Zombie Outrage
Mar 4, 2010 The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail, Zombie Outrage™
Politico got a copy of a GOP memo we weren’t supposed to see:
The most unusual section of the presentation is a set of six slides headed “RNC Marketing 101.” The presentation divides fundraising into two traditional categories, direct marketing and major donors, and lays out the details of how to approach each group.
The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.” (Emphasis mine)
Fear, loathing, and mindless reaction. The GOP understands their base perfectly well and panders accordingly.
What they don’t realize is that these zombies will bite them first, and hardest.
Continuing my boycott of Politico links:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33866.html
Call It The Teabag Terror
Feb 28, 2010 Golden Memes, O'Neil's Law, Sunday Sermon, The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail, alabama
Frank Rich says what needed to be said:
Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
NO ONE should condone a man who burned down his house with his wife and kids inside, drove to the airport, and flew his PRIVATE AIRPLANE INTO A BUILDING. A commercial building, by the way, with 200 innocent Americans inside it. The first floor was mostly empty, but the IRS shared the upper floors with software companies and other private businesses.
Truthers and healthers alike have latched on to the killer as a hero. Republicans are flirting with disaster when they pander to this nonsense. This blog has tracked the strange dance on America’s right for a full year; last April, I predicted this moment in the right’s new permanent revolution. The teabag terror has emerged and the Grand Old Party is in its thrall.
We have seen this movie before:
But the internal dynamics are finally coming full circle as the establishment opens fire. POLITICO has an actual scoop for once:*
“I don’t believe we should be giving [extremists] a platform or empowering them to do anything based off their conspiracy theories,” said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, “because they give the left ammunition to try to define the tea party movement as crazy and fringy.”
The attempt “to clean up our own house,” as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary “because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they’re a large part of this tea party movement. And I don’t think they are.”
Problem: They ARE a large part of the tea party movement. At least, the one that’s turning into a for-profit right-wing televangelism tour. Both the Tea Party Convention in Nashville and CPAC featured special wingnut training from folks like Andy Breitbart, Orly Taitz, and the Johnny Birch boys. RedState has apparently banned the birthers, but what about the freepers?
Which brings me to this discovery:
That’s the Rush Limbaugh of Huntsville taking on Parker Griffith.
Now I’m not saying there won’t be any tea party favorites elected in November, I’d say there won’t be many; and the reason why is plain to see in the strange career of Mr. Griffith, who in the course of one year transformed from an advocate of single-payer to a right-wing zealot. He has adopted every right-wing meme but the wingnuts are not impressed. Meanwhile, his opponent only has to point to Griffith’s record of achievement in office.
Remember O’Neil’s Law: all of politics is local.
The Teabagger Fail has begun…in Alabama.
*Maintaining my boycott of POLITICO links:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33621.html
Wheat From Chaff
Feb 23, 2010 Consensus, Harry Reid, The Teabagger Fail
We’ll be seeing more of this:
Reid said that the Senate will have the opportunity to take up other job-creation provisions in the future once this first bill passes. “The answer is not to do nothing,” Reid says in prepared remarks. “It is to do something to create jobs, and then create more jobs, and then create more jobs after that. That’s why this is not the only jobs bill or the last jobs bill we will bring to the floor.”
“But, we can’t do it alone,” says Reid. “Republicans share the responsibility to govern. If they support this bill — as they have in the past — and if they join us now to pass it, we will do many, many more just like it. However, if they once again put partisanship ahead of people — if they once again try to distract from the issue at hand — they will only confirm their reputation as the Party of No. They will only confirm the American people’s fears that Republicans refuse to do anything to help them.” (Emphasis mine)
Observations: (1) Reid is making Republicans vote a lot. (2) He’s getting defections. (3) This will keep happening between now and November; expect a long list of Republican losses.
The Teabagger Fail
Feb 22, 2010 CPAC, Faux Noise Channel, The Teabagger Fail
Faux Noise minimizing the impact of Ron Paul on its party:
Paulites are a big reason for the reenergizing of the conservative base. They came up with the “tea party” meme a long time ago and have essentially had it ripped away by the astroturfers. A circular firing squad is forming, but not on the left.
CPAC
Feb 21, 2010 CPAC, Conservative Media Lies, The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail
Cheney and Liz showed up, providing the usual tortured logic. Then Glenn Beck tortured history: “progressivism,” he said in his CPAC keynote, “is eating the Constitution.” He made no mention of unitary executive doctrine.
In a room sponsored by John Birchers and filled with a high concentration of Ayn Randists, Beck called the progressive movement “designed to eat the Constitution.”
Teddy Roosevelt, who tripled the size of the US Navy in a successful bid for global economic empire, came in for special Beckian scorn once again as a “weird progressive.” The bizarre revisionism came within a veiled stab at John McCain.
