Tea Party Boils Over

[lame54]

Conservative Activists Furious at GOP Consultants Hijacking Tea Party Name
By Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones Online. Posted December 31, 2009.

The Tea Party Express is trying to capitalize on the Tea Party movement for crass and self-serving political purposes -- mainly as a fundraising machine for Republican causes.

Would a true Tea Party patriot drop nearly $1,600 in donor money for a small meal at a fancy steakhouse? Robin Stublen says no, and he's mad as hell about the profligate expenditures of a GOP political organization that has glommed on to his grassroots movement. Stublen is the organizer of the Punta Gorda, Florida, Tea Party and a member of Tea Party Patriots, a national grassroots organization that has no offices, no president, raises virtually no money, operates largely on volunteer efforts, and, most importantly, doesn't endorse candidates. But unbeknownst to many, there's another outfit claiming ownership of this conservative movement. It's called the Tea Party Express, and it has dominated Fox News coverage over the past year with its multi-state bus tours and political rallies.

Behind it is a well-established Republican political action committee that has raked in tons of money fundraising under the "Tea Party" banner -- and it has also spent a lot of that money in a fashion unbecoming a supposedly grassroots insurrection. For instance, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the PAC that created Tea Party Express dropped $1,597.29 over the summer for a meal for six at a tony Sacramento Chops restaurant, an expenditure that has Stublen seeing red.

"Six people averaged $266, that's not grassroots. I kill bugs and cut grass for a living. I'm splurging when I spend $19 at Chili's. Outback Steakhouse is reserved for Mother's Day," Stublen says.

For Stublen the pricey Chops tab is only the latest evidence that Tea Party Express is trying to capitalize on the movement for crass and self-serving political purposes -- mainly as a fundraising machine for Republican causes. Starting in August, Tea Party Express organized two cross-country bus tours that bashed the Obama administration’s health reform and attacked members of Congress not deemed conservative enough. Fox News heavily promoted the first tour, even embedding a reporter to cover the trip...

[StarfarerBill]

1. My heart fair bleeds...NOT.

[n2doc]

2. Hey it's alright with me if they want to spend it on food

Beats spending it on elections! Good way to spur the local economy too! Of course it's not my money....

[immoderate]

3. Do not accept dinner invitations from cannibals...

Teabaggers are dupes.

--imm

[dodger501]

4. If a dinner out at Chilis is a big deal

Then why on earth are you a Republican?
Do you actually believe those people give a rat's orifice about you or your situation?
Clueless.

[mdmc]

6. Anyone in DC give a shit?

The GOP and DLC are just tools of the corporations. Perhaps this teabaggin chilis dude will get that.

Sure we have Bernie Sanders, a real deal working for the working man.
And a few liberal congressfolk..
but

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[mdmc]

13. kick

[mdmc]

5. Just desserts

will be served with tea!

God, do I love this. The GOP is about to get the kind of whipping the DLC would have gotten if Kucinich had the Charisma of Obama and the cash of the Clintons. All the GOP has is teabaggers and those that are not teabaggers and need to be purged. Now the real teabaggers just got pwnd by the corporate right and they don't like it one bit.

[damntexdem]

7. Hey, tea pottiers, I mean tea partiers, don't let them get away with ripping you off!

Fight the GOP. Make it no-holds-barred, and fight to the death (yours, theirs, or better, both). Make it public and really, really disgusting to the populace. I await the fracas.

;-)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

8. They're Republicans! What do you expect? They lie and they steal

It's what they do!

[BR_Parkway]

9. Dear teabagger - are you now ready to accept the truth that you are simply

a tool to these people and that your situation is not worse off because of the liberals, it's the conservatives who have brainwashed you into doing everything against your own interest as they line their pockets and lifestyles with your hard work and sweat.

[drm604]

10. Those GOP consultants didn't hijack the movement,

they started the movement.

[IADEMO2004]

11. The extras in the teabagger movie think they are producer and director.

What a laugh

[CAG]

12. Springfield MO LTE this weekend from a local tea bagger excoriated

the "super rich" republicans for not supporting the tea baggers in the area. It was quite an entertaining thing to read; these little repub peons really thought the big wigs controlling the repub money machine would start unloading funds to these morons.

[Edweird]

14. Heh.They are just starting to figure out that they have been 'had'.

They should read DU more often. Idiots.