Original Tea Party founder: it's over

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Phil Russo is one of the original Tea Party founders who sat in on the conference call that gave rise to the movement as an organized force:

I always defended the Tea Party against charges of racism. And then last week, someone with whom I am Facebook “friends” posted something extremely racist and I called her out on it. Immediately, her friends jumped down my throat, calling me a liberal and saying I wasn’t a real tea partier, despite the fact that I was one of 10 people on the first Tea Party conference calls back in January of 2009.

Well, now he's calling the movement out and declaring that it's time for a post-mortem.

Why? He credits the hostile take-over of the Tea Party by social conservatives and Religious Rightists with killing it.

A chance for Libertarians to reform the GOP

Nobody has been a bigger supporter of the Tea Party than I have been.

In Orlando, I think we had one of the best organized groups. Along with Cincinnati and Houston, Orlando was one of the cities that saw the biggest rallies, the most active tea partiers, and attracted the biggest names to speak at our events. When the left would point to the one nut-job in a crowd of 6,000 with a racist sign and call all 6,000 people racists, the more Libertarian tea partiers like me, would always use ourselves and our groups as examples of of the real, average tea partier.

At our events here in Orlando I met people who said they had never come to a political rally. Even when the left insisted that the Tea Party was just a bunch of GOP activists, I knew better. The people I talked to at our rallies were usually more independent. Of course there were lots of Republicans and some even more conservative members of the Whig Party and Conservative Party, but there were also lots of Libertarians, independents, and Constitution Party members.

I always felt like the Tea Party was going to be the chance for Libertarians to do two things:

First, I thought it was a golden opportunity to show Republicans the hypocrisy of their platform.

Secondly, I thought it was a great chance for us to talk to apolitical, independent folks who were genuinely angry about the bank bailouts: folks who work for a living or own a small business and felt like, “hey, I employ 25 people and no one is going to bail me out. To hell with GM and Lehman Brothers!”

These are people who vote for president every four years but don’t vote in midterm elections. They don’t really care if gays get married or if college kids smoke pot. They also do not want to have their paychecks confiscated to pay for Obamacare. They voted for the GOP in 2010 and made John Boehner Speaker of the House.

A movement hijacked by the political and religious right

And then, the Dick Army’s of the political world started to creep in and take over the movement. They were very slick about it. They started giving all of these individual Tea Party groups money so people who were selling real estate six months earlier could now make a living watching Fox News and blogging, or posting on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s so sad to me that a movement that began as an organic reaction to big government has been hijacked by the right. The Tea Party’s slogan was, “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets” — but it has now become the religious right in tri-corner hats.

I thought we were going to have Republicans thinking for once and realizing that if Barack Obama put an entire private sector industry out of business and then nationalized that same industry and created a new cabinet level department to oversee and regulate the industry I would call it socialism … so how come I was OK with George W. Bush doing the same thing to the airline security industry? And I am glad that we are all concerned about extra-judicial drone strikes on American citizens, but how come George Bush and Barack Obama can both kill Americans with drones overseas without a trial? Is it because the targets have brown skin and a foreign last name?

But alas we learned no such lessons. We are OK with big government as long as it’s a Republican administration. We are OK with losing our civil liberties as long as a white Republican is the one in the White House taking our freedoms away.

[Highlord Laan]

The responses to this are as hilarious as they are pathetic, just like the "Tea Party" itself.

[Stark]

Complaining a movement about political change that attracted people in a certain political party then changed to reflect that party seems a bit naive. Is the libertarian sad there wasn't enough direct control to retain e movements adherence to true values?

The little people seldom care about high level ideas or concepts, and maybe he never realised how few people at the rallies he attended cared about the same things he did.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

So your movement became the public face of mouthfrothing conservative stupidity and has gotten itself to such extremes, its members are tearing it apart because they can't even trust each other. Your movement also infected a major political party, to the point where half of America was represented by the likes of Sarah Palin and John Boehner. Your movement has even cheered when candidates from your own party lost, because you felt they were not extreme enough. In short, acting like a very competent lobby, you have pushed all your agenda in all areas in which you had influence, and America is suffering for it.

But no mister! Your movement was simply hijacked. It was not you who had a hand in anything. And it certainly isn't the case that you're jumping ship right as the GOP shifts to pro-gay and looks to get rid of the more rabid people. And of course there was no way to predict what kind of people your movement would attract.

Ahhh, mister... say, why don't you grab a large object, go someplace private, and fuck yourself?

[Imperial Overlord]

The Tea Party was astroturf from the very beginning, with conservative mouth pieces promoting it and Koch brothers setting up websites ahead of time. Why would a movement promoted by big money paymasters and fronted by libertarians and angry and fearful white conservatives be any different from the rest of the Republican party?

[CaptHawkeye]

Complaining a movement about political change that attracted people in a certain political party then changed to reflect that party seems a bit naive. Is the libertarian sad there wasn't enough direct control to retain e movements adherence to true values?

I think this is why some types of political spectrum in America will simply never be compatible with the country's actual political system.

The little people seldom care about high level ideas or concepts, and maybe he never realised how few people at the rallies he attended cared about the same things he did.

This is always how I felt when I was told the Tea Party as we know it is not the organization it was founded as. It really doesn't matter what kind of goals they had originally intended for it. What matters is what kind of people it represents.

[Flagg]

There was never any "Tea Party". That's the big lie. Like Imperial Overlord said, it was astroturf from the start and was just a wing of the Republican Party that was especially racist.

[Crossroads Inc.]

There was never any "Tea Party". That's the big lie. Like Imperial Overlord said, it was astroturf from the start and was just a wing of the Republican Party that was especially racist.

Yes and no...

The "tea party" was at the start a raw, intense backlash to Obama and everything he did and stood for. It was a bunch of people going "lets have another tea party to throw off the evil overlord(aka Obama). That was quickly co-opted by various GOP Super groups and of course the Koch brothers.

The irony is that THEY were co-opted in tern by the worst of the worst in terms of far right racist wacko's leading to the great purges of moderate republican's. It is funny to look back at the life of it at those people who didn't just take it seriouslly, but predicted it would actually usurpe the Republican party itself.

[Raw Shark]

It's really only funny if you don't know people who've quaffed the Kool-Aid. I still have a friend who, in the face of everything, insists that, "Racism is a liberal red herring! We're just opposed to excessive taxation, like the Founding Fathers!"

[Simon_Jester]

It's really only funny if you don't know people who've quaffed the Kool-Aid. I still have a friend who, in the face of everything, insists that, "Racism is a liberal red herring! We're just opposed to excessive taxation, like the Founding Fathers!"

The problem may just be his definition of "we." He doesn't feel affiliated with the racist scumbags even if they happen to be members of his own organization; it's not 'his fault' they're in it.

[obvious counterquestions to that are 'so why do you put up with them in your group' and 'isn't what "your group" is about the result of a weighted average of the actual membership, not just what you fondly imagine such a weighted average would be?']