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Title: The Great Tea Party Rip-Off
Source:
NYT
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html
Published: Feb 3, 2010
Author: Frank Rich
Post Date: 2010-02-03 21:33:54 by Murron
Keywords: None
Views: 17019
Comments: 91
The Great Tea Party Rip-Off Even given the low bar set by America’s bogus conversations about race, the short-lived Harry Reid fracas was a most peculiar nonevent. For all the hyperventilation in cable news land, this supposed racial brawl didn’t seem to generate any controversy whatsoever in what is known as the real world. Eugene Robinson, the liberal black columnist at The Washington Post, wrote that he was “neither shocked nor outraged” at Reid’s less-than-articulate observation that Barack Obama benefited politically from being “light-skinned” and for lacking a “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” Besides, Robinson said, Reid’s point was “surely true.” The black conservative Ward Connerly agreed, writing in The Wall Street Journal that he was “having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive.” President Obama immediately granted Reid absolution. A black columnist at The Daily News in New York, Stanley Crouch, even stood up for the archaic usage of “Negro.” George Will defended Reid from charges of racism as vociferously as Democrats did. Al Sharpton may have accepted Reid’s apology, but for once there’s no evidence that he ever cared enough to ask for one. So who, actually, was the aggrieved party here? What — or who — was really behind this manufactured race war with no victims? It would be easy to dismiss the entire event as a credulous news media’s collaboration with a publisher’s hype for a new tell-all-gossip 2008 campaign book, “Game Change,” which breathlessly broke the Reid “bombshell.” But this is a more interesting tale than that. The true prime mover in this story was not a book publicist but Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican Party and by far the loudest and most prominent Beltway figure demanding that Reid resign as Senate majority leader as punishment for his “racism.” Steele is widely regarded as a clown by observers of all political persuasions, but he is clownish like a fox. His actions in this incident offer some hilarious and instructive insights into what’s going on in the Republican hierarchy right now as it tries to cope not just with our first African-American president but with a restive base embracing right-wing tea-party populism that loathes the establishment in both parties. And though Steele is black, and perhaps the most enthusiastic player of the race card in American politics today, race was a red herring in his Reid vendetta. It threw most everyone off the scent of his real motivation, which had nothing to do with black versus white but everything to do with green, as in money. A profligate spender, Steele had inaugurated his arrival as party chairman by devoting nearly $20,000 to redecorate his office because he found it “way too male” for his sensitive tastes. In the weeks just before “Game Change” emerged, Steele was in more hot water. Over the holidays, G.O.P. elders were shocked to learn that their front man had a side career as a motivational public speaker at up to $20,000 a gig. The party treasury, which contained $22.8 million upon Steele’s arrival at the end of January 2009, was down to $8.7 million by late November, with 2010 campaign expenditures rapidly arriving. “He needs to raise money for the party, not his wallet,” one Republican leader griped to Politico. Then, just after New Year, Steele published an unexpected book of his own, “Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.” He hadn’t told his employers that the book was in the works, and, to add further insult, he attacks unnamed party leaders in its pages for forsaking conservative principles. Since it hit the stores, Steele has pursued a book tour for fun and personal profit, all the while daring his G.O.P. critics to bring it on. “If you don’t want me in the job, fire me,” he taunted them. “But until then, shut up. Get with the program, or get out of the way.” Fire him? Steele knows better than anyone that his party can’t afford what Clarence Thomas might call a “high-tech lynching” of the only visible black guy it has in even a second-tier office. Steele has said that white Republicans are “scared” of him. They are. He loves to play head games with their racial paranoia and insecurities, whether he’s publicly professing “slum love” for the Indian-American Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal, or starting a blog on the R.N.C. site titled “What Up?,” or announcing that he would use “fried chicken and potato salad” to recruit minority voters. As long as the G.O.P. remains largely a whites-only country club, Steele has job security. But he had real reason to fear some new restraints on the cash box; last year the party was driven to write a rule requiring him to get approval for expenditures over $100,000. On Jan. 9 The Washington Post ran a front-page article headlined “Frustrations With Steele Leaving G.O.P. in a Bind,” reporting, among other embarrassments, that the party had spent $90 million during Steele’s brief reign while raising just $84 million. Enter “Game Change,” right in the nick of time for Steele to pull off his own cunning game change. On Jan. 10 he stormed “Fox News Sunday” and “Meet the Press” to demand Reid’s head. There