Republican gubernatorial hopeful Tom Corbett never imagined a year ago that he'd be campaigning at tea party rallies.Completely absent in the reporting is the money trail from Richard Mellon Scaife (owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review) to the tea party movement.
But there he was Saturday afternoon on the North Shore courting voters -- as were congressional hopefuls Mary Beth Buchanan and Melissa Haluszczak -- as the Pennsylvania Tea Party marked its first anniversary with an open-air rally at Allegheny Landing replete with a sprinkling of coiled-snake Gadsden flags and protest pickets.
Many predicted the loosely organized, small government grassroots movement that began building in early 2009 would fade quickly.
A year later, its rallies are becoming a must for serious Republican candidates. Saturday's rally, the first of three this month in the Pittsburgh area, attracted several hundred tea party supporters as well as the candidates and their representatives.
By way of Dick Armey and Freedomworks.
- In 2008, the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $70,000 to Freedomworks
- In 2007, the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $200,000 to Freedomworks
- In 2006, the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $200,000 to Freedomworks
And that's just in the last 3 years.
When the owner of a paper funds an organization that's (at the very least) coordinating a political movement and then that paper reports on that movement without reporting on the connection, that's what's known as a conflict of interest my friends.
But it's all OK because we "know" that George Soros gave money to Moveon.org (except he didn't).
4 comments:
The Tea Party used to go by another name - George W. Bush's base.
If you were dumb enough to vote for George W. Bush twice, you'll believe anything the Tea Party crowd tells you.
And I finally figured two things out. 1) Beck's 9/12 Project is all about recreating the fear and hysteria that followed the attacks on 9/11; it ties in nicely with the birther crap about a secret Muslim friend of terrorists has "taken over" the White House; 2) All of these references to the Soviets and communism - it's connected to the Reagan fetish.
Finally, a prediction: very soon the Tea Party crowd's new slogan will be "Regime Change." Limbaugh is already laying the groundwork for it.
That is not a 'conflict of interest' -- rather just some bad reporting, again.
I agree with what Jaywillie says (well, except for the phrase "Regime Change", sounds too French), but I might take it further.
The Tea Party is all about the stupid, at least the national people are. Any candidates who comes grovelling to the Tea Party will have to show that he/she will lower taxes and slash services to the cities. It doesn't matter what that affects, in fact, maybe it is better if the cities start to have riots, because there are no jobs and no food.
The Tea Party wants to work from the gut level fear mechanism, because they don't want you to see the money coming in from corporate America and the likes of Dick Scaife. Then the Scaife-owned Trib conveniently reports on the true American nature of the Tea Partiers, how they are working to return us to an America the founding fathers would recognize (i.e. propertied Americans voting, urban renters restricted from voting by new/old laws). Meanwhile co-opted conservative commenters on the internet do Scaife's dirty work by creating false equivalencies.
Or so Obama would like you to think .... (cue Vincent Price laughter).
I would agree with that assessment, Ed. I think that's a good way to define the overall structure of the Tea Party movement and how it works.
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