Death of the Tea Party??
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Death of the Tea Party. Long live the Tea Party. Can the Tea Party come back? Anyway, several, several stories, columns out in regards to the Tea Party movement and how it is now dead. And they’re basically equating it to Freedom Works, which was the, in essence, the Tea Party pack that raised money for an extended period of time.
for candidates and the fact that they’re just shutting down at this point in time. Now, first and foremost, I used to be pretty heavily involved with the Tea Party when it initially started way back in this talk and going back to 2009. And if you recall, kind of got started, you know, that the spark that got the whole thing going with Obama as president of the United States and
him proposing all sorts of handouts and giveaways and whatnot was a Rick Santelli rant, an epic Rick Santelli rant on CNBC and going off and it’s going to be great. I’m paraphrasing. We’re going to start paying for everybody’s mortgages and we’re going to have to do this and we’re going to have to do that. So it kind of got it got started and started with various different events around the country.
And I was at an event I spoke at one of the original Tea Party events back in April, actually tax day April 15. And in 2009, it was 1000s of people was in southwest Florida. And like, of course, you know, you had the mainstream media at the time, attacking the Tea Party.
in any way, shape, manner, form that they could. Not trying to discuss what they were trying to get across, our ideals, our policies. We’re basically trying to frame it as a racist endeavor. I did a piece on it actually in May of 2009. And the title of the piece, and all my columns are on my website, they’re archived there. The title of my piece was, You Might Be a Redneck If.
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Let me read a little bit from it. I’m used to taking irrational and mean -spirited barbs from crooked stockbrokers and other thieves that happen to find their way to my crosshairs. However, the poison -tipped arrows at everyone and anyone who was involved with the April 15th tea parties, remember, tea taxed enough already, have taken basically the borderline insane. Quick example of the unhinged would be the conduct and coverage of my friends in the mainstream media.
Media elites, as we mere peasants should know already, are always morally superior. Their opinions, policy preferences are beyond reproach. They are without question, virtuous beyond debate. Therefore, this entitles them to be hateful to anyone who differs with their holier than thou views. Again, this is 2009. Nothing has really changed. One example is the appearance of the actress activist at the time, and she kind of fell off the planet.
Janine Garofalo, she was on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann’s program. And Keith Olbermann was one of the way he speaks, one of the nastiest human beings I think I’ve ever encountered in the mainstream media. And they did a bit here. And this is what she had to say. It’s about the tea party. Let’s be very honest about what this is about.
It’s not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea bagging rednecks. And there’s no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become.
It’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused and angry and highly volatile. That guy causing them feelings they don’t know because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right winger, a Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their headspace than in reasonable person and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring. This was
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on MSNBC.
And meanwhile, you know, basically the Tea Party, the head Tea Party economist was Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams. They’re black. But anyway, neither here nor there. I was featured at this Tea Party here and I was honored to do it. And one of the best things about the Tea Party at the time is that politicians were not invited. They weren’t welcome. They weren’t welcome. Michael Steele.
Michael Steele is a regular contributor on MSNBC right now. That’s how he makes his living. He was the chairman of the RNC, begged, begged to speak at the tea parties and he was told to take a long walk. No, no. And I stated, I stated at that event, my speech, which is still up on my YouTube page somewhere, that I wasn’t angry.
wasn’t angry with Democrats, at least they’re honest. They do and are doing what they said they would. My problem is with Republicans who spend earmark and trample on the Constitution and then ask us for their support. So some of my more newer listeners to the podcast and the radio show, full disclosure, okay? I haven’t changed my stripes.
spots, whatever you want to call it. Have it.
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And again, go into this column here, and I talk about various different issues that the country has at the time, the thing that the Tea Party stood for with pork barrel spending, a myriad of different issues. And I’m not going to get into that today, but that was what the movement was all about. It was essentially libertarian principles, libertarian principles that we’ve drifted away from. Dan McLaughlin.
a very intelligent, astute writer, national review, actually published a piece two days ago entitled, The Tea Party Movement is Dead. He says, yesterday’s announcement of the abrupt closure and dissolution of Freedom Works by its board of directors is the closest thing we will get to a formal date of death for the Tea Party Movement, which in truth has been dead since Donald Trump descended the elevator at Trump Tower.
in June 2015. Trump did for the Republican establishment what it couldn’t do on its own and killing the Tea Party and its demands for small constitutional government. I hear what Dan’s saying and I don’t wholeheartedly agree. Again, like I said, I was heavily involved with the Tea Party and its infancy stages, doing appearances, going to events all over Southwest Florida. And I stopped.
And the reason why I stopped is because the professional politicians were involved. You watch people jockeying for positions and power, looking to actually, you know, generate, basically make their living off the movement. And as soon as that happened, I walked away. A lot of my principles haven’t changed, but they’re basically becoming like a little
R &C and then you didn’t really hear from them much anymore. Yeah, they continue to raise money, but most certainly, they didn’t grab the attention that they used to back when they first started when they were grassroots, when they kept all the professional politicians and grifters and all these political grifters and hangarons out there. Go and get yourself a real job.