has been hardly a mention of Steele’s sins since. He can laugh all the way to the bank. His behavior is not anomalous. Steele is representative of a fascinating but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his own. As many suspected at the time, her 2008 campaign wardrobe, like the doomed campaign itself, was just a preview of coming attractions: she would surely dump the bother of serving as Alaska’s besieged governor for a lucrative star turn on Fox News. Last week she made it official. Both Steele and Palin claim to be devotees of the tea party movement. “I’m a tea partier, I’m a town-haller, I’m a grass-roots-er” is how Steele put it in a recent radio interview, wet-kissing a market he hopes will buy his book. Palin has far more grandiose ambitions. She recently signed on as a speaker for the first Tea Party Convention, scheduled next month in Nashville — even though she had turned down a speaking invitation from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the traditional meet-and-greet for the right. The conservative conference doesn’t pay. The Tea Party Convention does. A blogger at Nashville Scene reported that Palin’s price for the event was $120,000. The entire Tea Party Convention is a profit-seeking affair charging $560 a ticket — plus the cost of a room at the Opryland Hotel. Among the convention’s eight listed sponsors is Tea Party Emporium, which gives as its contact address 444 Madison Avenue in New York, also home to the high-fashion brand Burberry. This emporium’s Web site offers a bejeweled tea bag at $89.99 for those furious at “a government hell bent on the largest redistribution of wealth in history.” This is almost as shameless as Glenn Beck, whose own tea party profiteering has included hawking gold coins merchandised by a sponsor of his radio show. Last week a prominent right-wing blogger, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, finally figured out that the Tea Party Convention “smells scammy,” likening it to one of those Nigerian e-mails promising untold millions. Such rumbling about the movement’s being co-opted by hucksters may explain why Palin used her first paid appearance at Fox last Tuesday to tell Bill O’Reilly that she would recycle her own tea party profits in political contributions. But Erickson had it right: the tea party movement is being exploited — and not just by marketers, lobbyists, political consultants and corporate interests but by the Republican Party, as exemplified by Palin and Steele, its most prominent leaders. Tea partiers hate the G.O.P. establishment and its Wall Street allies, starting with the Bushies who created TARP, almost as much as they do Obama and his Wall Street pals. When Steele and Palin pay lip service to the movement, they are happy to glom on to its anti-tax, anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-big-bank vitriol. But they don’t call for any actual action against the bailed-out perpetrators of the financial crisis. They’d never ask for investments to put ordinary Americans back to work. They have no policies to forestall foreclosures or protect health insurance for the tea partiers who’ve been shafted by hard times. Their only economic principle beside tax cuts is vilification of the stimulus that did save countless jobs for firefighters, police officers and teachers at the state and local level. The Democrats’ efforts to counter the deprivation and bitterness spawned by the Great Recession are indeed timid and imperfect. The right has a point when it says that the Senate health care votes of Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana were bought with pork. But at least their constituents can share the pigout. Hustlers like Steele and Palin take the money and run. All their followers get in exchange is a lousy tea party T-shirt. Or a ghost-written self-promotional book. Or a tepid racial sideshow far beneath the incendiary standards of the party whose history from Strom to “macaca” has driven away nearly every black American except Steele for the past 40 years.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 57.
#1. To: All (#0)
This article is posted at LP, and it has one hell of a flame party going on, but not very much to go on in the way of answers! I have to admit, I threw my hat in Palin's ring in the beginning, but my common sense, and cynical side is kicking into gear. I feel like I'm watching some slow-mo re-run of Obama's 'community organizing' days, how and when he got to where he is, his books, his promises...blah..blah..blah... And now, I swear it looks like others have picked up his play book and are now learning how to cash in on what Obama already knows....tell the people what they want to hear, and they'll pay out the nose to hear it. This "PRIVATE" Tea Party puts me in the mind of poor people scrambling around at Christmas paying BIG BUCKS for gifts they hardly can afford, but it's the chic thing to do, and they'll pay dearly to get it...and those selling it know this.... Hey LFer's, give me some feedback on this, usually I can see right through a hustler, but I am truely stumped on this one, and I've become so cynical I really don't trust anyone...anymore. Thanks!
The liberal attack and disinformation machine is running full force. The democrats are in so much hot water that they will go to any extremes to create dissension and in fighting among the independents, conservatives and other Patriots. Just another reason to despise liberal ASSHOLES!
