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The Tea Party......15 years later (A reality check for all the GOP chest thumping)

Posted by $ Markus_Katabri 1 year, 3 months ago to Politics
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12/16/2022 Dale Steinrich
December 16, 2022, is the fifteenth anniversary of the modern Tea Party. That fact will come as a surprise to many readers who take the mainstream narrative about the Tea Party at face value. The mainstream account begins on February 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, live on CNBC from the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), declared a rebellion against "socialism" one month into the Obama administration.
If you’re already sensing something amiss, that’s understandable. An editor at establishment NBC lighting the fire of an antiestablishment rebellion? An uprising over mere proposed Obama bailouts of mortgage holders coming four months after silence over (if not a defense of) George W. Bush's $700 billion TARP bailout of Wall Street? If this mainstream narrative seems fishy the more you delve into it, that is because it is.
What really happened fifteen years ago and how was the Tea Party transformed from a libertarian grassroots movement to today's almost completely dead establishment version? What are some of the lessons that can be learned?
The Ron Paul Revolution (October 2007)
The ground-zero event that founded the Tea Party was the registration of the domain http://TeaParty07.com on October 24, 2007, by supporters of Ron Paul's first presidential campaign. Here is http://archive.org’s snapshot of the site on November 13, 2007, displaying the famous original curled flyer:
Twelve days after the site registration came Guy Fawkes Night on November 5, 2007, when Paul supporters set off the first "money bomb," a campaign fundraiser which (for Internet fundraising) raked in a record $4.3 million. Then on December 16, 2007, came the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Paul supporters in Boston reenacted the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor and a newcomer to politics, ophthalmologist Rand Paul, spoke at Faneuil Hall. A second money bomb set off on this commemoration of the Tea Party raised over $6 million, shattering the previous record set forty-one days earlier.
What was this schism on the American Right about? It was a rebellion against the Republican Party's wars (in particular, the twin disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq), its drunken-sailor federal spending (e.g., a $500 billion unfunded expansion of Medicare for a new prescription drug program), and its burgeoning post-9/11 federal spy and police state (for example, the Patriot Act signed into law on October 26, 2001).
From Grassroots Activism to Big-Money Corporatism (February 2009)
By February 2009, the GOP lay in complete tatters. In addition to its endless wars and domestic spending spree, it had added a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street after the financial crisis of 2008. This in addition to a series of earlier post-9/11 outrages including a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in November of 2001 (by all common sense, a massive encroachment on a function each airline should have been responsible for to begin with), the so-called No Child Left Behind Act in January of 2002, and a Frankenstein consolidation of twenty-two executive-branch agencies into a new, gigantic Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November of 2002.
As if all that weren’t bad enough, instead of nominating Ron Paul in 2008, the GOP had nominated conservative "war hero" John McCain and Alaska governor Sarah Palin. A war-weary public completely rejected the ticket in favor of a younger, articulate Barack Obama who promised peace and a revived economy.
The Santelli rant sprang the conservative and GOP establishments into action to transform a marketing vehicle that would serve to not only distract the public from their recent colossal policy failures, but also serve as a gold mine of self-enrichment: T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, Taxed Enough Already (TEA) yard signs, fluff books from the conservative pundit class, Glenn Beck rallies promoted by the Fox News Channel, and Rush-Limbaugh brand iced tea and children's books.
As Sarah Palin replaced Ron Paul as the face of the movement, a surreal change in advocacy followed. The anti-interventionist Tea Party, once outraged about the endless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, was now wanting the US to bomb and invade Iran just as it had Iraq. Rally chants of "End the Fed" were replaced with “USA! USA! USA!” a paean to the US military-industrial empire.
A Tea Party in February?
By 2014, the faux Tea Party's fifth anniversary, it was clear that the mainstream media were firmly on board advancing the new, ersatz establishment narrative, as 2014 headlines such as "Tea Party Marks Fifth Anniversary" made clear.
Still, glaring inconsistencies remained. The grassroots Paulist Tea Party began on December 16, 2007, the 234th anniversary of the original Sons of Liberty protest of 1773. The conservative and GOP forgery of February 19, 2009, was not connected to anything but the advancement of the self-serving and corporatist interests of Big Conservatism and the GOP. Even the latter’s supposed founder, Rick Santelli, was quickly pushed offstage while the Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and others took center stage.
Epilogue: Decentralization versus Fighting to Gain Control of Leviathan
While the Ron Paul Revolution, from the spread of homeschooling to Austrian economics, continues on fifteen years later educating people around the world, conservatives and the GOP in late 2022 find themselves in circumstances much like those of early 2009. Unfortunately, they have no quick scam to hoodwink the public with this time around.
The Trump presidency, bereft of any consistent underlying philosophy seen so clearly in both Ron Paul presidential campaigns, promised to drain the DC swamp but then, in complete contradiction, worked to maintain the empire by hiring a series of crazed war hawks (including Bush-era fossil John Bolton), bombing Syria, assassinating Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, and creating a new wing (Space Force) of the military-industrial complex that did little more over four years of Trump’s presidency than try its best to undermine Trump at every turn. Going along with the oppressive Fauci-Birx economy-killing covid lockdowns and other measures sealed Trump’s fate in terms of destroying his chances of reelection.
While the conservative pundit class now focuses obsessively on the recent Twitter files documenting how social media actively worked against Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, they are already quickly forgetting the 2022 midterm Big Red Wave that quickly vanished on election day, never mind their promised 2012 Mitt Romney landslide against Obama that never materialized.
While Twitter’s spiking of the October 14, 2020, New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop undoubtedly had an impact on the 2020 election, in effect it was nowhere near the daily impact of the most successful progressive and Democratic Party super PAC that ever was: the government “schools.” The conservative pundit class has zero solutions to it other than vouchers and charter schools that only serve to shift and repackage Marxist indoctrination. They cannot comprehend the idea that once government has its hands on tax revenue, it has all the leverage and spends it in a manner that best advances its interests, which is always progressive causes.
Now pundits such as Laura Ingraham are seriously proposing that the GOP’s only way to counter the Democrats is to outdo the Democrats at their bal
SOURCE URL: https://mises.org/wire/tea-party-fifteen-years-later


