Friday, February 12, 2010

CO-OPTED AND CORRUPTED: THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT IS BECOMING A JOKE

EXPECT PALIN, BECK AND FOX NEWS TO CAPITALIZE, MARGINALIZE AND MISMANAGE THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT



Sarah Palin recently was hired to speak at the national Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And speak she did, crib notes on her left hand and all. Palin certainly cuts a nice figure in a tight dress suit and stilletto heels, but the rhetoric became more mainstream Republican talking points combined with catchy phrases and digs at President Obama, as the night went on.

Let's face it, Palin has morphed from a so-called middle class maverick and Governer of Alaska, to a creation of Fox News and highly paid conservative consultants. And it is this attempt to have Palin come off as both anti-establishment and a maverick of the average John or Jane Doe that makes Palin appear flippant and cartoonish at times. Compare that Palin to the Palin that appeared on Youtube shortly after she was elected Govorner talking about how she was there to do the people's work and fight corruption and how "cool" she thought Congressman Ron Paul was for challenging the status quo. Too bad Palin seems entrenced with that same status quo.

Speaking of Congressman Ron Paul, the Tea Party Movement actually grew out of his efforts and objections during the Paulson-Bush government bailout hearings, and his even older cries about ending or auditing the Federal Reserve Board. Somehow, Paul is nowhere to be found now, at least at these Tea Party gatherings, and the movement has been effectively co opted by Glenn Beck, Fox News, and turned into an anti tax, anti Obama movement.  Several founders of the original movement have already quit in disgust over the Republican party takeover of what started as an independent, libertarian type of organization and movement.

A recent New York Daily News poll showed that more than half of the nation have an unfavorable view of Palin, and a full seventy-one percent think she is not Presidential material.

Mike Lupica, from the New York Daily News, has certainly noticed.  Lupica called her a political lightweight, mocked the crib notes of simple phrases that Palin had written on her palm, and referred to Palin as "the pinup-girl of the tea party movement"; "a hotter, less read,  Margeret Thatcher", "the piano that thinks it wrote the concerto."

Additionally, Lupica (better known as a sports journalist) called Palin's statement that she would not dismiss questions of whether she would run for President of the United States as an example of Palin's delusions of grandeur.

Palin the palm reader: Tough concepts such as Energy, Tax Cuts and Lifting America's Spirits. AP Photo