Poll: Tea Party favorability hits record low giving positive news to Democrats

Robert Sobel/The Examiner

In what can only be good news for Democrats heading into the 2014 mid term elections, the Tea Party wing of the Republican party are receiving their lowest favorability ratings since they broke into Washington following the 2010 mid term elections.

The 2010 mid term elections were what President Obama called a "shellacking," as Republicansregained the House of Representatives and broadened the gridlock in Washington. As the years followed, less has been getting down in Washington than ever before and Congress has been receiving their lowest approval ratings in its history. According to recent polling, another group seeing their numbers drop is the radical right of the Republican party, otherwise known as the Tea Party.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, only about one-third of Americans view the Tea Party in a positive light, with about 48 percent being neutral on the issue. What is also alarming for the fanatical right wing group is that only 22 percent of those polled consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released just after October's government shutdown showed the numbers even worse. The Post/ABC poll had the Tea Party's favorability numbers at the record low of only 26 percent. As expected, 80 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independents have a negative opinion of the Tea Party and even 34 percent of Republicans agree with that sediment.

Each poll shows that those who have a negative opinion of the Tea Party believe they were also to blame for the government shutdown, which could hurt the Republican party as the 2014 mid terms inch closer. Many political commentators and "experts" are predicting big wins for Republicans in both the House and the Senate, but if the Tea Party and their high profiled elected officials continue with their rhetoric, the end of the rainbow for the GOP won't be quite as bright.

Hannity's Financial Ties To Tea Party Worse Than You Think

 ERIC HANANOKI/Media Matters For America:

Fox News is allowing Sean Hannity to promote the Tea Party Patriots on its airwaves even though the group is financially connected to the conservative host.

Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reported today that Hannity, who also hosts a Premiere Radio Networks program, has been fundraising for Tea Party Patriots (TPP) in emails, and "has also promoted the group's efforts on his Fox News program."  

TVNewser reported that in response to Calderone's report, "Fox News tells us Hannity's involvement with the Tea Party group is for his radio show, and has nothing to do with his FNC show or role with the network."

But Fox's response that TPP has "nothing to do" with Fox is disingenuous and a dodge of ethical standards. A Media Matters review found that Hannity has repeatedly done promotional tie-ins for TPP on radio and then promoted or hosted the group on his Fox News program.

For instance, Hannity did radio promos for TPP on July 31 and August 12. He then hosted TPP president Jenny Beth Martin on his Fox program Hannity on August 20, and September 9. Martin was also part of a "special audience edition" of Hannity on August 16. Fox even allowed Hannity to promote TPP's website HannityForSanity.com on August 1.  

Calderone reported that "Hannity made a passing reference to the Tea Party Patriots on his Fox News show" on February 19 in which Hannity said "The Tea Party Patriots are partners on my radio show." Calderone added that "was the only time on Fox News that Hannity has described Tea Party Patriots as a 'partner' of his radio program," according to Nexis.

In addition to his TPP email this week, Hannity sent an email on behalf of TPP on September 6 urging readers to "sign the National Petition to Exempt America from Obamacare right now. It's the very best way to help get rid of this horrible law before it goes into effect on October 1st." Hannity sent a TPP fundraising email in mid-December, writing that "If you've heard my radio show at all in the past few months, then you've probably heard me talk about the great Americans at Tea Party Patriots ... So please, make your monthly commitment right away." 

Though it's not clear how much Hannity is receiving for his Tea Party Patriots promotions -- representatives for Martin, TPP, and Hannity didn't respond to comment requests from Calderone --  Hannity received big money for prior promotions for another conservative group.

Politico reported in 2011 that the Heritage Foundation paid $1.3 million to Hannity's program for "promotional tie-ins, as well as regular on-air plugs - praising or sometimes defending the groups, while urging listeners to donate - often woven seamlessly into programming in ways that do not seem like paid advertising."

Fox News previously forced Hannity to cancel a taping of a 2010 Fox News show at a Cincinnati Tea Party event because it charged admission and had "all proceeds" benefiting the organization. At the time Fox portrayed themselves to media as "furious" with Hannity.

Here are four recent examples of Hannity's radio promotional tie-ins:

Hannity Tea Party Patriots Promotion, 2/17/14. Hannity told his listeners to "take action" against the IRS and its alleged targeting of conservative groups by going to TPP's website PatriotsAnniversary.com.

Hannity Tea Party Patriots Promotion, 1/20/14. Hannity told listeners to show "leftists" that conservatives won't be intimidated by visiting TeaPartyPatriots.org and joining the group because "we need you."

Hannity Tea Party Patriots Promotion, 8/12/13. Hannity integrated a promotion for The Tea Party Patriots into his program while criticizing former IRS official Lois Lerner and the Obama administration. Hannity said he's supporting the Tea Party Patriots and urged listeners to go to HannityForSanity.com.