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  • Posted by mccannon01 1 year, 3 months ago
    Like bitter medicine, a depressing read, but necessary. I was on the treadmill and watched Rick's rant live and recall the feeling of exhilaration and shouted "Go Rick" at the TV. I even attended a Tea Party rally in my home city (very peaceful and fun to do) - the only outdoor political rally I ever attended.

    The article moves on to describe the WTF feelings I got as the whole thing seemed to derail and fade away except the likes of Rush Limbaugh kept the American dream alive and shined a light on the misnamed "progressives" - until Trump, but he was assaulted and scammed like the rest of us - and is now getting worse as it fads even more.

    America still has grit, as exhibited by many here in the Gulch and elsewhere, so I haven't given up.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 1 year, 3 months ago
    16th Amendment is the worst. Infinite fiscal powers.

    I supported McCain, but he was a first class arrogant asshole in real life. That guys was a puke, and so were his staffers (one of who I have met).

    We have no version of the obvious messaging that taking money from people by force, and spending it in government is at least a waste and at worst totalitarianism. This is the message we need to develop to sway people, and why I came to this site.
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    • Posted by mccannon01 1 year, 3 months ago
      "16th Amendment is the worst. Infinite fiscal powers." I have to agree here. In the voice of Rod Serling: "Imagine, if you will, a few sentences added to the US Constitution will result in thousands of regulations enforced by thousands of armed federal agents plundering by force and fear the entire population of the USA with the main purpose of supporting itself and other government agencies and institutions into the lap of luxury and lasting into perpetuity".
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  • Posted by tutor-turtle 1 year, 3 months ago
    The Kenyan felt so threatened by a relatively small number of patriots mailing teabags, teabags, to the Democrap Congress Critters, he turbocharged the NSA to break every law on the books to spy on us. Even to the point of issuing court subpoenas to Tea Party fundraisers in order to find the identities of contributors. Those identities where then forwarded to the IRS for audit.

    Three big lessons learned:
    > The Radical Left is evil, beyond measure.
    > The Radical Left will violate every law and moray to remain in power.

    Lastly the most important point:
    > The Radical Left was scared so shitless of the exceedingly small numbers of actual active Tea Party members, they literally lost their minds over it.