Sweating from his chalkboard hustle, Beck opined 2010 would be “a very good year. But it is not enough just to not suck as much as the other side.”
A straw poll elected Ron Paul. The crowd booed. There was shouting over a gay group’s presence.
“I have not heard people in the Republican Party admit yet that they have a problem,” Beck said at his crescendo before a rapt audience. “I haven’t seen the Come-To-Jesus moment from Republicans yet.”
Last year’s CPAC conference will be remembered for Rush Limbaugh rallying the right-wing media industry to create the teabag terror. CPAC 2010 has revealed the divides within the very inner bastion of right-wing politics: the teabagger fail is happening.
Fronting the televangelistic Tea Party Inc., Sarah Palin came in third in the straw poll at seven percent, far behind Mitt Romney. There were no less than a dozen choices. Make no mistake: the tea parties are never going away, and they’ve got the Republican Party by the balls, but they can’t agree on a leader. Teh Crazy™ in the room is just too diverse for a movement that despises diversity.
Limbaugh will be remembered for wanting Obama to fail. Beck will be remembered for this line:
All we’ve heard, the Fox News host complained, is “we need a big tent. We need a big tent. Can we get a bigger tent? How can we get a big tent? What is this the circus? America is not a clown show. America is not a circus.”
Glenn Beck is a clown. His show is a circus. The circus was merely transplanted from the studio to a convention stage.
Meanwhile, all of politics is local:
Tags: CPAC
Behold The Teabag Terror
Feb 17, 2010 The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail
From the New York Times comes this harrowing tale of a woman’s descent into the tea party madness, seduced by all the easy magical answers:
Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show. In this view, Mr. Obama and many of his predecessors (including George W. Bush) have deliberately undermined the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites.
I once again refer to what I said at the beginning of this phenomenon: it is morphing into something incredibly ugly that will do more long-term damage to the Republican Party than Obama. The Teabag Terror will become The Teabagger Fail. It’s a long article, and it’s disturbing to see perfectly good people so warped by fear.
In Other Words
Feb 17, 2010 Samsara of Wacky™, The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail, rush limbaugh, sarah palin
Someone is eventually going to have to put subtitles on videos like this:
Translated to English: it’s okay because Rush Limbaugh and Family Guy are political while Rahm Emanuel isn’t. Or something. And you will hear her true-believing cult use the same crap all the time:
The more she says this crap, the more they love her. See how that works?
Tea Party Crashing
Feb 7, 2010 Breitbart, James O'Keefe, Sarah Palin 2012, Sarahpalooza, Teh Train Wreck™, The Teabagger Fail, sarah palin
Gaylord. Heh. Sumptuous digs for a "populist" movement.
Well, last night was interesting.
I needed to be in Nashville yesterday anyway, so I crashed the tea party at the Gaylord (heh!) Grand Ole Opry Hotel and Convention Center to catch as much video as possible. I went as a citizen journalist with every intention of promoting my work via Huffington Post in all probability, but in the form of You Tube video that will be available elsewhere (including, and especially, my own website).
I introduced myself as Matt Osborne to everyone who asked. No one asked if I was with a media organization, including the woman who eventually “threw me out,” until Sarah’s speech was over and I was literally leaving the way I’d come. I got silent video of convention participants and Judge Roy Moore of Ye Ten Commandments. I talked to “media colleagues” and got samples of the propaganda. Though I was refused entry to the ballroom to so much as take a photo of Sarah, I watched a little of her speech on somebody’s laptop.
After getting shots through the wide-open banquet hall doors, I proceeded to interview two participants off-camera for research purposes. I didn’t take quotes and continued introducing myself as Matt Osborne.
I say all of this as prologue to explain that I’m working on a video involving Andy Breitbart; I was hoping to run into him, but was more concerned with getting video to lay out the narrative of astroturfery and right-wing nontroversy. If you follow my posts at HuffPo or my blog, you know that these are very big areas of interest for me; they’re subjects on which Maddow has reported as well.
So just in case I ran into Breitbart, I had decided to adopt the O’Keefe method: I went under pretext. The best part is, I did not lie about these things, and still got plenty of video. As far as professional ethics go, I think I did pretty well. My girlfriend thought it would be fun to try and say she was a high school senior working on a report for her government class; she does in fact appear quite young, but she’s no professional. Nevertheless, it’s her camera.
As I said, I got GREAT video that will be ready later today (I hope), but I didn’t get to meet or see Breitbart. So I was on my way out the same way I came in (the back door leads to the Opry Mills Mall parking lot; the facility has 24-7 public access) when I was stopped by a woman who claimed to be the event’s media liaison.
