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Alex Brant-Zawadzki

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Tea Party Predicts Downfall of Tea Party

Posted: 05/ 3/2012 7:27 pm

Leaders of the Tea Party acknowledged on Wednesday that if the recall effort to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is successful, it would effectively kill their movement.

In a really rather desperate email, the Tea Party Patriots begged their membership to help them raise $300,000 as soon as possible. Jenny-Beth Martin, co-founder of the group, starts off by warning that "the labor unions and big-government special interests believe they can crush the tea party movement." But instead of their usual bellicose "They don't know what they're talking about" rhetoric, the dismissive disregard the Tea Party usually expresses towards the left, for some reason this time they're scared. How scared? According to Martin, "This effort in Wisconsin will be the largest grassroots program in our history and we don't have much time."

"They know that if they can con the voters of Wisconsin into recalling tea party leaders like Governor Walker and his allies in the state legislature, they can stop cold our national movement to cut the size and scope of government... These enemies of freedom and free enterprise know that if they can just win in Wisconsin -- if they can just recall Scott Walker and some of his allies -- they can then roll to victory across America this fall."

In other words, the lefties don't just think they can crush the Tea Party -- they "know" they can.

Just how frightened is the Tea Party? Consider this fundraising ask: "Please make the most generous contribution you can possibly afford to Tea Party Patriots right away." This, from the people whose very existence sprung from righteous indignation over excessive spending? Usually they take great pains in their communiques to emphasize the down-home cashlessness of their grass-rootsy members.

They claim they need these hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to combat the alleged millions that "left-wing interest groups" are currently spending on ads. Or because "they have millions set aside for the recall campaign." Martin isn't clear when exactly the lefties are spending their millions. But they definitely have millions and they're definitely going to spend them. Apparently.

Of course, the Tea Party will never disappear, just like how it's impossible to win a war on terror. And many in the movement will disagree with Martin. But if some of the most prominent national leaders are talking about the potential for failure and dissolution, how long until it percolates down through the ranks? After all, we know how fond these people are of the "trickle down" theory.

 

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This user has chosen to opt out of the Badges program
03:12 PM on 05/28/2012
“Charles and David Koch, billionaire brothers and major Tea Party backers, run a corporate empire that has made illicit payments to win contracts, sold chemical equipment to Iran in defiance of a US trade ban, stolen oil on federal land and lied to regulators about toxic [cancer-causing]emissions. … For six decades around the world, Koch Industries has blazed a path to riches – in part, by making illicit payments to win contracts, trading with a terrorist state , fixing prices, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental regulations. At the same time, Charles and David Koch have promoted a form of government that interferes less with company actions.”
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Three Lakes
12:41 PM on 05/23/2012
Jenny-Beth Martin and other Tea Party officers that take $700,000 plus in salaries annually could work as volunteers like they did a few years ago and donate that money to their cause. They would have double what they need in Wisconsin.
10:54 AM on 05/07/2012
Jenny Beth Martin has always been an active Republican. She owed the government hundreds of thousands of dollars when she and her husband, now tea party treasurer, bankrupted their business. She is about the Republican party and making money. Everything else is to fool the clueless.
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Patricia Cash
Yellow Dog -Progressive-
07:01 PM on 05/08/2012
That's the entire Tea Party movement in a TeaBag -its first about making money off the mindless followers ,who refuse to think for themselves. Its safer inside of the Teabag in the little box writing checks and using up CC credit so Jenny Beth Martin, Sarah Palin ,Dick Aremy ,Sal Russo and other can live their chosen lifestyle.

I think therefore I vote Democratic- Obama 2012
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TheOneIndependent
08:52 AM on 05/04/2012
The tea party was toast as soon as the Americans for prosperity and the other GOP corp controlled groups took them over. It may have started with good folks voicing their concerns, a true grass roots movement. Then they were taken over by the big guns, the right wing facist, the Racist groups. Because the GOP was severely damaged by the incompetence of GWB they embraced all including the gun toting racist because they hated Obama for being a black president and they still do.
Fox noise spreading lies and feeding fears as what will this Black president do now to the white people, and if he does this or take away our guns, then he will............All BS to feed racism to garner votes.
08:34 AM on 05/04/2012
There's definitely an irony here. The Tea party is founded on the idea that they are being taxed too heavily. So what do they do in Wisconsin? They 'self-tax' by throwing $$ into Walker's coffers. I guess they feel that there are some issues where they are willing to spend the bucks. Not the poor, not the elderly, but a politician that doesn't know his a*ss from his elbow. Not known for smarts, but known because he has become a 'symbol' of the movement.