    Let that sink in

    We matter. Even our small actions make deep ripples in the sick minds of our enemy. They are weak. The are posed to fail. They are on the wrong side of history, and they know all of this deep inside their dark, corrupt hearts.
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  • Posted by bobbitchen34 1 year, 3 months ago
    All the chest thumping and "can't do" attitude has gotten me to register as a libertarian. Just a mild protest I guess. The only republican that excites me as having anything worthwhile is Ran Paul. This all would be easier to take if we still had the voice of Rush every morning.
    If anyone would like to tell me that registering as a libertarian is not a good idea I am open to it. It was a knee jerk reaction on my part.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 3 months ago
    One of the major downfalls of the TEA Party was because the Democratic Party hijacked it! They went in and bought up domain names. They registered the organization in many states as non-profits. Several even took donations before people figured it out.

    It wasn't ideology which killed the TEA Party movement. It was Dem chicanery.
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    • Posted by mccannon01 1 year, 3 months ago
      I've heard of this. Torpedoed from the inside by commie traitors. Also the MSMM strangled it at every chance - recall the black D congress critter that lied about being called a racist name as he passed by Tea Party demonstrators - that lie was broadcast every minute of every day.
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  • Posted by GaryL 1 year, 3 months ago
    First time I have seen "Comment Deleted" here and I can't imagine what tipped the scales. Maybe there could be a more acceptable way to say what was deleted. I know there are a lot of X Twitter content moderators seeking new positions and I sure hope they don't find a home here in OUR Gulch.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 1 year, 3 months ago
      It could have been deleted by the original poster.
      I have done that on my own posts when I realized I had made a mistake quoting an unreliable source and there have been no replies.
      When the Gulch webmaster does it, I think they post a warning first, and a reason if it's a deletion.
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      • Posted by GaryL 1 year, 3 months ago
        OKAY, thanks. I guess I could handle a deletion if the comment got too vulgar or implied some sort of direct violence or attack against a member. Most of us here are big boys and girls and can take emotional outbursts. Hell, On the other SM sites I could get banned for using such offensive terms as Boys & Girls. LOL
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      • Posted by tutor-turtle 1 year, 3 months ago
        I agree. I have also found myself mislead and retracted what was clearly a bad seed that had been planted.
        Our adversaries are sly and in far too many cases, well funded. I try to find as many cobborating sources as I can before I post
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  • Posted by $ 1 year, 3 months ago
    The REST of the story:
    “Now pundits such as Laura Ingraham are seriously proposing that the GOP’s only way to counter the Democrats is to outdo the Democrats at their ballot- and vote-manipulation schemes. (This from the woman who championed Mitt Romney over Ron Paul in 2012, then after Romney’s defeat, proposed reviving Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy as the new ticket to endless future GOP victories.)

    A national breakup is the only way to truly save Red states from the growing pathologies in the Blue ones (high crime, taxes, onerous business-smothering red tape), but the conservative pundit class won’t go for it in a million years. As part of his legacy, Ron Paul may have persuaded them to no longer want any part of new wars such as those in Syria and Ukraine that they would have loved under George W. Bush. However, they have no intention of truly dismantling the US military-industrial empire. Leave Puerto Rico and Guam? Are you kidding?! USA! USA! USA!”
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 3 months ago
    What needs to happen is to bankrupt the left by either refusing to pay taxes outright, or at least going galt and cutting personal spending dramatically. No money, and they cant control us
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  • Posted by $ 1 year, 3 months ago
    For Informational purposes. The “comment deleted” could have been my own first comment that I did when I was trying to get “The Rest of the story” on here. I did a bad copy and paste. So
    I deleted it and did it over. Purely an aesthetic thing.
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  • Posted by $ katrinam41 1 year, 3 months ago
    One day while stopped at a red light just outside of Toledo, Ohio, I saw a Tea Party rally in progress. Hundreds of peaceful participants waving Old Glory stood listening to a speaker, while at the rear a newsperson interviewed one of the crowd. Later on that night, I watched that interview. Behind the interviewee was an empty horizon, empty of everything except one of two people out of the hundreds wearing a costume. No sweep of those hundreds, no mention of numbers of attendees, just an empty horizon and a costume.
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