Washington (CNN) – Just about every blockbuster movie is followed by a sequel, or two. The tea party cross country caravan, it appears, is no different.
A Tea Party Express official tells CNN that they’re planning a third national tour in late March and early April that will culminate in the nation’s capitol on April 15, tax deadline day.
Levi Russell, a spokesman for the group, which is organized by the conservative political action committee Our Country Deserves Better, says the slogan for the tour is “just vote them out.”
Russell says that with the crucial 2010 midterm elections just months away, the tour will spotlight members of Congress who they consider the worst offenders when it comes to fiscal policy. While both Republicans and Democratic lawmakers will be targeted, Russell acknowledges that more Democrats than Republicans will be on their scopes.
More Dems than Righties targeted? Who didn’t see that coming?
The Our Country Deserves Better PAC was on the campaign trail for John McCain in 2008. From CNN, August 2009:
Then Tony Harris did an interview with Mark Williams, the chief spokesman for Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the organization behind the “Tea Party Express.” And while Harris did try to ask Williams some skeptical questions, it was a very congenial segment.
Most of all, Williams was able to flatly deceive the CNN audience about their purpose and intent. Harris asked him whether or not the entire thrust of the “tea parties” was to attack President Obama’s policies — a reasonable point, since these “partiers” were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush was busily busting budgets and running up massive deficits in the name of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Harris, though, pretended throughout the segment that they were purely a nonpartisan outfit only angry about over taxation. Which is a large wagonload of hooey.
The “Our Country Deserves Better” PAC, in fact, was founded in August 2008 — before the election — specifically to oppose Barack Obama and his policies. (They called it “drawing contrasts between Senator Barack Obama and John McCain”.) In October 2008, for instance, Williams was out on the stump campaigning against Obama as a “socialist” on a previous bus tour called the “Stop Obama Express”. They’ve also runs ads comparing Obama to Hitler.
After McCain got spanked in November, 2008, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC became rebels without a cause – until the health care reform issue became prominent in the news and money from AHIP and others started circulating to various organizations. The tea-bag protests became a well organized and well funded effort to help defeat the public option by interrupting the normal August recess town hall meetings. The Rachel Maddow Show addressed the issue of how a well organized effort was planned and financed to high-jack town hall meetings:
Here’s my shocking truth: I think that news of even more Tea-bag protests coming next year is wonderful! It gives the American citizens, the normal ones, the ones that will actually make a difference in November 2010, another chance to see just how loony the right-wing has become. It is important, though, to point out that the main stream news media has given just a little more credibility to these fake grassroots organizations and their crazy-talk slogans than they deserve. It would be important for us to speak to that issue, but leave the sign toting nut jobs alone.
As a matter of fact, I think it would be beneficial for progressives to attend as many of these tea bag protests as possible. Progressives should bring signs that have populist slogans. Here is a few of my ideas for signs (I have no imagination, so come up with your own):
“More Public Sector Jobs!”
“We Need The WPA NOW!”
“Balance the Budget – No More Wars On Credit!”
“Tax Cuts For The Middle Class!”
“Stop Taxing The Poor! Tax The Rich!”
“Repair Our Roads And Bridges!”
“Stop Sending Our Jobs Overseas!”
“Buy American Products!”
“Fair Trade, Not Free Trade!”
“Protect American Jobs – Tax Imports!”
“More Investments In The Power Grid!”
“Invest In Our Nation’s Education! – Increase Pell Grants!”
More?
______________________________________________________________________
Follow me on Twitter!
Phony Tea Baggers Take Over the Nut-Jobosphere
Re: Tempest in the Tea Party | Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer, Wed Dec. 30, 2009 8:47 AM PST
There’s a fight going on between the ordinary nut-jobs and the well organized and well funded nut-jobs. It seems that the real tea party faction, the Tea Party Patriots, have been out-maneuvered by the astroturf group, the Tea Party Express. And it looks like the Tea Party Express has emerged as the face of the tea bagger movement.
The Tea Party Express is funded by a GOP consulting firm, Russo Marsh & Rodgers which started the Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) PAC to propel false propaganda about Barack Obama during the 2008 election.
According to TalkingPointsMemo in an article posted December 29th, 2009 the OCDB PAC funneled two-thirds of the money collected through donations from ordinary protesters back to the firm of Russo Marsh & Rodgers:
In the “adding insult to injury” category, not only have the Tea Party Express organizers sucked all the air from the Tea Party Patriots’ balloons, one of the leaders of the TPP who switched allegiance over to the Tea Party Express seems to have grabbed up TPPs precious email list on her way out. What did the Tea Party Patriots do about this theft? They did what any good liberal, ACLU member would do.
They filed a lawsuit.
According to Politico.com’s Ben Smith:
Read Amy Kremer’s side of the story here.
It looks like that she absconded all their passwords, too. Pity. An honest, grass-roots organization like the Tea Party Patriots just can’t seem to get a foothold without right-wing money foiling their efforts. The Tea Party Patriots not only have Russo Marsh & Rodgers and their OCDB PAC to compete against, another PAC, FreedomWorks, is also out there organizing tea bag protests.
An article at Firedoglake states that, “FreedomWorks was launched a [sic] GOP version of MoveOn. ‘We believe that hard work beats daddy’s money,’ said Dick Armey at the time. Armey seems to be a bit irony challenged — Steve Forbes is on the FreedomWorks board. As Krugman notes, their money comes from the [sic] Koch, Scaife, Bradley, Olin and other reliable funders of right wing infrastructure including Exxon Mobil.”
Just a note here from AlterNet about the billionaire Koch brothers, David and Charles (who founded the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation), and their involvement with tea bag party protests:
The big money heavyweights have jumped in and taken over what was to be an honest, albeit wrong-headed, grassroots movement.
______________________________________________________