”Tea Party” movement co-founder Chad Peace has written an editorial harshly criticizing the takeover of the Tea Party movement by establishment political interests, explaining their strategic shifting of the movement’s focus to incoherent right wing partisan talking points in order to distract many of the individuals involved.

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Tea Party Co-Founder Laments Hijacking of Movement

by Kurt Nimo
Infowars.com

November 30, 2009


In an editorial posted on the CAIVN (California Independent Voter Network), Chad Peace, a co-founder of the original Tea Party movement, blasts the establishment Republican takeover of the movement.

Inspired by Rick Sabtelli’s now legendary rant on CNBC, Peace and a business partner set-up a tea party website.  “Within days, we received tens of thousands of e-mails and passionate pleas for government accountability.  Our vision was to change the political debate focused on general divisions to one centered on specific solutions.  We asked our supporters to question party-line politicians and demand that our leaders take a more independent and reasoned stance on the issues facing our country,” writes Peace.

It didn’t take long, however, for establishment Republicans to muscle in and hijack the idea.  “Knowing we had neither the financial means nor man-power to out-publicize political perverts, I was never-the-less convinced that this independent movement would not be overrun by golden idols,” Peace explains.  He wrote to supporters and asked them “to be weary of old Republican figureheads like Newt Gingrich and current political strategists Patrick Leahy, hiding their identity behind make-shift ‘grassroots’ websites.  I was hopeful that the same talking heads, like Hannity and O’Reilly, that asked us to bend over blindly to past leaders would not have enough credibility to grandstand in front of an independent-minded movement.”

It wasn’t so much Hannity and O’Reilly that compromised the movement.  It was mostly Glenn Beck.  His 9.12 Project stole much of the thunder of the original tea party movement and channeled it into a Fox News segment complete with adverts from Big Oil and Big Pharma.

Beck declared he was formulating “a 100 year plan... a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.”  He announced that on August 28, 2010, he will gather patriotic Americans “at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.”

Few seemed to notice the obvious contradiction — a corporate media network calling for a restoration of American ideals while simultaneously working against those ideals.  Fox News is owned and operated by a political player who supported the neocons and their murderous wars and then backed the political campaign of the wife of a former president who was “anointed” for the presidency by the Bilderberg Group.  Rupert Murdoch has played both sides of the fence and now one of his hirelings is calling for a restoration of the republic.

”Propelled by the moving mouths on TV and the talking heads of such ironically named organizations such as the ‘American Family Association’ (one must agree that for an admitted adulterer with three ex-wives heading the AFA is ironic, right?), the movement lost its focus,” Peace continues.  ”No longer were tea partiers upset with the bipartisan corruption in Washington D.C., they are mad at the socialists communists Hitler-like Democrats.  No longer did Constitutionalism mean respecting the rule of law, it meant Obama is not really our president.  A movement founded on the principles of independent analysis, it has become a yelling fest for punch-drunk cynics armed with incoherent talking points.”

Beck’s “new movement” was designed by the establishment specifically to destroy the threat posed by the original tea party movement.  Glenn Beck’s rhetoric on “Marxist” Democrats is a cynical attempt to perpetuate the false right-left paradigm and steer patriotic Americans back into a political safety zone controlled by the elite.  Obama and the Democrats are not Marxist.  They are the flipside of the same political system supported and perpetuated by the Republicans.  Obama’s advisers are from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, not the Communist International.

”Slowly, I’ve lost some of my unrealistic idealism,” Peace admits.  ”As I pull back the blinders, I try to look at the tea party from the eyes of an outsider, the average American.  What I see is a bunch of people reciting partisan political sermons, coddling fears, and perpetuating a superficial battle between ‘left’ and ‘right’; drowning the well intentioned idealists that remain.”

The coup d’état will be complete in February when the establishment holds its 1st Annual Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.  “Minnesota 6th District Rep. Michele Bachmann will burnish her conservative standing when she appears,” reports MinnPost.  The event “also will feature former Alaska Gov. and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  City Pages says Bachmann will give a breakfast speech, while Palin is the keynote speaker at the Saturday evening main event Feb. 6.”

It will not be an event for ordinary Americans.  “Tickets for the weekend convention are now on sale for $549 but don’t include accommodations at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.”  How many Americans — besieged by the bankers and witnessing their middle class lives slowly dissolving before their eyes — can afford to fork over several hundred dollars? More to the point, why would they want to spend that amount of money on a circus sideshow featuring a political hack groomed by the elite for higher political office?


”As the Tea Party Express makes its way across the country, Sarah Palin has emerged as a favorite daughter of the movement,” CNN reported in September.  “So far, no politician has emerged as a leader of the Tea Party movement - and the question of just who might eventually take up the mantle is a hot topic on the bus.  Nobody may be better positioned than Palin.”

”Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment.  Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite,” writes David Brooks, who straddles both sides of the false right-left paradigm as a journalist for NPR and The Weekly Standard.

Palin is no such thing.  She is merely a new face plastered on the Republican party as it struggles to regain power from the Democrats.  Palin is more attractive than the old Republican stalwarts.  But as they say, beauty is only skin-deep.  Her “rogue” status is a carefully crafted establishment magic trick.

”As the battle rages, I have more faith than ever that an independent revolution will come,” Chad Peace concludes.  “When the absurdity of our political process rises to the point where tea bags become a right wing rally cry and the left still manages to drop in the polls, there is a growing opportunity for the increasingly disenchanted to drive a stake right down the middle.”

We can only hope.  However, before disenchantment can work in our favor, a few million Americans need to tune out Glenn Beck and Fox News.  They need to see Sarah Palin for what she is — a creature groomed by the same global elite that sold us the Obama change mantra that turned out to be the same refried dogma offered up by the Bush administration.