From the Washington Post Q&A with Judson Phillips, the man behind the Tea Party Express:
Maryland: I am sorry but your answer of “I think the political class is afraid of the Tea Party movement. After all, we get people out as volunteers and get them to the polls. For them, it cannot be the same as usual in D.C. A lot of them are going to be unemployed after the first of the year and that does scare them” is really offensive. This us vs. them mentality is really repulsive to me. I am a hard-working middle class American and I don’t agree with anything you are saying, and I have a right not agree with you. But you spliting the citizenry into classes of “elites/political class/Washington insiders/liberals” vs “real Americans” is just plain wrong! and that’s the problem with your movement.
Liberals are just as American as you are and you and your movement has no right to question people’s patriotism or Americanness just because they disagree with you.
Judson Phillips: Yes we do. You folks in the left do far worse. Patriotism is not something that cannot be measured. It can be. And you folks on the left, as a general rule are not patriotic. You do not love this country. You are embarrassed by us.
I hate to tell you this, but those of us in fly over country are the real americans.
Really? Patriotism can be measured? I’d like to know what instrument he uses. The idea of measured patriotism makes me question the whole body of right-wing paranoia: why, for instance, should anyone in “fly-over country” get exercised about 9/11 if New Yorkers are not “real Americans”? They should cheer.
As for folks on the left not being patriotic: I’m on the left, and I’m quite patriotic. (I also happen to live in “fly-over country.”) When Phillips can produce the measuring-device for patriotism, I’ll gladly hold mine next to his for immediate comparison. It’s likely he’ll owe me a drink afterwards.
I do love my country. I am not embarrassed by his movement; the tea party phenomenon *IS* an embarrassment. Either Phillips has created the greatest act of mass cognitive dissonance ever, or he’s holding an exercise in surrealist theatre of the absurd.
Phillips is a political failure — a hack — who declared bankruptcy in 1999:
As a lawyer, Phillips has struggled. His legal practice has been suffering for years. The slick-sounding Nashville address on his firm’s Web site actually belongs to a construction company. Phillips meets his dwindling clientele in a Starbucks, according to both Smith and Tami Kilmarx, another former Tea Party Nation volunteer. Since 2002, Phillips has failed to update state-mandated paperwork for his business. For almost as long, he failed to pay federal taxes, leading the IRS to saddle him with $22,521 in liens from 2004 to 2008. But his financial problems and personal troubles stretch back even further.
Bear in mind that the Tea Party Express is a for-profit corporation. Phillips is stoking this dangerous, un-American nonsense because he sucks at being a lawyer.
