Wednesday, June 03, 2015

The Tea Party is a corporate scam, but members won’t care

No surprise here. A study funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health provides conclusive evidence that the founding of the Tea Party was not a grassroots effort by tax protestors and small government conservatives, but an organization formed and funded by groups with ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers.

Liberals and Progressives have long asserted that the Tea Party was an AstroTurf movement created to push a corporate-friendly agenda, and now we know that is the case. And the effort has been extremely successful. Since its inception in 2002, the Tea Party has successfully pushed Republican candidates farther and farther to the right, confused the public on climate change, muscled its way into state legislatures to promote its agenda, and all but abolished bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.

You might think that rank and file members of the Tea Party would be a bit miffed to learn they belonged to an organization created by billionaires to advance a corporate agenda, but I doubt that will be the case. First of all, if you are a member of the Tea Party, you’re not too bright to begin with and are probably used to being taken advantage of by those smarter than you. Second, you’ve convinced yourself that it doesn’t matter, because, hey, maybe someday you’ll be a billionaire too. Or finally, you’ve been brainwashed into believing that what’s good for RJ Reynolds and the Koch brothers is good for America.

Interestingly, the Tea Party would probably not have grown into the political powerhouse it is today if anyone other than Obama was President. Because he’s black, smart and the boss of everybody, he has become an icon representing everything Tea Partier’s despise about America in 2015, and he has served to bring racist whites together in common cause and shared hatred.

Money can’t buy love, but it can buy hundreds of thousands of gullible citizens willing to crusade for America’s beleaguered billionaires.

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