Rebel Outsider

There's now a slightly lower percentage than the six lobbyists per lawmaker working on health care reform, as Dick Armey has to take his ball and go home. This is an epic whine:

Dick Armey, the former House Majority Leader, is leaving his job with top Washington lobbying firm DLA Piper, citing negative attention that the firm is receiving thanks to the role of Armey's corporate-backed outfit, FreedomWorks, in turning out protesters to shut down town hall meetings on health care.

It is painful and frustrating to see a good, decent, able and effective partnership of honorable men and women and their clients attacked for things in which they are not involved simply because of their association with me. One would expect a higher degree of competence and professionalism from members of the media than spurious attacks on innocent bystanders.

Let me be perfectly clear about DLA Piper. It is a fine firm with good, competent people. It has been my privilege to be associated with them, and I will miss them. I am leaving the firm with regret but also with anticipation of being more fully engaged in the nation's struggle and without having attacks on me being directed at others.

It is imperative for me, within the context of my life's work in the defense of personal liberty against the encroachments of big government, to give my undivided attention to the work we do at FreedomWorks. In short, the threat to personal liberty in America is so serious and imminent at this time that it requires the full commitment of my efforts. While I consider it a personal sacrifice to leave DLA Piper, it is a sacrifice I must make in light of the important work I am committed to at FreedomWorks.

Poor, poor Dick Armey. His job as a corporate lobbyist was getting all mixed up with his work to turn people against health care reform and toward a position backed by corporate interests! I can't see how anyone would possibly make the connection.

Now that the former House majority leader and lobbyist has resigned, I'm sure people will see FreedomWorks for what it is - a noble, completely organic upspring coming from the depths of the grassroots to impact the corridors of power at the highest levels. Given that Armey is now such an outsider, it's amazing he was even invited on Meet The Press to lie about Moveon.org and his role in the extremism of town hall meetings. Must be all that amazing grassroots organizing.

And finally, now that it's obvious that Armey said things he knows are untrue on national television, any chance he'll be barred from returning? Will bookers conclude that Armey shouldn't be invited onto television news programs, since he's obviously willing to lie to the public? No, that's not how the game is played, which is why hacks like Armey feel comfortable lying in the first place -- there are no consequences.

Why does Steve Benen hate ordinary Americans like Dick Armey having a voice in the public debate? I mean, they have no other resources.

A Stroll Through The Teabags

This isn't turning out entirely well for the right. Even the roundup piece on the AP includes this balloon-puncturing nugget.

The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, a lobbyist whose corporate clients including Verizon, Raytheon, liquor maker Diageo, CarMax and drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

The group's federal tax returns show its educational and charitable arms received more than $6 million in donations in 2007, the most recent year for which returns are available.

Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich have no possible claim to leading a grassroots movement, though Armey did helpfully explain to the protesters what teabagging is, which at least should help their sex lives. This is corporate underwriting to harness populist sentiment. And the results have been ugly, like with this Fox News reporter exhorting his charges to "wake up and fight the fascism."



Or this.



"He's a fascist." "Why?" "Because he is."

I still haven't figured out what this protest is all about, but it sure is entertaining. Elsewhere, teabaggers threw tea over the White House gate, causing a lockdown while protesters shouted "Death to the President." This is an echo of teabaggers sending tea bags to Congressional offices and having them mistaken for hazardous materials. And here are some pictures - my favorite being "cut taxes, not defense," which just shows no recognition of how government or money or really anything works. Oh yeah, and this.

Robert Gibbs could only sigh and remark that the White House just passed the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, which is true and about all they really should say at this point, given their position of authority. I think Thomas Frank put it best:

Unless it rains today, thousands of average people will stand up across the land, declare their mad-as-hell-ness. Look for folks to holler for lower estate taxes and a replacement for Sarbanes-Oxley. They will put on three-cornered hats, wave "don't tread on me" flags, and imagine that they are channeling the spirit of Tom Paine as they do their part to ease the troubles of the economy's winners.