Thank you, but 'disinformation' isn't hard to spot, most kids can see right thru it. It's the truth being reported about Palin and other's that bothers me more, it's like deja-vu, been there, done that...all over again, only this time, it's a party I so wanted to give my complete support to, but now I'm really not sure. And to make things worse, she's pulling another Obama/liberal trick...ignoring those concerned about this Private Tea Party, costing anyone who wishes to hear her speak..hundreds of dollars, and she walks away with a cool $120,000.... But it's her silence about this that speaks volumes, it's what bugs the hell out of me...if she can get away with ignoring concerns now, she'll do the same if anything else ugly comes up in the future... I remember tea partiers in the past getting the cold shoulder when they asked the hard questions, they were either met with 'silence', or thrown out! I hope I am sooo proven wrong on this, but she is playing their game, I'm sure of it, I've seen this game played by too many, for far too many years not to recognize all the moves.
By whom? Where are the stories originating?
Grow local leadership, not the federal bureaucracy Defend our freedom to choose against the liberal insurgency in Congress. National Tea Party Convention - Nashville TN, Feb 4 - 6, 2010 A National Tea Party Convention will be held at the incredible Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN from February 4 - 6, 2010. This is a private event for Tea Party organizers and volunteers nationwide, including 9/12 Project groups and other conservatives who support the movement. The purpose is to bring together local Tea Party leaders from many groups and share experience and ideas in preparation for the 2010 primary and general elections as well as other work in 2010. This includes outreach among local business leaders nationwide (large and small) and other relevant groups of interest to independent voters. It is not a public political protest or media event. Sarah Palin has been confirmed by Tea Party Nation as the featured speaker at this event. Registration and event details are at www.nationalteapartyconvention.com The fee for this 3 day event is $549 plus a $9.95 processing fee. This includes the Sarah Palin dinner and the full program, including other meals as listed in the Schedule of Events. More details will follow soon. This is not a free public appearance by Sarah Palin. It is a private dinner event, with no news media invited. To reserve a hotel room, follow the link on that site and use code TEA10 Suggested arrival for travel plans: early afternoon of Feb 4, departure on the morning of Feb 7. A special room rate of $110 to $175 plus tax is available. This is a very substantial discount for this resort hotel. Please sign up at Tea Party Nation to receive information about the event plans as they are announced. Additional suggestions follow below for potential attendees, sponsors and speakers. January 17, 2010 - There have been some new attempts to smear the reputations of the organizers of this event. Tea Party supporters should be savvy enough to question the motives and validity of such attacks, which will predictably increase as conservative election victories frustrate progressives. This is not a media event or protest rally. The focus is on preparations for 2010 Tea Party actions. We will bring together local Tea Party organizers and supporters from across the country to share ideas. There will also be sponsorship and exhibit opportunities for support of this event and the Tea Party movement. This should help local organizers to meet potentially useful contacts elsewhere. Instead of promoting one group or event or candidate, a primary goal of this meeting is to reinforce personal networking and coordination among local groups nationwide. The leaders of the Tea Party movement are the local organizers and motivated volunteers in hundreds of cities. This event should serve to introduce them personally to each other and share ideas about how to have an even greater impact in 2010. The goal is to network, empower, and inspire the local leaders and volunteers to achieve even more in 2010. Unlike Tea Party protest rallies in public venues, this private meeting is on private hotel property. Disruptive conduct by registered event participants or any visitors seeking to create a public disturbance will not be tolerated by hotel security and police. Once again, this meeting is not a media event or a protest rallyregister for the event, and then follow the instructions for room reservations.
It sounds like it might be a dud. Too much control doesn't set well with the tea baggers.
So far as I know at the moment, about 600 have registered for the 'Private' Tea Party event, we'll know more tomorrow. What I don't understand is, if this is such a good thing, then why haven't more tea partiers registered for it? Palin has agreed to put her fee, about $100,000, back into the Convention.... Now my question is, where does this money go, to whom, and for what?
My oh my, but doesn't the Governor of Alaska have wonderful penmenship?! Still, fer what it's worth, I'm thinkin' more along the lines of "Palin 2020!!" Hmmm...MUD BTW...I'm currently on-the-road to Nashville, where Sarah Palin shall sign my copy of her epic novel, "Going Rogue"...gonna be a HOOt!! Actually, it already is...LOL!!
Shoot me an email for the return trip, you should stop by Mud.
