I always thought it was the Rick Santelli/Glenn Beck/Ron Paul/Koch crowd that started it. More Astro Turf than grass roots
Most people do and that is the narrative the ruling class co-opers want everyone to believe and for the most part that has been accepted as fact. And not with some reason either as I point out later.
However the first so-called Tea Party protest could be said to have taken place in 2006' when copies of the 9/11 Commission report were dumped into Boston Harbor. Maybe a reflection of citizen disgust but the connection would probably be rather loose to say the least. Many feel the official kick off of what became the Tea Party took place in upstate NY on January 24, 2009' with a guy named Treavor Leach who was affiliated with the group Young Americans for Liberty. The protest was over so-called "obesity taxes" proposed by then NY Gov. Paterson. Young Americans for Liberty sprang from the 2008' Presidential Campaign of Ron Paul which also had a very anti-federal reserve message to it and thus an easy anti-bank bailout stance which is also associated with some of the early so-called Tea Party protests like the one in Harrisburg PA. in March of 2009'. The wikipedia article on Tea Party under the "History" section has more if you want to check it out.
Now there is a strong Ron Paul connection in what became the Tea Party and whatever one thinks of Juan Williams at Fox News, he observed and I think rightly so that the Tea Party sprang from the ashes of the failed 2008' Ron Paul Campaign. Even Jon Stewart openly advocated that Ron Paul "planted that grass" when it comes to the Tea Party. Many suggest the seeds may well had been cast at the counter Convention the Paul Campaign had across town from the GOP Convention in Minnesota. Clearly that counter convention fertilized a counter political cause in this country towards a so-called libertarian/limited gov't perspective but the GOP understood what they might be facing so like any good parasite, they attached itself to the host and then bleed it dry to the point of all but killing it.
To the famous Santelli rant in February 2009'. No argument that rant got the mileage and sparked a conversation that went far broader. Before that point, what were or would be called "Tea Party" protests were small, isolated and local grass roots with little if any backing from a national cause. You could argue Treavor Leach's protest might well have been for PR to benefit the Young Americans for Liberty, I'll concede some of that point but we are still at a very small scale and only local news coverage at best or coverage via alternative news. After the Santelli rant, then the big guns of the GOP, the Kochtopus (more on that shortly) and the other astro turfers enter the fray and the whole thing became a purely GOP driven political vehicle. By April 2009', it was all but fati accompli.
The question hotly debated and never settled is did Santelli speak from the heart or from a script? There's no question that Santelli is in the employ of at the time, a subsidiary of GE which directly and indirectly benefited not only from the bailout but also from big gov't itself. A grassroots movement to limit the size and power of the state, especially in the area of corp. bailouts and other forms of corp. welfare could well prove problematic but by re-directing such a movement towards it's own political ends, it's not the first time a political/ruling class as twisted the masses to it's own ends. Also scaling down corp. welfare which was a lynchpin of the Paul campaign as well as the early Tea Party would have devastating effects on the likes of Corp. giants like GE who for years have been able to externalize costs onto the backs of taxpayers which then propel their profits higher.
Granted Correlation doesn't equal Causation here so there is no way at this moment to tell what Santelli's motives were but the effect and in following the money and the power, one can't help but question it.
As to Glenn Beck, Hannity and Fox News, that's just obvious on it's own face so not much else needs to be said there.
Now to the Kochtopus. The Koch brothers have often been associated with the so-called Libertarian (political) as opposed to libertarian (philosophical) movement in this country and in many respects this is true. The Koch's did fund the founding of the Cato Institute and for all practical purposes have always on some level controlled it along with several other so-called Libertarian groups. The Tea Party was by no means the Koch's first rodeo in astro-turfing.
When Cato was founded, at the time, it's purpose was in many respects a platform for the Anarcho-Capitalist economist Murray Rothbard to advocate libertarian philosophy and Austrian economics from the Ludwig Von Mises branch and Murray initially was given almost free reign to Cato's direction. However, it became apparent to the Kochtopus that this branch of radical libertarianism and free market economics would actually undermine the Koch empire and not advance it. Also Rothbard was fully open to the idea of reaching out to anarchist and folks of the then called New Left as a means to create a new political/economic front that moved beyond the 2 party state.
Rothbard had earlier became very close to folks like former Goldwater speech writer Karl Hess who by now was kicked to the curb by the GOP and had clearly embraced anarchism along with former SDS leader Carl Olgesby who I'm proud to say is a distant cousin, my great, great grandfather and Carl's grandfather were brothers, but sadly I never was able to meet Carl. In the wikipedia article on Carl, the following is stated:
I agree with Carl that the old right and what was then the new left were morally and politically coordinate and Murray Rothbard had also come to the same conclusion. We are talking late 60's/early 70's and many people from both sides of what is now called the paleo-left and paleo-right understood the point of intersection for both sides was what was once widely known as classical liberalism. A term many of the so-called founding fathers would call themselves.
More on the connections between Olgesby/Hess/Rothbard. At the link is another link no longer active but can be now found
here. But more than that, a website under the title "The American Conservative" memorializing a lefty SDS leader? How can that be?
The problem for the Koch's and others of their ilk were that they needed a big, interventionist state because much of their wealth has been built behind the false wall of the State itself. Murray Rothbard and his radical ideas became a problem at Cato and finally he was kicked to the curb, Cato became a solid player within the Washington Beltway and the rest is co-opted history as they say. David Gordon in 2008' wrote a 3 part series on the
Kochtopus vs. Rothbard saga is a must read in understanding the history of the Koch's and the so-called libertarian movement.
Your assessment of what the Tea Party became and that version of the Tea Party's origins are true and valid but what I'm saying is look further back and see
what really started it all. More often than not, the official narratives and the "on the ground history" don't match up and the on the ground history often proves far, far, far more thought provoking and rarely as divisive as the ruling class want us to think that it is. Also make note that once the election cycles ended, specifically 2012', the so-called GOP driven Tea Party disappeared but the emerging Tea Party we see now is all but being hammered by GOP leadership when before that same leadership embraced the Tea Party brand. Same is true for Occupy. Once the 2012' elections ended, so too did the backing of the Soros/democrat political machinery and Occupy as a movement fell off the pages of the news. They are still out there helping people saving houses from foreclosure or helping out the victims of Hurricane Sandy, for the most part privately funded too (that should be telling) and yet what does the news tell us of their current activities? Yeah, I hear those crickets too. Come on, think it through!
If you are willing to wade through the propaganda of the 2 wings of the same bird of prey and see beyond down to the grass roots of both the Tea Party and Occupy, the same heart that beats life into both are still there and just waiting for people to wake up and realize the common cause that exists between the false wall built between the movements. To quote a former propaganda puppet of the ruling class, "Tear Down This Wall!"
response we’ve come to expect from Chicago Jesus.