And Fox News, which plans to cover the tea parties, will no doubt hail this plastic populism as the realest kind of social uprising, a movement that is the rightful expression of this year's discontents [...]

The conservative movement, too, has long been a master of this maneuver. From the days of Richard Nixon to those of Sarah Palin it has described itself as a rebellion of Middle America against elitist liberals; as a nation of Joe the Plumbers rising against interfering bureaucrats.

It has little patience with traditional populism of the anti-big-business sort. Looking around on the Web site of the D.C. pressure group FreedomWorks, for example, I came across a denunciation of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's "small-minded populism" written in January 2008 by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, now FreedomWorks's chairman. Mr. Huckabee's offense was his claim to favor "Main Street, not Wall Street," thereby implying, Mr. Armey sputtered, "that the interests of the two are not in alignment. . . ."

As the mad-as-hell come together to proclaim their outrage, all the well-known earmarks of right-wing populism will no doubt be present. Leadership, in certain instances, will probably be furnished by one of the many well-known, well-funded Washington pressure groups. The ideology will be strictly Manichean: "government" and "freedom" in a zero-sum cage match, light versus darkness, with a victory for one being automatically a setback for the other.

Other than that, the tea partiers' stance on the issues is a little mysterious. But outrage is outrage, the party organizers probably figure; who will know the difference?

Great stuff.

...not that numbers are everything, but the biggest claim I've seen is that 60,000 people have turned out nationwide for this thing. 500,000 people rallied for immigration reform just in LA, and without any right-wing money or infrastructure, besides. Of course, I saw very little coverage of those rallies compared to the teabagging. And the disconnect from the traditional media is sadly predictable.

...Go Nancy!

PELOSI: What they want is a continuation of the failed economic policies of President George Bush which got us in the situation we are in now. What we want is a new direction. … This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end — we call call it astroturf, it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.

Teabaggin' Armey

Nobody could have anticipated that the teabag parties were simply a pretense for conservative movement list-building.

Dear [fake name based on a risqué pun],

Tax day is upon us once again and it is clearer than ever that we need to fundamentally reform the tax code. It’s unfair, complex, inhibits saving, investment and job creation, imposes a heavy burden on families, and undermines the integrity of the democratic process.

To this end, we have completely revamped ScraptheCode.org and created a petition to let Congress know we want to scrap the code and replace it with a simple, low, flat, fair, and honest tax code.

I’m writing to ask you to do two things:

Please join the thousands of Americans signing our petition to Scrap the Code, and

Please contribute to our campaign so we can get the word out and get more petition signers!

Some of our members are so frustrated with the tax-and-spend ways of Washington they’re taking to the streets on Wednesday for the nationwide Tea Party protests and helping us support them. If you’re looking for one near you, we have every one we’ve heard about or helped with on a map here and created instructions on how to organize your own.

Fixing our broken tax code is so important to America’s future prosperity that FreedomWorks Foundation Vice-Chairman Steve Forbes and I have both written books calling for fundamental reform.

Our team in Washington has also published the Top 10 Reasons to Scrap the Code, which I have included below.

I hope you find it as informative as I did and will sign our petition and contribute to our efforts to get the word out.

Sincerely,

Dick Armey
Chairman
FreedomWorks

It's going to be so awesome when all those homemade "Scrap the Code" signs just start popping up everywhere at these rallies.

Save the Rich has a lot more about the corporate underwriting of these "spontaneous" events. And by the way, Dick Armey has been organzing these things for over a month.

I believe it was Johnny Rotten who said, "Ever feel like you've been cheated?"

You Can't Parody These People Anymore

Stephen Colbert might as well give up.

Here's Dick Armey, decrying political discourse as "inane" and demanding that serious people go about their business and contribute seriously, and then minutes later saying to Joan Walsh "I am so damn glad that you can never be my wife".



And then, here's Glenn Beck, actually doing the idling the car outside the studio to "do his part for global warming" joke, months after Colbert did EXACTLY THIS JOKE on his show:



These are respected members of the conservative media elite.

Parody is dead.