Hillarysworld

Tea Party ‘founder’: Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’

A financial blogger and ex-CEO credited with being one of the original "founders" of the Tea Party has come out against the movement, saying it has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting and is now obsessed with "guns, gays and God."

In a "message" to the Tea Party Wednesday, Karl Denninger declared that he "ought to sue" anyone who uses the Tea Party name "for defamation."

"Yeah, that's a joke," he writes. "But so are you. All of you. Especially Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the 'Tea Party Patriots.'"

Denninger writes: "Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money!"

Denninger runs Market Ticker, a financially-focused blog that has been strongly opposed to bank bailouts and has railed against excessive government spending. He founded the group FedUpUSA in early 2008, shortly after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns.

In January of 2009, Market Ticker bloggers including Graham Makohoniuk and Stephanie Jasky suggested "mailing a tea bag" to Congress to protest the planned $800-billion stimulus package and $700-billion bank bailout. Denninger followed that up with a call for a "tea party" protest to coincide with President Obama's inauguration, thus helping to unofficially launch the political movement.

“I saw everybody fawning over Obama with the inauguration and yet here he was appointing people like Larry Summer[s] and Tim Geithner to his team who were all part of creating the problem,” Denninger said in a media interview.

Now Denninger says the whole movement has been steered away from its mission to demand fiscal responsibility from government and financial institutions.

"The Tea Party was initiated as a political protest against the unlawful and in fact unconstitutional usurpation of power from the Congress and The People in the form of extortion-led bailouts of enterprises that had engaged in acts that I, and many others, believe were at least civilly actionable and in many cases crossed the line into criminal activity.

This indictment is not limited to the nation's large banks, although it certainly starts there. The corruption of our economic and monetary systems runs the gamut from Fannie and Freddie through their ties to Congress (including literal sexual encounters in some cases), banking interests selling trash securities to everyone from pension funds on down, judges who don't judge but rather protect monied interests on Wall Street, The Federal Reserve intentionally debasing our currency and monetizing government debt, government spending that is running 40% above revenues and much more.

In short, The Tea Party was and is about the the corruption of American Politics and the blatant and outrageous theft from all Americans that has resulted. It is about personal responsibility and enforcement of the law against those who have robbed, financially ****d and pillaged the nation.

Yet today we hear literally nothing about these issues among the so-called "Tea Party" candidates and their backers. Sarah Palin has not said one word about locking up the banksters that brought up on the housing bubble and economic collapse. Not one word about Bernanke's out-of-control Fed and the arguably unlawful monetization of Fannie and Freddie paper, not to mention the monetization of the Federal Debt. "


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While no doubt some portions of this article engages in the typical bickering and blame gaming, there was something about it that I found refreshing. That a founder of the Tea Party would come out and effectively say "Hey no, big celebrity backers, we aren't going to let you co-opt our movement for your own nefarious needs", speaks volumes to me about the integrity of the movement. That sort of statement has to take courage.

So many times I think in our society, when we see something blooming before our eyes, some less savory characters will do everything in their power to tear it down. When that nascent bloom itself may begin to stumble, the kind of folks preprogrammed to be haters will redouble their efforts, trying to cheer it off the cliff. Take for instance EJ Dionne. He's the WaPo columnist who loves and loves to bash the Tea Party, all the while extolling the malaise that is the current Democratic party. He's also the guy who recently said 'the reason we are talking about Hillary as Obama's VP in 2012 is because it's Clinton supporters who are putting forward this idea as way to keep her politically relevant." A rank and file hater. Someone who will just never get it, and someone who if he read this article, would probably try and cast it as some sort of vindication as to why the Tea Party is horrible and instead, miss the larger message.

But when I look at something like this, I have the opposite reaction. Instead of condemning and giving in to those hateful emotions, I feel like I want to help.

When I see a founder of the Tea Party out there asking people to ignore what some others have tried to do in the Tea Party name, and instead call for a return for the Tea Party's values of less government spending, I see a political movement that has the capacity of self-reflection. I see a group of people trying to do what's right, a group of people whose sincerity should not be in question. I see a group of people not worthy of derision, but instead worthy of our help, so that their political movement is not co-opted like ours was.

In fact, I think in some ways PUMAs can relate to what the Tea Partiers are saying here. I think we all know what it feels like to have something you put your hard work into, be coopted by those who don't can't even begin to understand what it takes. Many of us worked hard to get the Democrats where they were in 2008, only to find that when it came time to enjoy the benefits, somebody else was selected. The difference here, from the 2008 Democrats is that, while no one in our leadership would speak up to say "No, what you are doing is wrong", here we see a leader in the Tea Party saying "No, you will not be allowed to coopt the Tea Party to further your own narrative." That's got to take guts.

I found this article very instructive in that sense then, in terms of how we should act and react when we see something like this happening. When we see a group of people fighting enemies from both outside and within who would try and coopt their message, our first reaction shouldn't be to default to our baser emotions and caw along with the rest of rubes who can't tolerate greatness in their midst. That to me, is gratuitous....that to me, is simplistic sophist whining fronting as keying political insight.

Instead, we should be offering something constructive, lending our voices to support those who try and remain honest in their message. Those are goals that transcend political ideology.

I do realize that PUMAs didn't have such allies -- that because we were the first to realize just what a poor turn our politics was taking with the selection of Obama, we were routinely condemned by our detractors -- but that doesn't mean that we should become jaded because of it and do the same to others. On the contrary, I think those of us who went through what we did in 2008, and those of us who had such a hard time getting our voices heard, should show solidarity in numbers and speak up and support those who try and remain honest to their values, just like we did in 2008.

Just something to think about next time you see another hater article about the Tea Party. The hating is easy, it's remaining true to your values, even in the face of Big Money, that is difficult. Instead of helping that kind of tear down along, we should be trying to encourage those who do make an effort to be about something real.

Good on this Tea Party founder who -- despite what other big names may have tried to do in the Tea Party name -- states once and for all what the Tea Party is really about.