IS THE "TEA PARTY" REALLY A POPULIST MOVEMENT?

I think this isn't anything new, it's just a very successful brand on reactionary politics. Those definitely aren't new.

Kenneth P. Vogel


Kenneth P. Vogel – who goes by "Ken" when he's not in ostentatious reporter mode – tracks the confluence of money, politics and influence for POLITICO.

He has covered politics and government at all levels, from small-town cop shops and school boards to statehouses, Congress and the presidential campaign trail, traveling during the 2008 race with the campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.

Before joining POLITICO prior to its 2007 launch, Vogel reported for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., The Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. and The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

He spent most of 2006 learning about the U.S. Congress from the inside through an American Political Science Association fellowship that let him work on the staffs of two House committees. He's won awards from the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

He’s analyzed politics on CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio and radio and television stations around the country.

He grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

However, I believe it will give you an understanding of the historical roots of the public discontent with the probably benign and at least well-intended attempts of recent U.S. governments to extend modern social welfare programs and their associated controls through the country.

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

Based on the various reports that we've seen, and aside from a few shouting matches, Saturday's "Restoring Honor" rally appeared to go off without major incident. Though those moving into a dorm room at George Washington University while tens of thousands of Tea Partiers were plodding their way to the National Mall, could be excused if they didn't feel like things were going so smoothly. The GW Hatchet has this report about Saturday's move-in process, during which many students and parents dodged the angry mobs while shifting those steamer trunks and cheap microwaves into the dorms.

But The Hatchet's report also includes this surreal graf, which was far too odd to not share:

Though the rally was a mostly peaceful gathering, two rally attendees got into a heated argument with an employee at the GW Deli over the D.C. bag tax, which ultimately resulted in the tea party member throwing a sandwich in the deli employee's face. The GW Deli declined to comment on the issue.

C'mon, now. Who throws a sandwich?

All told, I suppose that some crowded moving conditions and a sandwich casualty are far from the worst things that could have happened with so many combustible ideologies forced into a small area.

Some of the biggest foundations behind the conservative movement — Koch and Bradley — have signaled their wariness about affiliating with the tea party, even as Koch doles out hundreds of thousands — and likely millions — of dollars to one of the main Washington nonprofit groups assisting tea partiers around the country: Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by the family’s most politically active member, David Koch.

On the eve of the April 15 Tax Day tea party rallies in Washington, a spokeswoman for the various Koch foundations and companies issued a statement distancing the Kochs from the tea parties and another major Washington-based movement organizer, FreedomWorks, which was formed after a 2003 rift within a Koch-funded predecessor group that also yielded Americans for Prosperity.

According to Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia, “no funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.”

Nor have any Koch interests contributed to Tea Party Patriots or a number of other prominent tea party groups, Cohlmia later told POLITICO.

Likewise, the president of the Lynde and Henry Bradley Foundation, which grant reports show has contributed $195,000 to Americans for Prosperity and $270,000 to FreedomWorks between the time of their split and the end of last year, said his group’s focus will remain on policy research and development, rather than grass-roots mobilization.

“We are not directly funding their tea party activities,” foundation P—resident Mike Grebe told POLITICO. “We’re funding public education programs run by Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, both of which are very active in the tea party movement, but our monitoring of that would be indirectly, as opposed to having direct contacts with tea party people.”


For its part, FreedomWorks has been working for years to replace large institutional donors, primarily corporations, with a broad network of smaller grass-roots donors — an effort that got a major boost when the group emerged as a tea party leader, said its president, Matt Kibbe.

And the Democrats will be helping them by saying scathing and dismissive things about the Tea Party and its candidates. The Greek mythological figure Antaeus won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength. The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.

Commentators who explain smugly that O’Donnell’s position on masturbation (that it is a selfish, solitary act) is contradicted by her Ayn Rand-like attack on collectivism, or who wax self-righteous about Paladino’s comparing Sheldon Silver to Hitler and promising to wield a baseball bat in Albany, or who laugh at Sharron Angle for being in favor of Scientology (she denies it) and against fluoridation and the Department of Education, are doing these candidates a huge favor. They are saying, in effect, these people are stupid, they’re jokes; and the implication (sometimes explicitly stated) is that anyone who takes them the least bit seriously doesn’t get the joke and is stupid, too.

We the people hear this and know who is being talked about, and react with anger: “Don’t presume to tell me what to think and whom to vote for just because you have more degrees than I do. I don’t know much about these people but if you guys are against them, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

And if they don’t exactly say that, the recently unveiled “Pledge to America” says it for them in its money quote: “An arrogant out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites make decisions, issue mandates, and enact laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.” The many grow and become more robust every time a self-satisfied voice from the political or media establishment dumps on their spokespersons. Mayor Bloomberg may be right when he says (in explaining his endorsement of Cuomo over Paladino) that “anger is not a governing strategy,” but it sure is a campaign strategy and it is one the Tea Party and the Republicans it has tutored know how to execute.

What to do? It is easier, of course, to say what not to do, and what not to do is what Democrats and their allies are prone to do — poke gleeful fun at the lesser mortals who say and believe strange things and betray an ignorance of history.

That won’t work. Better, perhaps, to take a cue from Hercules, who figured out the source of Antaeus’s strength and defeated him by embracing him in a bear hug, lifting him up high, and preventing him from touching the ground. Don’t sling mud down in the dust where your opponents thrive. Instead, engage them as if you thought that the concerns they express (if not their forms of expression) are worthy of serious consideration, as indeed they are. Lift them up to the level of reasons and evidence and see how they fare in the rarified air of rational debate where they just might suffer the fate of Antaeus.

It’s at least worth a try, because the way things are going we may soon be looking at Senator O’Donnell, Governor Paladino and, down the road a bit, President Palin.

The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.

The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims,

My opinion is that the main force behind the increasingly widespread opposition to incumbents in political power is the growing impression among many Americans that the political classes of both parties are at worst interested only in the furtherance of their own political careers and power, and, at the very best, chronically unable to forsee the bad side effects of the increasingly intrusive legislation they seek to pass

what's happening isn't working thing, but a lot of the candidates look like complete tools, especially Palin