Hannity Tea Party Patriots Promotion, 7/31/13. Hannity claimed that the IRS is intimidating tea partiers and his "friends" at the Tea Party Patriots are creating TV ads but they need help to get them aired. Hannity then directed listeners to HannityForSanity.com to donate "whatever you can afford" so "we" can get those ads up.

Schumer Plots To Crush The Tea Party

SAHIL KAPUR/TPM

Sen. Chuck Schumer has a message for fellow Democrats: we screwed up and let the tea party achieve a stranglehold on the national debate, but we can still crush them.

In a speech planned for Thursday afternoon at the Center For American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, the New York Democrat is poised to lay out his plan to marginalize the right-wing movement by exploiting what he describes as its "glaring weakness": a deep rift between the moneyed interests that fuel the tea party and the wants of its average follower.
"[T]here is a glaring weakness, one very weak link in the tea party's armor, which is an inherent contradiction within the tea party that I believe can be exposed to greatly weaken their hold on the policy debate," he will say, according to prepared remarks. "The fundamental weakness in the tea party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the tea party elite, plutocrats like the Koch Brothers want and what the average grassroots tea party follower wants."
Schumer -- the No. 3 Democratic senator and his party's guru for policy and messaging -- will concede that Democrats failed to respond to the tea party's effective exploitation of declining middle-class incomes and America's cultural shifts by tarring government as necessarily bad. "Unfortunately, we Democrats really didn't have much of an antidote to this quack medicine; we let the argument go basically unchallenged," he will say. "It allowed the tea party to fill the vacuum and capture the anger that was bubbling in the land."
His prescription is to drive home the message that ordinary tea party followers may hate government in the abstract but they like actual government programs. "The fundamental contradiction here," he'll say, "is ... the average tea party member likes and wants to retain most of what government does ... The average tea party member, like the average American, likes government run Medicare, likes government built highways and water and sewer lines, likes government support for education, both higher and lower."
He'll also call for chipping away at the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in order to marginalize big-spending "tea party elites," and propose an electoral reform plan in which the top two vote-getters in a primary enter a run-off.
"This," the senator will say, "would prevent a hard-right candidate from winning with 22 percent of the vote and force even the most extreme candidates to move further to the middle."

Noam Chomsky: The Tea Party is the ‘petit bourgeois’ face of corporate oligarchs

By Travis Gettys/Raw

Story

The Tea Party is just the popular face of corporate power in the United States, says political philosopher Noam Chomsky.

“I wouldn’t call them revolutionary,” Chomsky said, dismissing a suggestion that the conservative political faction had anarchist characteristics.

He told Radio VR during an interview posted online last week that he agreed with the conservative political analyst Norman Ornstein’s characterization of the Tea Party.

“He just described them as a radical insurgency opposed to rationality, to political compromise, to participation to a parliamentary system — in fact, with no positive goals themselves,” Chomsky said.

He said traditional anarchists opposed the inherent inequality in the relationship between a government and its people or business owners and their workers, while Tea Party conservatives promote this imbalance.

“They’re in favor of having the population subordinated to concentrated private power, which should have no limits,” Chomsky said. “When they call themselves anti-government, that means they don’t want government to limit the capacity of concentrated private power to dominate the society. That’s very far from any anarchism.”

Tea Party conservatives present themselves as strict constitutionalist proponents of a limited government, a claim that Chomsky rejected.

“They do oppose too much state power, but that’s a bit of a joke; they also support state power,” he said. “They support the powerful systems that sustain private power, concentration of power, as opposed to traditional anarchists.”

Chomsky agreed that the Tea Party was a genuine popular political movement who members were almost entirely white, “petit bourgeois” business owners who tend to be highly nationalistic and had racist elements.

The group’s power and significance comes not from its numbers, he said, but by the heavy funding it gets from corporate backers and the favorable coverage it receives from some media outlets.

The Tea Party’s popularity is essentially a symptom of the rigged political system, Chomsky argued.

“They have popular support and plenty of financial support, and a lot of their power comes from the radical gerrymandering, redesigning of electoral districts,” Chomsky said. “So for example, they’re powerful in the House of Representatives, where in fact, Republicans have the majority of the representatives but with a minority of the vote.”

He said that Democrats actually won significantly more of the popular vote in the last congressional election but were unable to gain a House majority.

“By virtue of rearranging of electoral districts and vast amounts of money, the right wing was able to take over the representation,” Chomsky said.

He cited a study by the political scientist Thomas Ferguson on campaign funding and its effect on electoral results.

“(He) showed there’s an almost linear relationship between the amount of money put into a campaign and electoral victory,” Chomsky said. “These are basically bought.”

Watch this video of the interview posted online by VOR America:

Tea Party group posts video game image mocking Tea Party

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

A Florida Tea Party group found itself on the defensive Monday after posting a photo from a video game that was actually making fun of its political leanings.

