Tea-party activists claim to represent Main Street...So will they let corporate money rule America?

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/01/21/citizenstea

Where are the real populists now?
Tea-party activists claim to represent Main Street, not Wall Street. So will they let corporate money rule America?
By Joe Conason


The notion of right-wing "populism" is suddenly fashionable following last Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, when even stiff millionaire suit Mitt Romney could be heard braying about the "royalists" who rule Washington. But all such fakery was exposed today by an event of far greater moment. The Supreme Court's narrow, poorly argued and highly political decision in the Citizens United case -- which removes century-old restrictions on corporate influence-buying -- is the culmination of a Republican dream. From this moment forward, what the original American populists once called "the money power" will be enabled to overwhelm all other forces in American democracy using sheer wealth -- and that includes every "tea party" activist with a dissenting opinion about bank bailouts, executive abuses or crooked contracting.

For establishment Republicans like columnist George Will and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the court's decision is simply an overdue recognition of the First Amendment right to free speech. (Or what in fact is more aptly described as "paid speech.") But to understand its actual impact, listen to Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, who drew this pithy comparison: Under the old dispensation, which prohibited direct corporate expenditures on elections for nearly a century, Exxon Mobil could spend only what its political action committee raised from executives and employees. In 2008, said Waldman, that was roughly $1 million. Under the new order, the world's biggest oil company can spend as much as its management cares to siphon from its earnings -- which in 2008 amounted to $45 billion.

While most of the anger stoked against the Obama administration by the tea party groups is currently focused on healthcare reform, the original irritant was the spectacle of hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the Big Banks, the crooked insurance behemoth AIG, the reckless traders at Goldman Sachs, and all the abuses that attended those bailouts.

According to Judson Phillips, the Tennessee lawyer who organized the upcoming tea party convention, many of the movement's rank-and-file "believe that Congress pays far too much attention to Wall Street and not enough attention to Main Street." Dale Robertson, the founder of TeaParty.org, reacting directly to the Citizens United decision, told blogger Joy Reid that it is a constitutional travesty: "It just allows them to feed the machine. Corporations are not like people. Corporations exist forever, people don't. Our founding fathers never wanted them; these behemoth organizations that never die, so they can collect an insurmountable amount of profit. It puts the people at a tremendous disadvantage."

All the ultra-wingers and tea partyers who agitate constantly over U.S. sovereignty should recall again how little loyalty the multinational corporations and banks have displayed toward the United States in their drive for profit. Now, in effect, the Supreme Court's "conservatives" have opened up the American electoral process to a new, potentially limitless source of foreign influence.

Dale Robertson spoke like an honest populist -- or even a progressive. For him and anyone else in the tea party movement who isn't merely a loudmouthed stooge of the Republicans, a moment of truth is coming soon. Will they support legislation to curtail its worst effects, even if sponsored by those hated Democrats, or surrender to a new era of corporate rule?

[FreakinDJ]

1. TeaBaggers represent Corporations not Main St.

[babylonsister]

2. Not if you hear them tell it. nt

[ixion]

3. that's because most of them are critically-thinking impaired

and aren't even aware they're being punked. Of course, there are those among them who ARE aware, and they're the ones doing the punking.

[babylonsister]

4. Read the OP and see what head tea-bagger said; he's just as

dismayed as we are. That might be a good thing.

[shirlden]

5. My foot stompin, flag wavin,

DC marching, teabagging sister has her critical thinking overtaxed when asked, "want fries with that"

We are so screwn...............

But then I can look at the good side.......I'm 74.

[Tsar_Bomba]

6. The teabagger masses will believe whatever

their authoritarian corporate masters tell them to believe. This is because the teabagger is incapable of thinking for themselves. Sure enough when their leaders get tired of the anti-corporate populist message, the teabaggers will be herded into the same old failed GOP policies.

I still believe most teabaggers are disenfranchised GWB followers. They love Sarah Palin, who is nothing but GWB in a dress.

[SteveM]

7. Ah, Babylon, you have a very good post. Too bad it will swoosh over heads here...

That's because, once economic justice and regulation of corporations have been junked as issues (that includes the DNC), you have left nothing but culture war issues (and "liberals" at not much good at "winning" these). The Tea-baggers may be duped, but they are not following corporations: they are responding to an unmitigated hatred of "liberals/Democrats," promulgated by the Far Right, as a default way of venting off their own frustrations.

And that hatred is replied-to in kind in these pages.

The future for meaningful, democratic change will only come when the populist issues of economic justice and corporate regulation, are once-again embraced by the Democratic Party, or a third party. Success may come if the Democratic Party so changes, but a third party WON'T develop unless the "tea baggers" are included.

Funny, the Dems (and many in these forums) have rejected populist issues and willingly given them over to the Far Right, in exchange for a grutuitous, meaningless way of stereotyping and slapping down others who have for so long been ignored.

The GOP not only stole "our" issues, but they stole our style.