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MrScorpio

(73,626 posts)
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 06:35 AM Apr 2013

Phil Russo, Original Tea Party Member: The Movement Is Dead, Killed By Right's 'Racism, Hypocrisy'

The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing

Phil Russo, a libertarian-leaning, self-described "Goldwater Republican," was one of the earliest supporters of the tea party. But now, in an op-ed published in the Grio on Tuesday, he proclaims that the conservative movement is dead, killed off by members of the "political and religious right" who have poisoned it with toxic strands of hypocrisy and racism.

Russo, who was active in the tea party for some time as a radio host and campaign consultant in Florida, writes that he joined the movement in hopes of broadening the GOP's reach. He believed the tea party would call out hypocritical areas of the party's platform on social issues, and draw in independent voters "genuinely angry about the bank bailouts" in the wake of the financial crisis.

It was working, Russo writes, until moneyed interests "hijacked" the tea party, allowing it to turn into the "religious right in tri-corner hats" sometime after the Republican wave elections in 2010. Since then, it's gotten worse, Russo says.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/phil-russo-tea-party_n_3046174.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


Duh?!?
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magellan

(13,257 posts)
1. Known for some time (except by the later Teahadists who still refuse to believe)
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 07:10 AM
Apr 2013

The rabid right want nothing to do with disgruntled moderate Repubs, and were never going to let them change the party's suicidal direction.

Kolesar

(31,182 posts)
2. Russo is deluded: Teabagging was always about firing up the RW fringe
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 07:18 AM
Apr 2013

Their party is fundamentally divided by immigration and cannot draft a coherent message on that issue.
Fat Buchanan himself said that five years ago. Too messed up to go mainstream. The Democrats will move to the center and occupy a position ignoring the far right and the far left. Rather like Vladimer Putin, the tyrant in Russia.

n2doc

(47,953 posts)
3. So the movement is 'dead', because he doesn't like how it turned out?
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 07:19 AM
Apr 2013

The TP'er ALWAYS were mostly racists. As Bill Maher notes, the evidence is the simple fact that the TP didn't exist until there was a black man in the white house. And they will be gone if the repubs ever take the WH back.

hootinholler

(26,449 posts)
4. U MAD BRO?
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 07:31 AM
Apr 2013

I thought that the movement (if there ever was one) simply outlived its usefulness to the Koch Bros (via AFP). I guess we'll find out for sure during the mid terms, eh?

MrScorpio

(73,626 posts)
5. The Teabagger Caucus is barely extant in Congress these days…
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 07:34 AM
Apr 2013

It's turning into nothing more than a Ponzi scheme for everyone else for now

Javaman

(62,439 posts)
6. oh the irony...
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 09:36 AM
Apr 2013

the tea bagging ball lickers would have never existed if it weren't for moneyed interests. They held their hand out to be paid mouth pieces from the get go.

more delusional thinking by the extreme nuts on the right.

muriel_volestrangler

(101,149 posts)
7. The first public Tea Party complaint was about helping people facing foreclosure
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 10:03 AM
Apr 2013

Not about 'bank bailouts'. They let the bank bailouts happen without a murmur. This was about hating the 'losers' who were their neighbors.

A Televised Birth of a Movement

CNBC's Rick Santelli is widely credited with launching the grassroots movement. While standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on February 19, 2009, he unleashed what can only be called a rant against the Obama Administration's proposal to help homeowners facing foreclosure refinance their mortgages.

"Do we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages?" he asked. "This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" He went on to suggest that he would organize a Chicago Tea Party in July, where capitalists would dump "some derivative securities into Lake Michigan." The video of his tirade became a YouTube hit, and thus the movement was born. Within weeks, Tea Party protests were sprouting up all over the country. The Tea Party name, a clear reference to the American colonists' dumping of tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxes imposed by King George, stands as an acronym as well: Taxed Enough Already.

http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/tea-party-history.html

Brother Buzz

(36,212 posts)
8. Sal Russo, King of Astroturf movements and co-founder of the Tea Party Express says it ain't dead...
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 10:47 AM
Apr 2013

as long as there are still sheeple willing to be fleeced. Who needs a grassroots movement when you can but a build a brand spanking new Astroturf movement with a bit of tobacco PAC seed money and the mother-of-all email lists?

AlinPA

(15,071 posts)
9. It's still working for them with control of the US House and enough of them to shut down the Senate
Wed Apr 10, 2013, 11:33 AM
Apr 2013

work with their filibusters.

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