“We don’t take credit for the image,” National Liberty Federation (NLF) president Everett Wilkinson told The Raw Story in a phone interview. “We have no association with the game. I’d never heard of the game. I’m as clueless, probably, as most people.”

MSNBC reported that the picture, taken from the video game Bioshock Infinite, went up on the group’s Facebook page on Saturday, and depicts George Washington holding the Liberty Bell and the Ten Commandments while caricatures of “immigrants” hover at his sides, with the words, “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes” at the bottom. The post was taken down Monday, but here’s a screengrab:

National Liberty Federation Bioshock FB

As video game news site Kotaku pointed out, the picture is used in the game as propaganda by a group of xenophobic characters called the Founders. Kotaku also reported on Friday that members of the white-supremacist online forum Stormfront criticized the game for employing “strange, borderline-deranged (if not psychotic) themes with anti-White undertones” and accused Ken Levine, owner of Bioshock developers Irrational Games of using the game as a “white-person-killing simulator.”

“Since games are distributed and advertised through much of the same pipelines as Hollywood movies, Jews have a temendous advantage in the industry, since as everyone knows they already control Hollywood,” one Stormfront user posted. “This means competition can be choked out, and their own games bolstered to success.”

On Monday, Wilkinson said his group — previously known as the South Florida Tea Party — “removed” the person who posted the image.

“We’re a conservative organization, so we understand that some people may not necessarily like our views,” Wilkinson told Raw Story. “But we don’t tolerate racism, what you might consider hate messages or anything like it.”

However, MSNBC reported that while the Bioshock post was taken down, a post comparing Islam to rabies in a quote attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is still active, as are posts comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and to cancer.

“We’re not like the Christian Coalition, where we bash gays or anything,” Wilkinson said on Monday. “I actually have gay donors and supporters, and Black donors and supporters. So we’re very sensitive to stuff like that.”

Four years later, the Tea Party has learned nothing

JONATHAN BERNSTEIN/Salon

The Tea Party is no longer a brand-new movement in American politics. So, more than four years in, what do they appear to have learned? How about: nothing. And they seem to want it that way.

Certainly that appears to be the case with the Tea Party as an electoral force. Oh, Tea Partyers will remind you – they’ve won some. Ted Cruz in Texas, Mike Lee in Utah, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin – all True Conservatives in good standing (at least last I looked; these things can change rapidly), all solid winners in their election bids. It’s hardly the case that nominating a Tea Party candidate is guaranteed to turn a win into a loss.

But three election cycles in, it’s pretty clear that nominating a candidate favored by Tea Partyers over what they consider “establishment” candidates is a formula for risking Republican disaster. And that it’s not going to change any time soon.

So it was for Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle in 2010. So it was with Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012. And so it’s likely to be with the 2014 crop.

The thing is, four years is plenty of time to develop solid, seasoned candidates. Indeed, once upon a time Marco Rubio was one of those solid, seasoned candidates. Rubio was a successful Florida Republican who had risen rapidly to become speaker of the Florida House; he then adopted the emerging Tea Party and went on to easily win an open U.S. Senate seat. But Rubio’s Tea Party credentials were tarnished because he actually tried to legislate on immigration; while it’s much too early to declare his career in trouble and it wouldn’t be surprising if he still ran a solid race for the Republican presidential nomination, it’s also very easy to imagine him having to fend off a Tea Party primary of his own if he runs for reelection instead of the White House in 2016.

So what do Republicans have for 2014? Matt Bevin, taking on Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, is a first-time candidate; should he win, Republicans would probably lose that seat. In Georgia, Paul Braun in particular is thought by many to be a particularly weak candidate, capable of losing that open seat to Democrat Michelle Nunn if he emerges as the nominee. In Louisiana, Republicans had settled on a solid candidate to challenge Mary Landrieu, but Tea Partyer Rob Maness has jumped in with plenty of serious organizational support.

Granted, this early in the cycle, none of these candidates has (to my knowledge, at least) managed to embarrass himself by orating on rape. Nor have any of them yet revealed themselves as certified non-witches. Indeed, it’s so early that I don’t even know if they have a history of having said crazy things – although I suspect that Mississippi Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel, a former talk radio host, has furnished enough for a fat opposition research file.

Still, it appears to be no more distinguished of a crop than the 2010 and 2012 versions, and I strongly suspect they will begin to generate equally baroque sound bites as soon as the public portion of the campaign season begins. After all, we just had birther Dean Young, who provided plenty of entertainment if you enjoy politicians saying crazy things, come close to knocking off mainstream conservative Bradley Byrne in the Alabama 1 special election.

There’s nothing about being conservative, even extremely conservative, that would necessarily generate bad candidates. But it’s a mistake to interpret Tea Partyism as simply about being more conservative than mainstream Republicans. Instead, in practice, it’s basically turned out to be a cross between radicalism for the sake of radicalism, along with an extreme suspicion of elites. Which in turn has made it rather easy for hucksters and scam artists to convince Tea Party voters and activists that solid conservatives are really squishes and RINOs. There are no issue positions one can cling to that will prevent those charges; accusations of being insufficiently “conservative” in this atmosphere, to these voters, are impossible to refute.

