I’ve recently decided to look back on the history of the tea party. Its kind of strange and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the Republicans as a united party.
On Dec. 2007 there was a grass-roots money bomb for Ron Paul scheduled on the historic date as a modern “tea party.” Paul’s campaign finance manager tried to get the organizers to drop their plan because they needed the money sooner & the money bombs seemed to dry up weekly contributions in anticipation of the big event days. Supporters wanted to stick to the symbolic anti-tax protest, and that was pretty much the end of cooperation between the campaign & the grass roots.
So anyway, it wasn’t too long after that the primary results were coming in and people started drifting off toward their 2nd & 3rd choice candidates. Obama ended up getting the next biggest ‘money bomb’ in about March of ’08, and it was organized by many of the same social networks that put Ron Paul on the front pages. So in a lotta ways, the original tea party already broke for Obama. (If you didn’t see Obama’s campaign appeals to libertarians & progressives, well, you were as tunnel blind as we were)
It looks like February 2009 is when the tea party meme resurfaced, when Rick Santelli got angry at the government for promoting reckless financial behavior.
Oddly enough, no one noticed when Santelli was also ranting and raving in Sept & Oct ’08 about how corrupt & destructive Bush’s original bankster bailout was in the first place.
Shortly thereafter, Republican national marketing groups got busy organizing the Apr 15 tea party protests. Glenn Beck got a whole bunch of crazies together for his 9-11 thing.
So in the end, I don’t see much of any influence of Ron Paul or Santelli on the modern tea party concept. Most of the protesters here are nationalist-nativists with a wicked strong socially conservative streak.
Remember, the RP group of the Republican party is about 10%, the nativist/nationalists are another 40%, evangelicals another 40% (with strong overlap), and the country club types are probably the most important/powerful 10%.
The tea party movement in current form offers little to libertarians, evangelicals, or country-club Republicans. The tricky part is that the country-club types are “running” the tea party show even while this splinter group threatens to take down the Republican coalition. Its like knowing a legion in your army wants nothing more than to overthrow you but that they’re unable to as you’re the one organizing them and giving them bullets. (think about Kim Jong il and the way he only poses for pictures with his military when their guns are unloaded)
So here in FL, we hate Crist but this ‘tea party’ nomad running against him just looks like way more crazy and moving in the wrong direction. Crist can spend money, but only when it comes to his political allies & business friends. Crazy tea-bag nomad doesn’t ever want to spend any money at all – unless its banning abortion, deporting illegals, and killing Muslims.
What we really need in this country is to find more productive ways to spend the money our government is already spending. Take a look at the military, prison, and banking outlays and imagine how much better it would be for our future if we could apply these things to supporting a healthier and more educated society…
Now, where is the political party that supports these things? Surely it isn’t the corporate Democrats, but anyone looking for salvation from the right is in for a reactionary disappointment of epic proportions!