Some real perspective is needed in here.
Many people are making statements about the Tea Party that are based on a completely reactive observation.
The Tea Party has always been really similar, almost exactly like, the Liberty movement.
Back in the 90s there were people like Aaron Russo, C.A.T.S. (citizens for alternative tax system), our own Ron Paul, Irwin Schiff, and many others that were getting together and recreating the Tea Party ceremony by dumping Tea into the Boston harbor.
This was a way to get like minded people together before the modern internet forums become the norm in the 90s.
Aaron Russo had been releasing his own Videos like "Mad as Hell" which I had helped him with. My uncle would go and make recorded videos of the Tea Party gatherings and these would be used in Aaron Russo's materials as well as to help the C.A.T.S. which was the group which eventually coalesced into what we now know as the FairTax movement. For some reason people got behind the FairTax movement much more then the C.A.T.S. even though the ideas were minimally different in approach.
It is quite amazing how Ron Paul was not the center piece of this Tea movement at the time but whenever people brought him up there was always a consensus. Also at the time the central idea was to get the govt to reduce the taxes and if possible change the entire tax system completely. Some where in it just to get taxes reduced, some wanted to remove the IRS and replace it with a better easier understood system and finally some wanted to remove taxation completely.
This focus on the tax was the primary goal of the Tea Party movement at this time in the 90s. We were under Bill Clinton and people didn't like the tax system and bloating govt at the time. Newt Gingrich became involved in the Tea Party movement much more during this time.
He was showing up to the Tea Dumping ceremonies and we then started to hear about this on the fledgling Fox News station. This whole movement was referred to as a grassroots conservative movement.
This momentum was used by George W. Bush during his campaign for election in 2000. He campaigned on the fact that he would reduce the taxes because there was such a huge groundswell for the idea at the time. Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and many others were also touting the now very familiar lower the taxes mantra used by Ronald Reagan 20 years earlier with the Tea Party movement as an identifier of public interest.
We had the 2000 elections..... we had the 8 years of George Bush...... we had Bush tax cuts which created the 8.0+ in GDP leap in 3 years after passing. The same as it did for Reagan in 1980.... and John F. Kennedy (Yeah, a democrat passing a tax cut) before him. This seemed like great success.
So what happened?
Well, I don't need to fill in what Ron Paul pointed out during the 8 years of the Bush presidency and even the Clinton presidency.
Even though we got the tax cuts and the economic growth we also got such a huge expansion of govt in all areas. Since 9-11-2001 we had many liberties taken away for the sake of security. Much more borrowing from China was taking place during the 2000s to compensate for the military expansion into oil countries to "stabilize" the oil economy.
I don't think that libertarians, true conservatives, Tea Party folks, knew that govt was going to explode into this huge military complex during these years while taking away our rights and liberties.
By the time we get to the 2008 elections many people were finally starting to see the truth. That there was a big status quo in the government regardless of if there were democrats or republicans. They both would grow govt and take away individual liberties while continuing to either raise taxes, grow debt, or print money (hidden tax) to devalue the currency. Devaluing the currency was a smart move by the government if their entire goal was to make the debt owed to China in US Dollar amounts (easily devalued) as opposed to the value in gold.
So Bush and co. used the Tea Party as a movement to help themselves get into power. The real tea party was starting to figure all these things out and was, again, wanting to focus on libertarian or liberty minded principles again so as not to be fed to the neocons again.
The neocons recognized this around the 2008 elections and even knew it would make a difference in the 2012 election. So you started to hear Fox News and Talk Radio report what the "Tea Party TM" was doing. They didn't really pay attention to what the Tea Party was really doing but rather injecting what they wanted the Tea Party to be and knew that less informed middle America would follow suit. Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, etc all started to report what "the Tea Party wanted" like electing Sara Palin and John McCain. Which was totally false as no sane minded Tea Party member would get behind those people. They have very different values then real Tea Party members.
How do I know this?
Well the REAL Tea Party was never really interested in having a huge military that was dominant around the world in hundreds of bases building up huge government debt to maintain.
Every single real Tea Party person I knew personally wanted nothing to do with John McCain or Sarah Palin. But there were all these news reports saying just that.
Fox News even had an "official Tea Party TM" debate in 2012 which featured the audience booing Ron Paul when he suggested we trim down our military to save our budget from debt and the value of our currency.
At this point it should have been obvious to every single true Libertarian, conservative, Tea Party person, Liberty minded individual that the news media had taken the "Tea Party" moniker for itself as was no longer reporting what the Tea Party wanted or was really representing but rather creating the dialogue to fit their own favored agenda.
At this point I knew that seeing Gingrich and Bush become involved back in the mid 90s was just laying the ground work to gain interest and later utilize to their own ends.
This may all sound a bit like conspiracy but I have watched it front row center over the last 17 years. No Tea Party member back in the 90s EVER had anything bad to say about Ron Paul. He was not the center of the movement at all but.... to see a room of people on TV boo Ron Paul when he suggested an idea that real Tea Party members adored was evidence enough.
If you research you will find that Rupert Murdoch and the Koch bros began bankrolling a "Tea Party" movement of their own between the 2008 and 2012 elections. They knew Ron Paul or anyone else like him would definitely change the controls that were in place or at least expose them.
The Tea Party did not sink itself. It was dismantled from the outside.
It was bought.... redesigned.... and made into a propaganda tool for the neocons.
If it lost any national integrity it is because its easy to recognize the lack of integrity the neocon agenda forced onto its moniker "Tea Party TM"* on television and talk radio.
If you hear the term "Tea Party" on radio or television know that they are hoping you identify yourself with the movement and are awaiting info to parrot onto others to help them achieve their own political agenda.
Sadly, it looks like Rand Paul has been pulled into this now too.
Its going to be very hard to wrestle real honest perspective from the media in the near future. Even the internet is being threatened with control. The Ron Paul movement really exposed the voter fraud to some extent but it never really sank into the minds of the US citizenry.
Just remember that any moniker "Tea Party. liberty movement, FairTax. etc" can and will be attempted to be usurped by those in power.
DISCLAIMER : I am a Libertarian, Liberty, pro capitalistic, individual liberty minded person. I have leaned more right then left over the years. I do not hate corporations nor do I identify with the 99% or the 1%. I just see what is happening in our electoral process. Also that our rights and liberties are being taken away. What has happened in regards to the real Tea Party movement and am desperate to keep everyone informed and aware. I don't want to tell you what to think but rather give you information to help you think.
