MSM says Tea Party is dying . . . yet again
This time, the press blames Donald Trump
Donald Trump’s quest for the Oval Office certainly has been fascinating.
This weekend, protesters in Arizona and their anti-Trump road blockage made for breathless press coverage. I suspect the organizers of that inanity are going to be shocked when they learn that it helped Trump win more votes and gave the business mogul free media attention.
Now, Trump is being blamed by the elite media for the impending death of the Tea Party. For example, the Los Angeles Times engages in fantasy reporting with this analysis:
…Trump’s candidacy has not only fractured the Republican Party, it’s threatening to break apart the tea party movement and erode a once-powerful voting block that has driven conservative politics and elections for the past seven years.
In addition to grass-root defections by activists like Dooley, tea party leadership has split over Trump’s presidential bid. Some conservative activists met this week to try to stop him, while others have joined his campaign.
Meanwhile, major financial backers, including groups funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, have been sidelined from publicly backing GOP primary candidates, partly out of fear they might alienate their divided base.
The soured relationship should come as no surprise. The tea party was always somewhat of a marriage of convenience between Washington’s free-market powerhouses and frustrated ordinary Americans who showed up at rallies with their tri-cornered hats and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.
Demonstrating how little they understand the Tea Party movement, the report kept referring to “Tea Party leaders”.
There is no such thing. There are organizers. There are participants. However, no true “Tea Party” has a leader.
The citizen groups that have evolved over the past 7 years remain focused on smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and adherence to the U.S. Constitution. Some groups may support particular candidates, some don’t.
However, the “Tea Party” movement can’t splinter, fracture, or otherwise break apart…because it was never a cohesive entity to begin with.
Some of the co-founders of our San Diego group gathered together recently to talk about the primary season. Most of them were thrilled the idea that their vote will have some meaning in the June 7th primary. None of them are Trump supporters…however all will vote for him if he wins the nomination.
But we would not kick someone out of our Tea Party group if they voted for a Third Party. There will be no splintering, fracturing, or rolling-over now or into the foreseeable future.
Our real focus will be on getting information to the voters about the 8 propositions that are on the statewide ballot already, including California Condoms in Pornographic Films Initiative (2016). I suspect the Libertarians in our group will have have a thing or two to say about enforcing the mandate for condoms in the adult film industry.
California Tea Party Groups organizer and dynamo, Dawn Wildman, has this analysis:
We have never been about candidates, we have always been about issues. The elite media continues to conflate conservatives and Republicans, ignorant of the differences. What we share with Donald Trump is the need to work around the press instead of with the press.
As the LA Times and other press outlets will continue their fantasy coverage of Tea Party, we will continue working to inform voters of the issues.
In other words: We are doing the job the American press won’t do!
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Comments
Being a TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY (TEA party) supporter from the git, I know that there was NEVER a “party” in any normative sense.
Every TEA party event I’ve attended…and there were several…included the presence of Constitutional Conservatives like myself, Lyndon LaRuuuuuuuush nutballs, Ronulins, along with various flavors of confused “conservatives”, libertarians, and disaffected Deemocrats.
Part of the reason the “TEA party” was so easy to mock was that it was never a cogent “movement” with any kind of coherent message, unless you count Bill Whittle and his very coherent Conservative principles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diFwuuy15LA
There goes Rags again… faking his ‘tea party creds..’ Never have I seen an idiot so proud of his stupidity.
When the Tea Party began, it had 60% public approval – but was only opposed to bailouts and spending (it wasn’t until the push for Obamacare began in earnest that opposition to it was added).
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But a leaderless movement invites quacks, and every single one of the groups that trade on the TP name, including Freedom Works, TP America, TP Express, TP Patriots, etc, have turned out to be total scams, with less than 5% of their revenue going to advertising for issues and candidates, most being squandered on salaries, luxury offices and travel, and the like.
Others tried to use TP to promote their own agendas, some conservative, some personal, and use it as a general tool against “the establishment.” TP has approval under 25% today because of these hucksters and thieves.
Precisely why I assert the true groups function at the state and local levels. A good reporter who used more than Google would have figured it out.
The hucksters count, of course.
But the concerted actions of the media was more important, IMO, to diminish the Tea Party “brand”
The TEA Party was first and foremost about government corruption that raised taxes with a diminishing return. Today, it is also about devaluation of capital and labor through liberal policies, and disenfranchisement through the pro-choice doctrine that [selectively] rejects principles of individual dignity, intrinsic value, natural imperatives, and citizenship.
I suspect that’s what they were aiming at, since they are really for Hillary, and in some polls Hillary can only beat Trump.
As a bonus, they succeeded for a while in blaming Bernie Sanders for that – getting Trump to do so. That may have cost Sanders the lead in Illinois and Missouri.
Trump has now backed off on that and is properly now putting the blame on Hillary. He told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “Hillary is the one disrupting my rallies. It’s more Hillary than Sanders, I found out,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/will-trump-be-dumped.html
A further benefit from the protests is demonizing Trump among Democrats. The organizers no doubt feel that they can indirectly convince others that Trump is illegitimate as a political figure because they are trying to shut him down. Low information voters will reason that if people are so adamant against him, he must very, very, bad.
The benefit of this kind of political “attack” is that you don’t have to say anything specific, (in fact, at one protest, the protesters were told not to explain anything to anybody)
And the sky is the limit. Just reason backward from the reaction of presumably better informed people. Even more well informed people are somewhat affected by this.
Such great news for Hillary. I wonder if she knows that all she needs to do is stay out of prison long enough and she can glide right into the oval office.
If you open your eyes, you can see how fearful the left is of Trump – because they know he can win.
The strategy by the left of giving the corrupt bastards of the GOPe their ‘excuse’ and cover to lose but keep position are over.