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Anyway, go back to Dan’s piece here. That impetus may return someday. It has gone away. Many of us still believe this way. But again, I’m not stupid. I know that these libertarian principles that I hold, my belief system is pushed to the side. The Maggot types, for the most part, are ruling the roost right now.
He said, the impetus may return someday as it has in the past. Nobody during the first seven years of George W. Bush’s presidency was seriously predicting a mass movement against compassionate conservatism, Wall Street and corporate bailouts, socialized medicine and the growth of the security state. Anymore than anybody in 1955 and talks about Goldwater conservatism. But anyway, Freedom Works was one of the most prominent.
And again, you want another one that collapsed too? They still exist. Still exist. House Freedom Caucus.
Take a look at members of the House Freedom Caucus, the members that have left over the years. Those were the Tea Party guys. The House Freedom Caucus for the most part outside of maybe Chip Roy. It’s full on mega, full on mega. All that type of populism. And again, it is what it is. There was an article in Politico talking about this. Luke Mullins, the writer,
interviewed the FreedomWorks president, Adam Brandon. Said after Trump took control of the conservative movement, a huge gap opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders still believed in free trade, small government, a robust merit based immigration system. These positions clashed.
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with the Trump -aligned membership who called. They wanted tariffs, tariff man. They wanted to build a wall. Again, we’re very silent. Let’s not talk about that $8 trillion that Donald Trump spent and added to the national debt. And he said, our staff became divided into MAGA and never Trump factions. It also impacted fundraising. He said, now I think donors are saying, what are you doing for Trump today?
and we’re not for or against Trump. He says, we’re for Trump if he’s doing what we agree with and we’re against him if he’s not.
Again, they shut it down. Dan had also had a piece out. This was back a couple of years ago and kind of talks about what’s happened. What’s happened as far as politics are concerned and how races are run and how actually the 2012 race between Mitt Romney.
and Barack Obama and how consequential it was. And actually, they call it it was it was Obama’s advisor. What was his name there? I got it here. David Fluff used this term. It’s called stray voltage. Stray voltage is a polarization strategy that Donald Trump uses. Obama started it. But but Donald Trump uses it. If you remember.
Okay, so Obama used it because again, you go back you think about Obama’s reelection there. And these statistics are fascinating. It really is. With the exception of James Madison in 1812, Obama was the only president to win a second term with fewer popular votes and fewer electoral votes than the first time. Between 1812 and 2012, only Woodrow Wilson was reelected with fewer electoral votes.
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but he added 3 million voters and grew as popular support. You think about these numbers, well, how that happened? I mean, well, the conventional wisdom was you have to go out and you have to get what? The swing voters, right? The swing voters, yeah, no, they changed all that. They changed the idea.
of swing voters and they started this strategy where it’s called stray voltage. And again, a dance piece, and I remember this, George Stephanopoulos was doing this, he was handling debate. It was a primary debate. And George Stephanopoulos asked about banning birth control. And Romney called the question silly. But what did Obama do the next month?
They issued a regulation ordering employers, even remember Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraceptives. Then, do you remember Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student that demanded that she needed her insurance to cover contraception? And then Rush Limbaugh called her a slut and I got all this stuff riled up. And then you had Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was in Virginia. And again, this was part of the Trayvon Martin thing, was telling a black crowd in Virginia that Romney and Paul Ryan were gonna put them back. We’re gonna put you guys back in chains. And basically putting out these various different issues just because they got the people going. They caused controversy. Which again, brings me back to my position is where we’re at today in this country.
It’s not about the swing voters. It’s not how they run campaigns. It’s about the dumb voters. It’s about increasing your base. Increasing your base by bringing as many people, you want to call them dumb, ignorant, stupid. It doesn’t make any difference. I know that they’re not very nice terms, but if you’ve got a better idea, uninformed, I don’t know, misinformed voters to your side. And how do you go about doing that? You get riled up.
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You get them riled up. Anyway, neither here nor there. And again, because I get into these back and forth sometimes with listeners here, the program that constantly pushing me, you gotta vote for Trump, Trump, Trump, no, I’m not. Okay, never will be. Again, I gotta go and I gotta vote. And like I said before, it’s like the South Park episode.
South Park episode going back to 2004, which I’ve discussed here on the program in the past where they’re, you know, they’re basically having a race at an elementary school for the school mascot. And they’re basically making fun of the 2004 race between George W. Bush and John Kerry in this episode. The guys from South Park are brilliant. And they make it between a giant douche and a shit sandwich.
Do I think, you know, our choices are limited this? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We’ve talked about the Uniparty here on the program. The principles that I care about, that I hold dearly, are they being addressed? No. No, and like I said, we have a long way to go. There’s going to be many, many, because this strategy.
Strategy work. These bombs are going to be dropping over the course of the year. Attempts to divide people, get people riled up, whatever it may be. Mark my words. Okay, what are they called? Yeah, voltage issues. And they work. But again, is the tea party dead? Let’s just say we’re here. We’re not in hiding. We’re not in hiding. Again, it’s part of my entire
belief system here where again, you need to go out again, build, create, protect, and teach and do the best you can to get people’s minds right. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.