Sarah Palin ROCKS...MUD
Indeed she did MUD! But here and I still disagree where John McCain is concerned, he is a TRAITOR, his policies have been, and are, a betrayal to the American people, if she truely feels the way she does about what Obama has done, then she should at least questions those closest to her that are doing the same. Below are two examples of why I cannot stomach her support of McCain, and she has me stumped as to why she continues to support this man, even thoough she has no obligation to do so. I don't like politics as usual, and when someones does something to harm this nation, I expect Palin, like I would any candidate I would support, to call this man on it...or distance herself from him, pronto! We, the American people, tend to feed the ego's of these traitors with Hero worship, we heap praise on them for something magnanimous they've done in their past. Most Americans are so focused on McCains pow days that they tend to look the other way, or don't understand the just exactly what his policies will do to this nation. For example! In Vietnam, he endured beatings and torture for the sake of his country. But the hero has since become a TRAITOR. Today, for the sake of his own populist self-aggrandizement, McSHAME betrayed one of his country's most basic principles: the freedom of political expression. How? Through the "McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill" What does this mean? Imagine that it is Oct. 1, 2012, and John McSHAME is running for re-election (if he's still alive). You and a group of like-minded friends pool together your money to buy a television spot in Phoenix saying "Don't Vote for John McCain." Under the McCain-Feingold bill, you would be breaking the law. When McSHAME asked whether this would suppress free speech, he and his followers glibly assert that "money is not speech." But how can you have the right to speak - unless you have the right to use your own money and resources to broadcast your ideas? That's like telling a publisher he can print whatever he wants - so long as he doesn't spend money to buy printing presses. The most brazen aspect of this proposal is the fact that McSHAME would suppress political speech specifically in an election season - precisely when a citizen's freedom to express his political views is most crucially needed. Such a provision is patently unconstitutional - and patently un-American. For all his supposed, newfound enlightenment about what most Americans want, protection against this Illegal Alien invasion taking place in his own state, not to mention this intire nation, commitment to the rule of law, meaningful employer sanctions, an end to sanctuary cities, enforcement-by-attrition plus deportation reform, and an end to special illegal alien benefits that invite more law-breaking McSHAME remains a Geraldo Rivera Republican. Like the ethnocentric cable TV host who can’t string a sentence about immigration together without drowning in emotional demagoguery, McCain naturally resorts to open-borders platitudes when pressed for enforcement specifics. Instead of emphasizing the need for local and state cooperation with federal immigration authorities to prevent the release of illegal alien criminals or discussing 100 percent preventable crimes by illegal alien thugs who should never have been on American soil in the first place, TRAITOR McShame harps on open-borders sob stories. McShame and his kind had their chance, and they've learned NOTHING. I think I can understand Palin's gratefulness at being selected as his running mate, but she doesn't need him now, and if she understands anything about this man's politics today, she'd distance herself...pronto!! JMHO!
#58. To: Murron (#57)
(Edited)
While you know I agree with you about McStain, I don't think it's in Gov. Palin's best interests to throw him under the bus. That said, I think she's wise enough to realize McCain is the epitome of that GoodOl'Boys network she's used to fighting in Alaska and I hope J.D. whups his butt in the Primary...MUD
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#2. To: Murron (#1)
Hey LFer's, give me some feedback on this,
#3. To: Ibluafartsky (#2)
The liberal attack and disinformation machine is running full force. The democrats are in so much hot water that they will go to any extremes to create dissension and in fighting among the independents, conservatives and other Patriots. Just another reason to despise liberal ASSHOLES!
#4. To: Murron (#3)
It's the truth being reported about Palin
#9. To: Ibluafartsky (#4)
"By whom? Where are the stories originating?"
#10. To: Murron (#9)
#33. To: Fred Mertz, war, Mudboy Slim, Ibluafartsky (#10)
#49. To: Murron, Badeye, A K A Stone (#33)
#52. To: Mudboy Slim (#49)
#55. To: Badeye, Murron (#52)
I couldn't get the WiFi to work for me at the Ramada Friday night/Saturday morning, so I wasn't able to read yer comments until today. Thanks fer the heads-up on the weather...the road was good on the roadtrip back, until I got to 64 East, which was quite the white knuckler, especially coming over Afton Mountain.
#57. To: Mudboy Slim (#55)
Sarah Palin ROCKS...MUD
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