Indeed, as we’ve seen with Ted Cruz, the very reaction to crazy things that Tea Party politicians say really  is the best proof that they are actually True Conservatives.

Which doesn’t mean that Democrats are about to win a Senate seat in Mississippi (although they would be smart to at least get a plausible candidate on the ballot, just in case). But it does mean that we can expect more of the same from Tea Party candidates – perhaps even worse, since by this cycle, perhaps, raving against rape will be too old hat to get condemned by Rachel Maddow, and therefore not sufficient to establish one’s True Conservative credentials.

And therefore, expect Republicans to continue to give away elections they could have won – and to prove incapable of governing in many cases when they do win. The dysfunctional Republican Party isn’t getting better any time soon.

House Republican Admits To Donors: GOP Had To Shut Down The Government To Please The Tea Party

BY JOSH ISRAEL/Think Progress

Though he repeatedly joined with all of his Republican colleagues to force the government shutdown, in a candid moment last month Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) complained that the Tea Party’s influence forced them to do it.

Walden, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee (the House GOP’s campaign arm), reportedly told a group of top Republican donors that the Tea Party’s organizational strength meant that Republicans had to shutdown the government and obstruct a debt-ceiling increase.

“Listen,” Walden told them, “We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.” Noting that he often hears complaints from the pro-business wing of the party, he noted none of them get involved at the local level. “The Tea Party gets involved at the local level,” he added.

Thanks to gerrymandering, most House Republicans represent districts that are solidly Republican. Indeed while more than 51 percent of the nation’s voters backed President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, the average House Republican district gave Obama less than 40 percent of its support — more than an 11 point difference.

UPDATE

Though the NRCC did not initially dispute the report, a committee spokeswoman Thursday disputed whether Walden explicitly mentioned the Tea Party in his remarks.

POLL: Tea Party support plunges to near-record low

Jane C. Timm/Morning Joe

The grassroots movement where Texas talker Sen. Ted Cruz has hung his hat has reached a near-record low of supporters, according to a Gallup poll out Thursday.

Just as the party has reached a record-level of influence and notoriety thanks to a cohort of outspoken Republican senatorsarmed with filibusters, only 22% of Americans of voting age say they support the Tea Party—the lowest number since before the group’s coming out in the 2010 elections.

More people hate the Tea Party than support it, too. Twenty-seven percent of Americans say they oppose the party. The number of Americans who said they strongly oppose the party, 17%, also outnumbers those who said they strongly supported it, 11%.

Fully half of all Americans, however, say they don’t oppose, support, or have an opinion of the Tea Party.

Despite the last week of infighting between Tea Party and more mainstream Republican congressmen, GOP voters are increasingly ambivalent about the movement.

In 2010, after Tea Party members were successfully elected in a number of districts, 65% of Republicans said they supported the movement. Now, just 38% support the party. A full half of all Republicans responded that they were neutral or had no opinion on the movement.

The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,510 adults by telephone between Sept 5-8, 2013. It has a margin of error of +/- 3%.

The Tea Party Turns on Republicans, Threatens to Sit Out 2014

By: Sarah Jones/politicususa

When you organize a protest and only 6 people show, including yourself, your movement might be in serious trouble.

Waving a rather sad, given the context, but large “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, Juan Fiol, a Miami real estate broker and Marco Rubio protest organizer, wondered where everyone was. “It was supposed to be a big event,” he told Naples News, as he stood with the five other Tea Partiers to protest Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA) for being a “back-stabber” and a “liar” over immigration reform. That desolate July protest must have stung.

Bitter feelings of betrayal have led activists to their next threat: They will sit out the 2014 election:

The tea party is a loosely knit web of activists, and some are hoping to rekindle the fire with 2014 primary challenges to wayward Republicans. But many more say they plan to sit out high-profile races in some important swing states next year, a move that GOP leaders fear could imperil the re-election prospects of former tea party luminaries, including the governors of Florida and Ohio.

Republicans need only look at how that same tactic turned out for Democrats in 2010 to know that is a disaster waiting to happen.

Republicans are now paying the piper for their 2010 gamble. Yes, it won them the House and gummed up Obama’s agenda, but it also made them wildly unpopular. Worse still, their own party has been taken over by the beast.

Even Republicans don’t like the Republican Party. A July ABC poll by Langer Research Associates showed that a stunning 52% of Republicans see their party as being on the wrong track with only 37% seeing it on the right track. In fact, for the first time since 1994, a majority of Republicans are dissatisfied with their party.

A July Quinnipiac poll demonstrated the Republican Party’s problem: Forty-nine percent of Republicans believe that the GOP is doing too little to compromise with President Obama, yet the Tea Party wants no compromise. The Tea Party consists of the most vocal supporters, the reliable turnout for off year election turnout. With an ever-shrinking tent, Republicans can’t afford to lose any support. After all, the ABC poll also revealed that only 21% of Americans surveyed identify as Republican.

