In an era when Rolling Stone does journalism better than the New York Times, centerfolds scooping the Washington Post is your new normal. Of course, I only had time to read the article when it emerged — I was in Canada, after all — but it struck me as genuine. My more careful analysis today makes me even more certain. It illuminates splits within the movement that I have noted in this blog over the last seventeen months:
- The anonymous author is steeped in the libertarian movement: “(T)he homegrown activists I work with are the real deal,” Anonymous continues. “They may not read much, but they all know their Ayn Rand.” Teabaggers are more diverse than the author admits.
- “(T)he worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make lots of noise but can’t win without professional help. I love the irony of helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar.” As I’ve been saying since February 2009, the average tea party activist has no clue just how much of a Beltway creation their movement is. Which brings us to:
- Anonymous claims the tea party “know(s) the birther argument is a loser” and that Andrew Breitbart, not Sarah Palin, is the most important leader of the movement. This will be a surprise to the attendees of Nashville’s Tea Party Convention who saw Breitbart arguing with the birthers, who were raucous, loud, and definitely not “loved by Tea Partyers in a way Palin can never hope to be loved.” Just watch if you don’t believe me.
- “We’re playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives. In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that causes road rage.” What have I said a thousand times now about loud, fearmongering lies? Speaking of which:
- “Conservatives had been trying to take down ACORN for three decades. Where they failed, BigGovernment.com and my friends succeeded.” Nothing racist at all about the high-tech lynching of an uppity black organization, nosiree. All the more reason why Breitbart must be destroyed with his own content.
- The writer goes too far by describing a direct-mail campaign using new variable-print technology to send thank-you notes from Wall Street CEOs to voters. Having read that, the Democrats will absolutely steal the idea in the form of highly-effective TV ads.
The author makes this solid-sounding prediction:
The reality is the Tea Party as we know it will cease to exist within an election cycle. Its ideas won’t go away, but most of its leaders will. That’s because most self-appointed leaders in this world simply don’t know how to win. Mark my words: Without proper experienced guidance they will fuck it up. Rallies don’t win elections—votes do. Their egos are writing checks their organizations will never cash.
The author’s ego is writing a check his base won’t cash. The plan seems to be that K-Street fools enough scared white people into voting Republican to retake Congress in 2010, after which…what? There’s no plan for what comes next because this is all the right has left. Which brings me to the last, and most deadly observation:
Various Republican congressional leaders met for hours with our leadership and our finance team in the Richard Nixon suite at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Never in my career had I had a congressman look me in the eyes behind closed doors and say with such sincerity, “Give me a list of what you need me to do.” The second meeting drew 10 congressmen. There we sat, inside the Capitol Hill Club (which shares the building that houses the Republican National Committee), sharing ideas on how we can work together. The third meeting drew 17 congressmen.
The tea party phenomenon has been a K-Street product, manufactured and sold to Republicans from the very beginning. Activists and politicians alike are suckers in a confidence scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.