She had the a sharp, angry tone of a harpy. Mind you, this woman had already caught sight of us and the camera shortly after we came in and did nothing. When I now held out my hand and introduced myself as Matt Osborne, she asked me who I was with and I suddenly grew devil’s horns. Remember, I had already done what I’d come to do; just to find out what would happen, I said two words that may get me in real trouble:
“Huffington Post.”
I said that because (of course) Huffington Post is not a “real media organization” (while Breitbart, who borrowed the Huffington Post business model to spread demonstrable lies and paranoid racist agit-prop, was a central figure at the convention). Huffington Post alone does not get invited to the tea party. Wing Nut Daily is more “respectable.”
The harpy said I would have been treated like any other media organization if I had checked in with her, but I got VIDEO of their plan for me. No thanks — the media room was on the opposite end of the extremely large building, and reporters from other news agencies described an oppressive atmosphere.
Remember, I used public access. I took video of people already appearing on video. I didn’t tape or record interviews. As far as ethics are concerned, I’ll gladly compare mine to James O’Keefe any bloody day. Which must be why I grinned when the harpy said she should have expected as much, that HuffPo was an unprofessional outfit and I was the perfect example.
I tore a page out of the Breitbart-O’Keefe playbook and she called me “unprofessional.” Let that sink in.
Anyway: the harpy texted or tweeted someone. I did not have a press credential from HuffPo (I don’t think they have any, actually) so I began to explain that I am an unpaid blogger for Huffington Post…but she was already calling security as the words started coming out of my mouth.
The harpy said that I was to be detained and held for questioning, which was not about to happen for any number of reasons. It’s still the goddamn United States of America; I am not easily intimidated by civilians playing tinfoil god. I also found her highly offensive, so I just said “no” and turned to walk away.
Then the harpy followed me (she would follow me all the way to my car, she said). She attempted to taunt us (laughable) and hollered that we were in terrible trouble — which, in fact, we were; my girlfriend has breathing problems and was now having difficulty getting enough air.
When the harpy realized how I’d accessed the building, she took verbal offense that I had not paid $18 for self-parking. At that point I turned to her in an attempt at reconciliation; there were no grounds for arresting us, and my girlfriend was having a panic attack.
Which is the moment the harpy called the police. Irony: I was in a building full of people convinced the president was an illegitimate foreign agent bent on removing their constitutional rights.
We lost her and made a clean extraction, but there’s no video of all this — my girlfriend was so scared she thought she would drop the camera.
I will understand if Huffington Post is forced to disavow me. That’s fine; I’ll take whatever bad-boy punishment Arianna determines — and make no whimper of complaint under the lash. (Though it would be great to get some consideration from George Soros, who has yet to send me that check we’re all supposedly earning in the liberal ’sphere.) The fact is, I haven’t made any money by being on HuffPo and that’s not what I blog there for.
The woman called herself an employee of Gaylord’s, but I have yet to confirm that and have reason to doubt it. More as this develops…
ADDING: She actually yelled a verbal no-trespass order for the entire convention center and the Opry Mills mall at my back. Boo f***ing wa wa hoo, I can’t drive two hours to pay a retail markup.
ALSO ADDING: Did you know that shutting a door is “assault?” I didn’t, until the harpy shouted this fact too. Interesting how adaptable definitions become whenever wingnuts get involved.
Also also Adding: Gaylord (heh). Turns out the great Nashvegas institution is a corporate welfare recipient.
Teabaggers Fail
Jan 26, 2010 The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail
Sarah Palin is losing fans over her decision to campaign for John McCain’s reelection against tea party primary candidate J.D. Hayworth. The Nashville Tea Party Convention is falling apart as groups and individuals shy away from naked profiteering. The “movement” sparked by right-wing operatives is rudderless, leaderless, and at odds with the Republican Party apparatus. Now that Obama has pivoted on Wall Street and stolen much of the populist thunder, it remains to be seen whether the “movement” can even sustain itself.
It’s my opinion the best that organizers can hope for is to create a kind of semi-permanent right-wing counterculture. Tea party-goers are moved to protest against government in general, and Obama in particular, but without a coherent electoral message. The Teabagger Fail I predicted here last April seems more likely than ever.
Catching Up With The Teabagger Fail
Jan 14, 2010 The Teabagger Fail
So here’s Sarah saying she won’t take a $100,000 speaking fee for her remarks at the National Tea Party convention in Nashville:
What Sarah is so inartfully saying is the whole shebang ought to be a non-profit affair, which is isn’t and never was. Even Eric Odom, the original electronic astroturfer, has backed out of the convention over profiteering — ironic, considering that he’s sold all that Rand schwag on his sites. Judson Phillips, the Nashville attorney who started the “movement” holding the convention, has been called out by a former volunteer.
Looks like a good thing I didn’t get tickets to cover the event; one doubts it will still happen.