Republicans keep trying to fool the Tea Party just like they fool voters; for example, they’re trying to sell Rubio’s immigration reform as border security. But the Republican Party bred and fed a particularly virulent strain of paranoia in order to turn the Tea Party against their own best economic interests and keep them misinformed. It was inevitable that at some point, that paranoia would turn on the Republican Party – and it looks like that’s beginning to happen.

Some of the embittered Tea might sit out 2014, but don’t breathe a sigh of relief yet. Finding no national platform, the Tea Party is following the Republican game plan of 40-50 years ago. Tea Partiers are infiltrating on the local level, running for “school boards, county commissions and city councils, focusing on issues such as unfunded pension liabilities and sewer system repairs,” according to Naples News. So the people who know the least about government and governing and hate government the most want to be in charge of it. Since no one will hand them the national reins, they’re taking over on a local level. What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, House Republicans remain clueless and Foxified against the national reality. They only care that they can get re-elected; they don’t care what they are doing to their party.

Thus the party vaunting the morality of self-interest now has to live with the downside of self-interest as a guiding principle. It turns out that it’s not all the conservative idea of a good time — denying poor people food and cheering the deaths of the unemployed.

Eventually, the self-interest they gloat about bites them in the bum and even the Republican Party can’t force their own self-interested members to behave anymore. Now the activists are threatening to stay home because the GOP didn’t hate on immigrants enough. Let’s not forget, it was the Republican Party who taught the Tea Party how to control via terror, fits, and tantrums.

Turns out, it was the Republican Party and not President Obama who took it upon themselves to tread on the Tea Party. That was predictable, as is their rage at being used.

Tick tock, Governors Scott and Kasich.

Tea Party Distances Self From Republican Party Stars

By MICHAEL J. MISHAK/Huffington Post

MIAMI -- This wasn't the revolution the tea party had in mind.

Four years ago, the movement and its potent mix of anger and populism persuaded thousands of costumed and sign-waving conservatives to protest the ballooning deficit and President Obama's health care law. It swept a crop of no-compromise lawmakers into Congress and governor's offices and transformed political up-and-comers, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, into household names.

But as many tea party stars seek re-election next year and Rubio considers a 2016 presidential run, conservative activists are finding themselves at a crossroads. Many of their standard-bearers have embraced more moderate positions on bedrock issues such as immigration and health care, broadening their appeal in swing states but dampening grass-roots passion.

"They keep sticking their finger in the eyes of the guys who got them elected," said Ralph King, a co-founder of the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots. "A lot of people are feeling betrayed."

The tea party is a loosely knit web of activists, and some are hoping to rekindle the fire with 2014 primary challenges to wayward Republicans. But many more say they plan to sit out high-profile races in some important swing states next year, a move that GOP leaders fear could imperil the re-election prospects of former tea party luminaries, including the governors of Florida and Ohio.

"It changes the playing field for us," said Tom Gaitens, former Florida director of FreedomWorks, a political action committee that has spent millions of dollars to help tea party candidates. "The most powerful thing we have as a movement is our feet and our vote."

In the summer of 2009, tea party supporters stormed congressional town hall meetings, shouting down lawmakers who had voted for the bank bailout and the stimulus package. The movement's voice grew louder after Democrats passed the health care overhaul, and voters took their outrage to the polls in 2010. The tea party wave stunned Democrats and many moderate Republicans, sweeping the GOP into control of the House and changing the balance of power in many statehouses.

But not long after some tea party stars took office, political analysts said, they were forced to adapt to a changing landscape, particularly in states Obama won in 2012, and to the realities of governing.

The tea party also fell out of favor with many people. At its height after the 2010 elections, a CBS News poll found that 31 percent of those surveyed considered themselves tea party supporters. A May survey found just 24 percent identified with the movement.

Facing sagging approval ratings, tea party Republicans, some of whom were elected by slim margins, shifted tactics.

Fla. Gov. Rick Scott, a former health care company executive who won office by attacking the health law and calling for deep cuts to state spending, later endorsed the health law and signed one of the largest budgets in state history, complete with pay raises for teachers. Similarly, Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, and Rick Snyder, R-Mich., are battling their GOP-dominated legislatures to expand Medicaid, a big part of the health law.

Tea party supporters were most struck by Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants. His personal story and unlikely rise to power made him perhaps the most prominent figure in the movement.

As a Senate candidate in 2010, he denounced as "amnesty" any plan that would offer a path to citizenship for those who were in the country illegally. Yet in recent months, he has emerged as a leader of a bipartisan Senate group that developed a plan that includes such a provision. The plan has been panned by conservatives but ultimately could bolster Rubio's standing with Hispanics, a growing demographic group that has voted overwhelmingly Democratic in recent years.

