Paid GOP consultants use Tea Party front to promote candidates

Like I said, the Tea Party Express and its cross-country bus tour is nothing more than a front dreamed up by GOP consultants to raise money for GOP candidates and attack their Democrat rivals.

But in doing so, the GOP has secretly undermined real Tea Party groups (which was probably the Republican party's intent):

"'We've worked hard to distance ourselves from the Tea Party Express because of their close affiliation with the Republican Party, the Republican establishment and their PAC,' said Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella group of local activists. The Patriots have supported a strict nonpartisan posture but also have struggled to raise money, and Dooley contends that's partly because of Tea Party Express."

"Adds Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a nonprofit group that trains local tea party organizers: 'I'm concerned that they're using (Tea Party Express) as a marketing gimmick to line the pockets of consultants instead of actually helping the tea party movement.'"

The GOP is playing with fire in promoting the teabaggers. What is now a very disunited movement with a lot of astroturfed "grassroots" funding from big GOP groups and donors could turn into a real grassroots movement that won't take marching orders from the RNC or support GOP candidates in lockstep. (This is not the most likely scenario, but it is possible.) It'll be interesting to see how much gas the teabagging movement has beyond 2010, and then if they simply get behind the GOP nominee in 2012 without getting anything in return.

GOP operatives crash the tea party

By Kenneth P. Vogel

April 14, 2010 | Politico

URL: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35785.html

Stupak's 'betrayal' and Tea Partiers' beliefs

Maybe it's the lib'rul media's fault for misinforming me, but I can't understand exactly what it is that Democratic ex-Congressman Bart Stupak did to "betray" his Michigan constituents, and incur the wrath of the Tea Party Express and its fundraising PAC. I mean, Stupak is a Democrat, he's not a Republican or a teabagger. Yes, he is pro-life, and so he conditioned his support of the health care bill on President Obama's promise to sign an executive order that the bill would not fund abortions. You may not agree with him, but his stance did make sense. He did not do a 180. And anyway, I thought the whole Tea Party thing was about fiscal conservatism, not anti-abortion. So why did the TPX single out Stupak?

All this goes to show that the teabaggers are just Republicans playing dress-up. The TPX in particular seems like a poorly disguised GOP front group. Looking at their web site, I can hardly figure out what they're for. The Tea Party Patriots site at least provides a Mission Statement and Core Values, which makes no mention of abortion. There are lots of other Tea Party groups if you care to look them up.

Um, and just as an aside, you know, the Tea Partiers are trying to field their own candidates for Congress, but more often, they simply support GOP candidates. Yet their national agenda is entirely domestically focused, and then narrowly. Not a mention of foreign policy. Why? The first view is that foreign policy questions could divide the movement between the pro-war, God & Guts Republicans, and the no-entangling-alliances, fiscally conservative Republicans who don't think America can afford to wage a decades-long two-front war. The more cynical view is that if you don't take a stand on something, you can say you never betrayed your beliefs, which is another way to say: most teabaggers are pro-national defense and want the Pentagon to spend whatever the hell it takes, the deficit be damned. Nor do they take any official stance on social issues.

Are we the people supposed to take the Tea Parties' electoral ambitions seriously when they have nothing to say officially on foreign policy and social issues like abortion? Or is the default assumption supposed to be something like, wherever our views are not expressed, we concur with the Republican party?