Why does everyone maintain that the Tea Party is astroturf?

[XemaSab]

I have been to three of their meetings, and at each meeting there have been 150-200 people who are concerned about the direction that our country is going in. They are concerned enough to go to meetings, volunteer, get involved, and generally try to make a difference in their communities.

I don't agree with them at all and I think that they are mostly reactionaries, but I just don't buy that all these people are on the payroll of the Koch brothers or that Karl Rove tells them what to do. :shrug:

[SoCalDem]

1. Start here

Tea Party Training sessions

and then add the million dollar buses that were provided to shlep them around..

[XemaSab]

2. All the "Tea Party Training" here

is from people in the community. :shrug:

[SoCalDem]

3. Republicans are well organized and they know how to organize locally

It's the ONLY reason they control so much now.. They started decades ago, and they know that local is where it all starts..but even local costs money, and their benefactors have deep pockets:(
bus tours

bus pics


All these fancy buses just didn't magically appear..

[meow2u3]

8. I misread it as "Tea Potty Training"

:evilgrin:

[Brother Buzz]

4. What brand of Tea Party did you attend?

Howard Kaloogian, Sal Russo, and Joe Wierzbicki created the Tea Party Express from their Move America Forward mailing lists. 100% Astroturf.

[XemaSab]

6. Oh, those people are astroturf full on

I went to the Tea Party Patriots.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. You actually go to TP meetings?

I married a conservative, that's as close as I'm getting!

Which is actually pretty close...about 4 or 5 times a week...more on the weekends...for about an hour...sometimes longer if we're rested...

Goodness, but it got warm in here all of a sudden.

[sufrommich]

13. lol! nt

[Atman]

7. They started as Koch-funded events...who do you think paid for their tour buses?

A $150,000 custom tour bus is NOT the stuff of a "grass roots" organization. Nor is the renting of arenas for rallies. Camping out in parks is grass roots. The Tea Baggers started out as a fully-funded organization designed to disrupt town hall meetings and hold bogus impromptu protests, organized and promoted by Fox News. What grass roots organization has its own television station.

Once up and running, there were plenty of ignoramuses watching Fox who thought it was real, and I'm sure actually agreed with the bullshit they were being spoon-fed despite it being against there own interests ("Keep government out of my Medicare!"). So, while there are people who really think they are Tea Partiers, the so-called organization was not an organic meeting of the minds. It was the definition of political AstroTurf.

[XemaSab]

10. Our local tea party doesn't have buses

:shrug:

[Atman]

12. You seem to have completely missed what I said.

What does your local tea bagger group not having a bus have to do with anything? You asked why we maintained that the tea party is AstroTurf. I replied that I don't doubt that there are many local tea bag groups which sprang up after the original Koch-funded, Fox-promoted sham of an organization. The "roots" in this case are not grass at all...they are fake, corporate, not grown organically rather laid out pre-made. AstroTurf. There was, indeed, a massive fancy tour bus taking people around to the first tea bag rallies...do you really think those senior citizens with their folding lawn chairs and walkers bought that bus? The fact that some of them got on it, and still identify themselves with The Koch's phony movement has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your local group even has a mini-van. The point is, it is NOT, by definition, a grass roots organization. Its roots are in a corporate board room, for the purpose of advancing a tax-cutting, regulation-gutting agenda friendly to particular corporate interests. The tea baggers are almost universally voting against their own interests, i.e. "Keep your government out of my Medicare."

:shrug:

[FarLeftFist]

9. Because it is corporate sponsored.

[Sgent]

11. I agree with you

although I've never been to any of their meetings (I would probably get kicked out), I deal with a lot of people in my community, and a good percentage of them are absolute reactionaries.


See the comments to http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2011/11/cable_companies_to_offer_995_b.html if you don't believe me. A lot of these tea-party types literally are still pissed off at the 60's.