But why do they think that throwing more $$ after the millions he collected -- about the same or more than Santorum took in on his campaign for president, will do anything? Walker's numbers have not moved despite the millions already spent in the last few months. These folks baffle me.
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WanderingDon
Orwell was an optimist
09:29 AM on 05/12/2012
I believe the idea is that they decide how their money is spent rather than the government making that decision. Perhaps they donate to the poor and elderly themselves. I don't know, but I feel it's worth considering.
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White Raven
Eyeballs are tasty
07:50 AM on 05/04/2012
Sadly at its inception I found myself approving of the Tea Party, because they did come from a good idea. I happen to think that smaller government and lessening the influence of lobbies is a good thing. It quickly became clear that the movement was hijacked almost as soon as it gained any real power though, and by the same sort of powerbrokers that the Tea Party claimed to operate against. Ever since then it's just been a matter of time. They'll fade out like the co-opted party-within-a-party that they really are.
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Peter Gatliff
07:27 AM on 05/04/2012
It seems to me every thirty or forty years Fascism sticks it's ugly head out of the closet and the Americaan people slams the door on them.
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Patricia Cash
Yellow Dog -Progressive-
07:02 PM on 05/08/2012
Its out of that closet all the way this time -
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bygbubba
04:10 AM on 05/12/2012
Yep, Obama will be slammed out of office in November. Good call.
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wmnorton
Moderate where moderate used to be
12:41 AM on 05/04/2012
Bill Clinton said it best back in 2010. The Tea Party people will figure out they have been played.
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bygbubba
04:11 AM on 05/12/2012
Bill needs to just go sit down and be quiet. Once a man, twice a child.
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12:00 AM on 05/04/2012
Looks like big daddy Koch is done with them. Probably no longer useful to them.
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
hipichick7
I'm still walking, so I'm sure that I can dance!
11:44 PM on 05/03/2012
As my little grandson would say "bye-bye tea party."
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John J3
Better to have a bleeding heart than none at all
12:53 AM on 05/04/2012
He's a very astute young man!
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Alex Brant-Zawadzki
Journalist, researcher, politico, dork
08:05 AM on 05/04/2012
Ideally, we all want smaller government. the problem is, industry has run roughshod over the government for so long that some believe we need a strong government in order to be able to regulate oil companies and protect consumers from the inevitable encroachments on civil liberties and opportunity in general caused by the ever-expanding need of companies to satisfy their share-holders.
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Malcontent21
I'm the last W.T.F.O.M.G factor
11:40 PM on 05/03/2012
The Tea Party is realizing that they're just pawns the establishment uses for leverage.
11:22 PM on 05/03/2012
The tea party as we know it will die. It's death will be in 2016 after Obama who birthed it by their hatred of him. The talking points are just the decoys and front. Their agenda is really that of the super rich conservatives. How else can you explain their ranting against their very own interests and not recognizing the govt benefits they receive whilst the condemn them. Low education and misinformed. The astro turf tea baggers will continue.
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TheOneIndependent
08:55 AM on 05/04/2012
I believe the OWS is the only peoples movement and the real tea party people with valid and factual concerns will go there to voice them because they are realizing that the Tea party has its own agenda and it has nothing to do with average people, except to trick them to vote to screw themselves.
03:50 PM on 05/04/2012
U R 1 independent thinker. I agree.
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knott wrench
10:30 PM on 05/03/2012
Wow. Talk about being mess up, its the Tea Party.

Desperate times call for desperate lies by the TP.
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09:29 PM on 05/03/2012
I thought the Koch Bros. were the source of Tea Party funding. Why not hit them up for the cash? $300,000 - that's a miniscule drop in the Koch's bucket, isn't it?
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GPFandango
08:47 AM on 05/04/2012
They probably carry that much with them everyday.
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
MsMassachusetts
Wit is cultured insolence. - Aristotle
09:19 PM on 05/03/2012
Why don't they just ask the Koch's for more money? Has the gravy train ended?
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knott wrench
10:32 PM on 05/03/2012
Sounds like it.

Maybe Walker has become "Radioactive" to them.

After all, once these two reclusive spiders were exposed by the "Faux" phone call, every one started talking and writing about them daily.