Hunt: Tea Party May Be Weakened 2012 Force

Source: Bloomberg News

The Tea Party movement was a potent political insurgency in U.S. elections last year, and it is a major presence in Washington and state capitols today. It may have a tougher time as an entrenched force next year.

The grassroots, anti-government, conservative movement provided the energy and enthusiasm for the huge Republican gains last November that gave the party control of the House of Representatives. It was driven by the financial meltdown of 2008, the resulting government involvement in the economy, ballooning budget deficits and a visceral dislike of President Barack Obama.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-12/splintered-tea-party-may-be-weakened-2012-force-albert-r-hunt.html

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It's as grassroots as astro turf

Funded by Fascists that don't want to pay taxes to fund the well being of the nation.

The debt they rave on about, was created by Bushy<"Reagan proved deficits don't
matter">-Cheney tax cuts.

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Who funded the Tea Potty <bowel> movement?

Ans: Big Corporate Money Greed; same ones whose Right Wing Propaganda Machine
funded the majority of 2010 election ads.

Time for a Paul Revere wake up the country-side about what's happening to our
democracy!

as they were only needed for the 2010 election,
but now, the only thing that they would do, if allowed, would be to help nominate
a Republican that cannot win a GE....

So you will start hearing about the Tea Party's demise (starting now),
as to allow the Republican party to choose Romney or Huntsman (the 2 most electable Republicans)
as their nominee without being hindered.

Note: The Tea Party were always a small minority of the Republican party, and so their views
were never held widely anyways.....only by fools who were so anti-Obama, that nothing else
(policy-wise) mattered.

The candidates that will be mostly hurt by move will be those who have been ass-kissing the Tea Party, but it will also hurt Pres. Obama, if the loonies are taken out of circulation!

Yes, they did help get some of the "nuts" elected, and now they are going to have to explain why some that they helped get elected are trying to destroy states like Wisconsin, Maine, and Florida! How can they claim they want "smaller" government, when governors in these states, and many others, are acting like dictators by passing laws that hurt the average person, and help the corporations and the rich? How will they explain trying to balance budgets on the backs of teachers, firemen, police, nurses, seniors and even children while giving huge tax breaks to the rich?

If one would check out the numbers in states were republicans won control I think they would find that huge numbers of democrats didn't bother to vote, and the republicans won by very small margins. It was so much that the tea party had so much power as it was the democrats just didn't get out and vote, and we all know what that got us!

you got to see the true enemy's of this country Paul Ryan and anyone that would be stupid enough to follow him and the writings of Ayn Rand. When evil shows it's face good things happen because of it. Never forget the Tea Party and what a bunch of stupid people have done and this country will prosper.

It's the Big Corporate Billionaire Bosses that don't want to pay their taxes!

Of course, in the US, these "populists" also have the race of the president to motivate them.

"The Tea Party movement never has been monolithic, always replete with factions: the dominant anti-government conservatives, social-issues advocates, anti-immigration forces, libertarians and others." - The right always pushes the "us vs. them" meme whether the "them" are immigrants, women, gays or racial/ethnic minorities.

“A major divide is between a smaller group that says focus on fiscal conservatism and a larger group that includes social conservatives,” says Judson Phillips, of Tea Party Nation, who is disdainful of the fiscal issues-only crowd. ... Phillips once suggested the solution to illegal immigration was to take a “planeload” of undocumented workers and “dump them in Somalia.” He also was a devotee of the anti-Obama birther movement.

Even when it comes to economic issues, there are divisions over priorities between the pro-business elements and the conservative economic populists. Charles and David Koch, who own a huge energy conglomerate, are important, if often secret, funders of the movement. Some local groups, however, express outrage at corporate subsidies.

Let's hope they mimic the fate of the Know Nothing Party which they (perhaps unintentionally) seem to have patterned themselves after. They peaked in 1854 and disintegrated by 1856.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants (teabaggers worry more about Hispanic and Muslim immigrants, of course), who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success.

In spring 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston, Salem, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia was editor Robert T. Conrad, soon revealed as a Know Nothing; he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays, and to appoint only native-born Americans to office. He won by a landslide. ... They were still an unofficial movement with no centralized organization. The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings that they formed officially as a political party called the American Party ...

The party declined rapidly in the North in 1855 and 1856.

The platform of the American Party called for, among other things:

Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
Restricting political office to native-born Americans of English and/or Scottish lineage and Protestant persuasion.
Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
Restricting public school teacher positions to Protestants.
Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools.
Restricting the sale of liquor.
Restricting the use of languages other than English.

Other than restricting the sale of liquor, these policies would fit well with modern teabaggers if you changed the target of immigration restrictions to Hispanic and Muslim countries.

Media need to stop pretending a nationawide political party sprung into existence instantly and spontaneously, as a grass roots movement with no financial backing or other assistance.


"A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

More: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer