Tea Party gimmick gets exposed: Why it was always a tool of the Republicans

[DonViejo]

The myth that the movement was all about economic issues -- not social ones -- is finally laid bare. Here's how

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Jim Newell hit the nail on the head about the alleged “revenge of the GOP establishment” in this week’s primary elections. Yes, they are all Tea Partyers now. Who needs the label when they are getting everything they want from the establishment?

In fact, the Tea Party has always been populated by the rank and file far right of the party. Yes, they expressed hostility to their elected officials in Washington. They were angry that the Democrats won a majority and they blamed their leadership for letting that happen. But as John Boehner explained just yesterday:

You get in these primary elections – they are hard-fought battles and sometimes – listen, there is not that much, not that big a difference between what you call the tea party and your average conservative Republican.

Indeed. Nonetheless, it is interesting that so far in these primaries the major victory claimed by the Tea Partyers doesn’t feature a standard libertarian-ish right-wing Republican railing against Big Government and babbling about Benghazi!™. It features a hardcore member of the Christian right, which is hardly the image of the Tea Party in the political press. That would be Ben Sasse of Nebraska, the Yale-educated history professor who had the backing of Tea Party groups like Freedomworks, the Senate Conservatives Fund and Club for Growth, and Tea Party icons Sarah Palin and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. He won the primary against establishment-backed State Treasurer Scott Osborne. Yes, he hates Big Government as much as any right-wing Republican, that goes without saying. But Sasse is motivated by his belief that the U.S. is a Christian nation under siege from that Big Government, not by his belief in free markets and low taxes.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/tea_party_gimmick_gets_exposed_why_it_was_always_a_tool_of_the_republicans/

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