One sweltering July day, a half-dozen tea party protesters gathered under a tree in front of Rubio's Miami office, seeking shade as they denounced his support for an immigration overhaul. But the protest soon turned into more of a support group, with the four men and two women grousing to each other about how Rubio had turned into a "back-stabber," a "liar" and a "flip-flopper."

Juan Fiol, a real estate broker who organized the protest, kept looking at his phone, waiting for calls from fellow tea party supporters that never came.

"It was supposed to be a big event," he said as he waved a large "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

The movement's top strategists acknowledge the tea party is quieter today, by design. It has matured, they said, from a protest movement to a political movement. Large-scale rallies have given way to strategic letter-writing and phone-banking campaigns to push or oppose legislative agendas in Washington and state capitals. In Michigan and Ohio, for example, leaders have battled the implementation of the president's health law and the adoption of "Common Core" state school standards.

Local activists say they have focused largely on their own communities since Obama's re-election and the ideological drift of some tea party-backed politicians. Many are running for school boards, county commissions and city councils, focusing on issues such as unfunded pension liabilities and sewer system repairs.

"The positions that people are filling at the local levels are more important for the future of the movement and the future of the country," said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella organization. "It's creating a farm team for the future."

The Republican establishment, however, is concerned about 2014. Party leaders worry about the GOP's most passionate advocates walking away, particularly those supporters angered by the Senate's immigration bill. In a nod to the tea party, business and conservative groups have launched ad campaigns recasting the bill as a national security measure.

The conservative American Action Network spent $750,000 on pro-reform commercials. One ad aimed at Florida voters called the legislation "the toughest border security plan ever passed by Congress" and urged viewers to thank Rubio for "keeping his promise and fighting to secure the border."

National tea party leaders hope to re-energize followers by focusing on two of the movement's chief targets: the Internal Revenue Service and the health law. They said the Obama administration had handed them a recruiting tool when it delayed the law's implementation and when the IRS singled out tea party groups and other conservative political organizations for special scrutiny.

"The very issues that brought us together in the first place are emerging as more center stage than they were in 2009 and 2010," said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks. "That animates the political conversation and mobilizes our grass roots going into the 2014 election."

Some Republicans are also moving to repair their relationships with the movement.

Rubio recently spoke to about 50 conservative activists and other lawmakers at a meeting of the Senate's tea party caucus. Organizers said he breezed past immigration, instead devoting much of his speech to repealing the health law.

___

Tea Parties Use Verdict to Further Attack Trayvon, Reproduce Racism

By Devin Burghart/IREHR

The facts of the case are straightforward.  Trayvon Martin was walking home when he was accosted by an armed vigilante who scuffled with the teenager and then shot him at close range.  The vigilante was an unofficial “neighborhood watch” volunteer, who was advised by a police dispatcher to not give chase, but did so anyway.  Despite the fact that Trayvon Martin was guilty only of “walking while black,” some Tea Party leaders had already convicted 17 year-old well before the trial, rather than George Zimmerman who shot him.

As IREHR previously noted, shortly after Zimmerman killed Martin on February 26, 2012, white nationalists and other bigots concocted false allegations, and slandered Martin. After the Zimmerman “not guilty” verdict, and particularly after President Obama publicly discussed the issue of race in the Trayvon Martin situation, many Tea Partiers used the occasion to place blame on the victim, amplify racist stereotypes of black men, and reproduce that racism in the civic arena.

For example, just hours after the July 13 verdict, the Florida Tea Party sent an email blast to supporters entitled “Black Teens Murder White Baby For The Fun Of It.” The brief, brutal story had been news from Brunswick, Georgia the previous March. But the Tea Partiers regurgitated the story in July in an attempt to deflect blame away from Zimmerman on to black men

The Florida Tea Party was not alone in this regard. Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, repeatedly weighed in during the trial with attempts to demonize the dead African-American teen. In a July 15, 2013 Tea Party Nation website piece entitled “From Sinner to Saint,” Phillips fused many falsehoods and distortions into a vicious and bitter piece of propaganda.

Trayvon Martin was well on his way to a life of crime, a life that would feature at best, the revolving door of the criminal justice system or possibly even a lifetime stay at a penal facility.  Or, at worst, a shortened life, ended by someone else.

Trayvon Martin was a product of American liberal social policies.  A single mother raised him.  His school was more concerned about appeasing the civil rights hucksters than whether Trayvon Martin was either educated or taught basic responsibilities.

The story of Trayvon Martin’s life is not irrelevant.  It is the major cause of what happened that night he encountered George Zimmerman. The left has tried to demonize Zimmerman and has tried to canonize St. Trayvon.

The truth is Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old thug who was the architect of his own demise.

That is the story that should be told.  Perhaps if that story and the truth about Trayvon Martin is told, it might prevent the next Trayvon Martin.

