Times column today:

Thus, President Obama is being called a "socialist" who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

Thing is, these tea party organizers are smart. They know what sounds and looks good (at least most of the time... Hey, it's not their fault that they didn't know what teabagging generally refers to). They've done their best to not only disassociate themselves with the militia members and hate-filled fringe groups while still getting them to participate, but also they've also removed partisanship and the appearance of sponsorship.

But have no doubt about it, this is an orchestrated event, even if organizers don‘t want it to appear that way. Think Progress also points out the Astroturf nature of this "movement," noting the lobbyists and large conservative think tanks involved in the events (Fire Dog Lake has a good breakdown, too).

Who better to respond to this charge than Eric Odom, the organizer of DontGo.com, the aggregator of all this tea party commotion. Luckily, he has just the Web site to respond to such criticisms. It's called ThinkProgressWatch.com. As Odom explains, his Web site "was set up to expose the Leftist Propaganda site called Think Progress. Our goal is to shed light and expose their anti-free market agenda."

Odom must have been itching to have Think Progress attack the tea party movement. Think Progress Watch posted a retort that doesn't actually refute anything that Think Progress wrote about the tea parties, but instead says that Think Progress is being hypocritical because they are funded by think tank The Center for American Progress.

The thing is, Think Progress is totally open about their affiliation with the center, proudly displaying a link to the Center for American Progress Action Fund in the margin of each of their Web pages. The tea party movement, on the other hand, proclaims itself to be grassroots and driven by the people.

In response to a similar attack on Think Progress by Jon Henke, Matthew Yglesias writes:

I don't understand how this argument is supposed to work. CAP & CAPAF aren't Astroturf outfits because we're not pretending to be a grassroots organization. The Tea Party "movement" is a sham because it's pretending to be a spontaneous grassroots movement. Obviously, ThinkProgress is not a spontaneously grassroots movement. It's a hierarchical organization that describes itself as "a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund" that "seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies."

Odom is not, as far as I know, a registered lobbyist. Instead, he is a PR guy. He does consulting in search engine optimization/Internet strategy as well as political consulting. And who better to market an Astroturf campaign than a right-leaning public relations 2.0 entrepreneur? In January he announced his new company, Strategic Activism, LLC would be a "partnering up with some of the most talented eActivists on the right."

Seems to me Odom is another person trying to capitalize on political frustration. He'll surely get some clients out of this, and he's already made some money.

Further, Odom tries his hardest to disassociate the "movement" with the GOP by boasting in a press release about how he turned down RNC Chair Michael Steele's request to address tea baggers on Wednesday. Steele denied ever asking to speak at the event, making for even more press than Odom got out of the release in the first place. Score!

Odom ends a post about how the tea party movement is not tied to the GOP with this question (lifted from the movie "Network" and all in bold), "What part of 'we're just Americans and we're mad as hell' do they not understand?"

Seems that anger is one of the few things this movement will stand up for. And in that they have plenty of company. For example, one reader commented this hateful diatribe in response to Odom's blog entry:

Don't fool yourselves. These events are republican [sic] through and through. As an independent, I was disgusted at being handed pro-gun and pro-wall street signs to hold up. I'm looking to throw the wall streeters [sic] and bankers in jail and get some death penalties for most of them at [sic] outright traitors.

Instead, there was also a bunch of NRA nutbags at the teabag party I attended in St. Louis. I took my two daughters and left. I could never support a non-white president, so I can't support that guy currently in office. I won't betray my race like so many did in 2008. (Note, however, that black people voted 98% in favor of the black candidate!)

Despite Odom's courageous rejection of the GOP's completely unpopular leader, there will be plenty of Republicans at Tax Day tea party events.

As of last week, the list of Republicans speaking at tea bag events had grown to well over a dozen (though Fox News and Odom have grown fond of saying only two Republicans have supported the parties). Newt Gingrich even made a commercial promoting the Tax Day tea parties, recorded with tacit approval from Odom's organization.

Whether or not they're associated covertly with the Republican Party, it's clear that tea baggers are on the conservative side of the aisle. A rash of parties took place around the country on Feb. 27, to varying degrees of success (at least one was marred by safety concerns for local media and angry scream fests). There was one here in Chicago, of which you can see video here.

If you watch around the 1:20 mark of the video of the Chicago event, you'll see a confrontation where tea baggers insist that the whole thing is set up by the GOP:

"Screw the Republicans! Third Party!" one man yells back at a speaker who suggests that the protesters bring out of "retirement" Republicans who have lost their way.

Moments later he's surrounded by other participants, who try to calm him down.

"This whole event was organized by a group called 'Don't Go,' which is the Republican version of MoveOn.org," one of them tells the angry protester.

"We're trying to recapture the party," says another participant.

Rachel Maddow recently proclaimed this movement to be "the only real sign of energy, the only real sign of life on the political right... the future of the Republican Party."

Are conservatives really going to rely on tea to revive their party? The Republican Party might not be dead, but they're starting to sound like witch doctors.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS