Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Frank Rich’s Tea Party Lies
  TEA Parties piece by Warner Todd Huston

Frank Rich’s column(1) in the New York Times opinion section today was at the very least two things: Lies and the rehashed work of another writer. But it was also a third thing and that third thing was cover for his buddy in the Oval office and for the hard-core left-wing agenda he’s trying to force down our throats. Rich lent that cover by desperately trying to discredit “the Tea Party” as a funded-from-the-top, sham of a movement. The truth is, though, that “the Tea Party” is not funded by shadowy, rich right-wingers. It isn’t funded at all in most cases.

First of all most of what Rich wrote was but rehashed words from Jane Mayer’s slam against the Koch Brothers of New York. Three quarters of what Rich penned really came from Mayer’s New Yorker piece on the philanthropists. So, big demerits for Frank Rich for simply appropriating Mayer’s piece.

But the real point of Rich’s piece was to pile onto Mayer’s slanted attack piece with some echoed slams against the Tea Party movement in order to discredit it all. Rich is desperate to make the movement seem like a marionette show with rich “sugar daddies” funding it and controlling it from the top.

“There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising,“ Rich says of the Tea Party events, “the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the ‘death panel’ warm-up acts of last summer.“

Rich then rehashes Mayer’s examples of where the Koch brothers put their money in the form of Americans For Prosperity and Freedom Works, two nationwide, very active, and successful conservative advocacy groups.

Now, it is absolutely true that both AFP and Freedom Works have had the cash to put on large events in Washington D.C. and other cities. But it is not true that either of these groups controls and runs “the Tea Party” movement from above. In fact, both AFP and Freedom Works were sort of caught unawares when the Tea Parties started forming spontaneously all across the nation in early 2009. Both had to rush to try and tap into that passion. Neither was initially prepared for the amazing energy that the Tea Party has unleashed.

Yes, these two organizations have held many events. But the number of evens that they have held, funded and had a hand in operating are but a small number compared to the hundreds if not thousands of Tea Party groups that started up all on their own, all with their own funding and members, all without the bankrolling of a “sugar daddy” named Koch.

To say that the Koch brothers, or Dick Armey, or Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips control the Tea Party movement is simply a lie. In fact, these advocacy groups are like the 80-pound child taking his 200-pound dog for a walk. The kid may seem like the owner, but it is the big dog in control of where the walk ends up heading! The Tea Party is the 200-pound dog that neither AFP, nor Freedom Woks can control. These groups are the 80-pound kid holding on for dear life, trying to stay relevant in the minds of the Tea Party movement.

And Rich makes a second mistake—or calculation—in addressing the Tea Party movement. He keeps saying “the Tea Party” as if it is a single entity. It is not. I have been interacting with, writing about, and attending rallies with various Tea Party groups since the first days of the movement. There is one thing that holds true throughout. They are not connected one to the other in any meaningful way.

But you see, if Rich and his anti-traditional American ideologues can make it appear as if “the Tea Party” is run from the back pocket of the Koch brothers, it is easier to discredit as a false front set up by secretive, shadowy forces. If it were all a Koch enterprise, now that is a strawman that Frank Rich could knock down. But if the Tea Party is understood as millions of individual Americans following their patriotic hearts, that is an impossible image to discredit.

So you can see why Rich and his cohorts are desperate to make it “the Tea Party” instead of revealing the truth.

No, there is no “the Tea Party.” There are hundreds of groups, all unconnected, all operating on their own hook with their own ideas, rules and hierarchies. In fact, this is the one draw back with the movement. There is at this time no reliable way to get them directed into a pointed and effective political force.                                           

But extreme left-wingers like Frank Rich are desperate to discredit this true American movement. He wants to make you Tea Party members into dupes, fools, and chumps led by “radical right-wingers.“ He needs to make of you the useful idiots to the moneyed elites.

But I’ll guarantee you if you ask 99 percent of all Tea Party groups if they are being bankrolled by anyone they’ll look at you and simply laugh. They are sure to say they WISHED that someone would bankroll them because as it is now they bankroll themselves and in this horrid Obama economy any outside “sugar daddy” would be welcome news!

The truth is the dreaded Koch brothers are not bankrolling and controlling the Tea Party. Neither is Dick Armey or Tim Phillips. But Obama’s mindnumbed minions, useful idiots like Frank Rich, are desperate to discount the patriotic efforts of millions of individual citizens who have become disgusted by Obamaism. It is because these millions of individual patriotic American citizens are a threat to their Euro-lite, left-wing agenda.

The left is frightened of you, folks. A look at the venom spewed at Glenn Back’s Restoring America rally is proof of the unhinged hatred that the left has for you. They cannot stand the idea that you are about to put the kabosh on their decades old plan to eliminate the America we grew up with and replace it with one unrecognizable to a patriot.

And that is what Frank Rich tried so hard to do with his editorial. Sad for him he is whistling past the graveyard.

Warner Todd Huston

1) The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Posted by Warner Todd Huston on 8/31/10

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