Later Phillips wrote, “The George Zimmerman trial was a travesty to begin with. It never should have happened” and called for the head of State’s Attorney Angela Corey, claiming, “She is an individual unfit to be a prosecutor, unfit to be a lawyer and unfit for a job anymore significant that asking, “Would you like fries with that?”

It should be noted that by openly articulating the type of bigoted clap-trap that is usually said only behind closed doors, Phillips both invests these ravings with a certain legitimacy while re-establishing his own racist credentials.  Indeed, Phillips Tea Party rhetoric mirrors closely the words of white nationalist demagogue Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, who wrote “Five white women and an apparent Hispanic have acquitted George Zimmerman on all counts. The facts and the law clearly required that it do so. However, this is a just conclusion only to a case that should never have been brought, and that casts a harsh and damning light on black race hustlers, crazed white liberals, and a vilely irresponsible media.”

From another angle, Lloyd Marcus, the Deltona, Florida paid spokesperson for the Tea Party Express, who describes himself, parentheses included, as a “(black) Unhyphenated American,” also chimed in. In an article entitled “Political Correctness: Bring Me the Head of George Zimmerman!” Marcus emphatically declared “I was elated upon hearing the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial. It gave me hope that America has not yet totally succumb to the tyranny of Political Correctness. It is refreshing that the jury was not willing to sacrifice the life of an innocent man on the alter[sic] in worship of Political Correctness enforced by the mainstream media and the Obama Administration.”

Marcus also pushed a notion that is popular in Tea Party circles that “the Obama Administration unlawfully conspired to ‘get George Zimmerman.’” As he often does, he attacked the NAACP and concluded that “had Zimmerman been sentenced to prison to appease PC, it would have been a dark day for all Americans – further empowering PC to imprison and enslave us.”

Tea Party reiterated old and tiresome attacks against the NAACP and others civil rights organizations and leaders, calling them a “racial grievance industry.” Over at the Patriot Action Network, for instance, one frequent commentator on the Tea Party site wrote, “George Zimmerman has been found not guilty by a jury of his peers. However the NAACP and the jury of the Society of Perpetual Race Baiters® is not persuaded. They will continue to hound George and use him as an example of racial injustice for decades to come; thus the tragedy of one young man’s death becomes the tragedy of character assassination and ruination of another young man’s life. So here’s our official halftime score: American Justice System 1, Race Baiting Prosecutors Acting Stupidly 0. Official Race Baiting outrage to follow.”

This kind of talk was old before the Tea Parties were invented.  It goes hand in hand with the Confederate lie that slavery was good for African Americans.  But when it is re-articulated in the 21st century, it renews and reinvigorates racist behavior.

Not satisfied with just defaming a dead teen, TheTeaParty.net (the same group which sponsored the .223 Day of Resistance Gun rallies in February), tried to use the verdict to attack the Obama administration (and raise cash). This group described the president the Attorney General Eric Holder as “race baiters.”  They were supposedly involved in a conspiracy, according to this group. “Obama's DOJ, led by Holder, actually facilitated organized protests and rallies against George Zimmerman following the death of Trayvon Martin BEFORE Zimmerman was even brought up on charges!”

In a fund-raising pitch, the group pressed against those who believe that the Justice Department should charge Zimmerman with civil rights charges.  TeaParty.Net demanded that “HOLDER MUST RESIGN AND BE PROSECUTED!”[Emphasis in original] They added, “We cannot continue to look the other way and not call out the likes of Barack Obama and Holder for being manipulative, dangerous race baiters. Their tactics are dirty. Their tactics are insulting. Their tactics are destructive for America.”

Two days later, in another fund-raising email, the group spun the conspiracy even further, announcing that “Eric Holder is declaring war on the American people and he's using George Zimmerman as cover.” Two days after that, in another fundraising email, TheTeaParty.net lambasted Obama’s remarks as “distraction, smoke screen” designed to cover up the IRS (non) scandal.

In a similar fashion, after President Obama’s remarks on Trayvon Martin, many Tea Party websites were flooded with racist comments lashing out against Martin and Obama, including fantasies about the President being killed.

For example, at the website of the 1776 Tea Party, Steven G. Elliott of Manns Choice, PA responded to the text of Obama’s remarks by comparing Obama and Martin, “One dope-head thug talking about another dope-head thug.” Linda Lee Kenney of Louisville, KY followed “I'm so sick of this jihadist trying to divide our country.  He needs to go back to freakin Kenya!” Robert William Velon of Penryn, CA followed with “He needs to go back to Kenya in a box...  I had hoped that his vacation to Africa would have promted[sic] him to buy a mud hut so he could move back.... Trayvon was a punk he was not the victim..... [Ellipses in original]” Jack Lamberson of Crawfordsville, IN added “He just proved he is racist and wants riots so he can declare marshal[sic] law and come after I guns.  I sure wish it was him 35 years ago, we would all be much better off.” George Zornetsky of Beacon, NY also wished that the president was dead, “Too bad Obama isn't more like Martin, six feet under where that sonofabitch[sic] belongs.” There are many, many more comments like these on numerous Tea Party websites post-verdict, with scant voices challenging the racism.

