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Definitely what the world needs now is another wild-eyed conspiracy theory. Happy to oblige.
I’ve been wondering lately how the Tea Party could have materialized so quickly after Obama’s inauguration. What was it, three months? It’s well known that Tea Party funding comes largely from as few billionaires. What motivates the Koch Brothers of the world? This is a generalization but I think it’s safe to say their main concerns are lower taxes, deregulation and somewhat down the ladder trade policies that allow for or encourage outsourcing.
They could easily decide to spend millions on fomenting hate for Democrats and support for Republicans just over the tax issue. Our billionaire friends will save more if the top tax rate stays at 35% instead of rising to 39% than they will spend on all the funding of the Tea Party and all the millions spent on Republican candidates this election season.
As lame as the Democrats are as defenders of the middle class and the poor they’re still not as amenable to everything a right wing billionaire would want. So could all the sturm and drang of the last two years — the overheated health care town halls, the rage over spending and the deficit, etc. merely be a business plan to turn the population against the Democrats and elect enough Republicans to insure the Bush tax cuts remain in place? It would be a good business decision for the plutocrats.
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It’s hardly a conspiracy theory if you can make the business case for it.
[edit: if this were a crime we were talking about, the fact that the Kochs stand to benefit financially from their investment in the Tea Party would be called a motive.]
Could be a plausible theory but for the fact that the Democrats are in faovr of the Bush tax cuts, too.
This article from The New Yorker explains all the Koch’s astroturfing of the tea party. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
I think you might want to be careful with that rather broad brush.
Not all Democrats are in favor of the Bush tax cuts, and the ones that are may be DINO/Blue Dogs, or spinning right now because of the election, or purely stupid.
The rank-and-file members of the Democratic Party do not support the Bush tax cuts. It’s time to tax the rich; they’ve had a decade of lower tax rates and all they’ve done with it is tank our economy.
I saw the outrage appear instantly in Virginia after Doug Wilder was elected 1st Black Governor in Virginia.
Racism is real. That’s not a “consipiracy” per se. It’s just just a fact. The bigots don’t really start reacting to a leader they are bigoted against until they are in office. Then all hell breaks loose.
You should have see the ugly mess that happened over a statue of barrier-breaking tennis star Arthur Ashe (a Richmond, VA native) being put up on Monument Avenue, the street wth all the statues of dead Confederate leaders. OH MY GOD!!! City Council chambers was stuffed with hoods and sheets.
To borrow a phrase,
“Not all conspiracies are theories.”
The Obama is a muslim, Joe the plumber shit started before he was elected.
I think I figured out the purpose of the Tea Party. I was puzzling over this investment of the Kochs’ funds as well.
Note that the media (not just Fox) hype up the Tea Party to make it seem like a really big deal. This is to provide a basis for explanations as to why Republican and even Tea Party Republican candidates will win upset victories in November. The real reason why these candidates will win is indicated by Election Defense Alliance in several reports, based on the exit polls and results of elections from 2000-2008. Richard Charnin has also been delving into this.
The Tea Party will provide cover for election fraud that will see unexpected victories in the election. Make sure you understand EDA’s explanation for how pre-election polling also introduces a bias toward Republicans, to bump up the expectations of how well Republican candidates are likely to fare. Then, when the upsets happen, look for explanations of a surge of new Tea Party voters, and third-party voting by disaffected Democrats.
At the Charnin link read’ The Truth About the 2008 Election’ and ‘An Introduction to the True Vote Model’
Alternatively, listen to Peter B. Collins interview with Jonathan D. Simon of Election Defense Alliance, who describes the 2008 election results as having been fudged to reduce the amount by which Obama won….and much more.
Here’s the Peter B. Collins interview with Jonathan D. Simon.
Thanks for this link; the podcast is highly recommended. It confirms a lot of things that I *suspect* but have little proof to point to. The podcast highlights how most citizens live in the illusion that the voting system in the USA is “fair and accurate,” but it’s not. They do discuss various ways in which voting has been “rigged” in the past, including gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.
I did wonder at how “low” Obama’s win was, even though it was definitely more than enough to give Obama a complete “win.” Yet I recall MANY conservatives, esp nascent T-Partiers, endlessly quoted RushGlenn who *claimed* that Obama “barely won” and only by some ridiculously low number of votes. I heard less than 10,000 votes clear down to less than a 1000 more than McCain.
We all know that Fox lies incessantly, including going so far as to state that 9/11 happened when Clinton was POTUS. But I found it interesting that the rightwing was *claiming* such a close race when it wasn’t really. Obama himself either stated or implied (not sure which) that he needed a huge turn-out…. and the implication was that it had to be huge so that vote rigging wouldn’t work.
The podcast is about the Coakly-Brown race in MA, and the conclusions drawn by James Simon that Coakly actually won is very interesting. I do believe Coakly ran a crummy race, but I can also believe that the voting was rigged. Coakly’s race clearly highlights why Dems have to be super careful to ensure that they run good races, or they’ll be done in by the vote process.
Dick Armey & David Koch astro-turfed Ron Paul’s Tea-Party, which Paul created sometime before the 2008 campaign. It was a Libertarian group, but as the campaign proceeded – and Obama was clearly a front runner Armey and Koch pumped up the volume with their “Tea Party.”
The first T-party protests occurred in late Nov 2008 after much planning and advertising by Fox. They made it *seem* like it was “grass roots,” and rightwing constituent anger that a Dem won the POTUS was easily manipulated to get these people to go out with their signs and begin their incessant whining and complaining.
To what end has the present T-party been created? To provide opposition to anything that the corporations and the Oligarchs don’t want. This group of rightwingers can reliably be counted on to be pissed off and whining simply because a Democrat is in the White House. This is the same group of freaked-out whining rightwingers who bitched and moaned all thru the Clinton Admin in the 90s.
Are T-partiers also a “front” or “cover” for vote rigging &manipulation?? Sure why not? That too.
Here’s a link to a thorough book-length analysis of the origins of the Tea Party, from Ron Paul to the usurpation by the Koch astroturf groups, militia movement, etc.
Unfortunately, my representative, John Adler, has said in a recent debate that he supports extending the Bush tax cuts. From the New York Times: