The Real Progressive

You Can’t Get Something for Nothing.  It would seem odd that anyone would be fired up about Tax Day this year. Not that I love paying taxes, but who does, right?  I drive down federal roads, eat food that has the okay of the USDA, and  feel relatively secure that the military is doing the job of keeping our country safe.  You can’t get something for nothing, my grandfather always said.  But the way the Tea Party is all fired up about today’s taxes, you would think so.

Tea Partiers Still Angry When Paying Less Taxes.  It’s odd, but Tea Baggers are rallying around the country on the issue of high taxes. I wonder if they did their own taxes and compared it to what they paid last year before scheduling all those rallies.   As part of the Stimulus President Obama signed in 2009, 98% of all working families and individuals received a tax break for this year.     This total includes the 95 percent of working families that will or have received tax credits in the range of $400 to $800.  Under George W. Bush, the wealthiest 2.2 % of Americans got a tax break.

Somewhere There Is a Disconnect.  I could understand people being upset about giving the government money, especially when you don’t always agree as to how it will be spent.  Every year people rally about the good old days before Americans had to pay income taxes.  (In case you are wondering, that was before 1913).  But the larger numbers and the increased rancor don’t make sense when you get to keep more of your money in your pocket this year and  pay the government less.  Did someone forget to give the Tea Party the memo?  

GOP Hijacks the Tea Party.  You got to hand it to them, they are an exciting group.  They get to dress up in Paul Revere costumes and talk about how they hate the government and love their freedom.  I’m not a fan.  But they have their principles and beliefs, wrong though I think they are.  They have tremendous energy, loud megaphones and are newly excited about politics.  They love their grassroot movement.   They don’t like government or Democrats.   It would be a blessing for the GOP if they could turn all those angry protesters into GOP voters this fall.   But problem is that as much as they dislike Democrats, they aren’t too happy with Republicans either.   

Tea Party Express.  Not to let grass-root sentimentality ruin a great campaign, Joe Wierzbicki, a Republican consultant with Russo Marsh + Rogers came up with a plan to position them as a leading force in the 2010 elections.  The plan was to start a nationwide tea party bus tour called the Tea Party Express.  Buses would bear the Tea Party Express logo and would bring speakers and entertainers for rallies at dozens of small towns across America with headliners like Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

Raking in the Money.  Fancy campaign advance work, event planning with slick ads done by Russo Marsh, big crowds and savvy media turned the simple man's grassroots movement into a prime fundraising vehicle.  They have been able to raise a lot of money, $2.7 million in July compared to less than $600,000 in the six months prior.  They changed their name from “Our Country Deserves Better “to “Our Country Deserves Better PAC –TeaPartyExpress.org.”  This means that Russo Marsh  is getting a lot more business, $1.9 million of the $4.1 million the PAC paid out.  The money is flowing and business is good.

Co-Opting the Tea Party.  The only problem is the Tea Party doesn’t really like the Tea Party Express.  They’re angry about the high profile image of the Tea Party Express and the big payments made to Russo Marsh.  They feel that the bus tours distract from the “real” meaning of their grassroots movement and that the GOP and PAC ruin their independent efforts.  The Tea Party Express is actually hurting real Tea Party activists according to Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella for the Tea Party.  Dooley notes that “[w]hen people donate to the Tea Party Express, they think that they are donating to a tea party, because they don’t read the fine print at the bottom of their e-mails that says it’s a PAC.”  She adds, “[it] hurts the local grass-roots tea party organizers, since a lot of that is actually taking  some money away from them."

The Tea Party could complaint to a federal agency, but that would mean more government involvement, so perhaps not.

By: Michelle Loggins