Of course, this sort of guttural racism isn’t confined to Tea Party ranks or the white nationalist fringes. Conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have all used the verdict in the same manner. Racism and white privilege then are not simply a “left-over” phenomenon.  It is, instead, a new and continually reproduced disease.

This horrid rhetoric provides further evidence of the depth and persistence of racism in this country.  It should also serve as a wake-up call for all those who have given the Tea Party movement a free pass, and let it persist in the notion that it is simply a conservative cause concerned only with taxes and budgets.  It should tell any decent hearted soul that this racist movement needs to be opposed as the bigots and racists they really are.

The Tea Party Is Ready To Bid A Tearless Goodbye To Mitch McConnell

By DEBORAH MONTESANO/Addicting Info

Why is U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell sitting in the back of the room, twiddling his thumbs, as the Senate pushes for bipartisan compromise on difficult issues? When the heat was on last week for an agreement between the GOP and Democrats to avoid the end of the filibuster, McConnell was nowhere to be seen–and it was thanks to the Tea Party
.

McConnell faces a race for re-election next year and, until recently, thought he could focus his efforts on the likely Democratic challenger, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. On Tuesday, however, Tea Party member Matt Bevins–an investment adviser who has never held public office–sent out a media advisory stating his intention to challenge the incumbent senator in the 2014 primary. Bevins will be making appearances around Kentucky for the rest of the week to create visibility for his campaign.

In what must be an ominous sign for McConnell, 15 local tea party groups appealed to national tea party groups to withdraw endorsements of the senator that they’ve already made. In a letter, the groups wrote:

Senator McConnell’s Progressive Liberal voting record, his absolute iron fisted rule over the Republican Party in Kentucky and his willingness to roll over and cede power to President Obama and the Liberals in Washington, prove that he is no friend to the American people or the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Your endorsement undermines the work of the real grassroots Tea Party organizations all over Kentucky. Had you taken the time to reach out to us, you would have learned that the Tea Parties in Kentucky do NOT support Senator McConnell’s campaign.

Uh-oh, McConnell. There’s more. Senator Rand Paul, who has also pledged his support to the minority leader, refused to discourage Bevins from making the challenge by saying:

I’m not giving (Bevin) encouragement or discouragement. It’s a free country and anybody who wants to run, can.

Still, there’s a silver lining to Bevin’s challenge–maybe not for McConnell, but certainly for the Democratic opposition. The fact that the Senate’s minority leader has been endorsed by two national TeaParty groups, TeaParty.net and Tea Party Nation, but not by the local groups, indicates a split in their movement. In May, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation made the case that the movement needs to“grow up” and “pick our fights”, writing on the group’s website:

For those who scream that McConnell isn’t ‘Tea Party’ enough, would you prefer Harry Reid?

So expect McConnell to continue twiddling his thumbs as others–like John McCain, who is not up for reelection–step in to fill the GOP leadership gap on issues requiring bipartisan cooperation, like immigration reform and the budget ceiling. By avoiding any further erosion of his position as a conservative, McConnell seeks to inoculate himself from further Tea Party accusations–and opens himself up to vulnerability from the probable Democratic candidate.

Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her candidacy on July 1st, hoping to take advantage of both McConnell’s deep unpopularity and her own status as underdog. In 2011, she won the office of Secretary of State by first defeating the Democratic incumbent and then the Republican who had Tea Party backing. She won the most votes of any Democratic candidate statewide.

After her announcement for the Senate race, Guy Cecil, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, pointed out a poll showing that over 60 percent of Kentucky voters disapprove of McConnell’s job performance. Cecil had this to say about Lundergran Grimes’ prospects:

The Kentucky Senate race is now a toss up. Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular incumbent in the entire country. He is a relic of the past and a symbol of everything that is wrong with Washington. Kentuckians want a change.

McConnell is starting the race with a huge war chest of over $8.6 million. However, Lundergan Grimes comes from a political family with extensive connections and the possibility of raising large amounts of cash herself. She lost no time in framing the race from the perspective of a younger, fresher face, saying:

The question never was, is Mitch McConnell vulnerable? The question never was, does Kentucky deserve a change? The answer to both of those questions remains and is, yes.

I agree with thousands of Kentuckians that Kentucky is tired of 28 years of obstruction. That Kentucky is tired of someone who has voted against raising the minimum wage while all the while quadrupling his own net worth.

So, here’s McConnell’s dilemma: stop the obstructionism and face the wrath of the Tea Party, or continue with that course and face the wrath of voters who want to see progress on the issues that most affect their daily lives.

Whatever the outcome, the nation is already reaping the benefits of the race: no more Mitch McConnell in their faces until at least after the primary season is over.