Have “Scandals” Sparked A New Tea Party Revival?

It’s as predictable as Glenn Beck’s tears. As soon as a president appears to be weakened by attack, the media pounces in a feeding frenzy hoping to score a kill. Some do it out of partisan animus. Some do it for personal glory. But either way it’s a bloodcurdling spectacle that contains scant morsels of actual substance.

In the present festival of feasting, many in the press are asking the same question: Have the scandals plaguing the White House created an opportunity for the moribund Tea Party to mount a revival? Take a look at a selection of the headlines:

  • Scandals revive Tea Party, threaten Obamacare – Boston Herald
  • Tea Party revival – World Magazine
  • Will the IRS scandal revive the Tea Party? – The Week Magazine
  • IRS scandal revives tea party – CNN
  • IRS scandal: Reinvigorated tea party eager to seize moment – Christian Science Monitor
  • Tea Party Looks To Gain Momentum In IRS Scandal Aftermath – Huffington Post
  • Back from the dead – WorldNetDaily

That last one from WorldNetDaily is particularly notable because it presumes that the Tea Party has been dead, which is not something that WorldNetDaily ordinarily admits.

To answer the burning question of the day, let’s examine how the Tea Party responded to the scandal outbreak. With lightening-fast reflexes, the Tea Party Patriots organized protests across the country to “Rein in the IRS.” And their legions of followers stepped up to speak truth to power. There were 30 of them in Topeka, 70 in Phoenix, 100 in Tampa, 30 in Kansas City, 11 in Tallahassee, 100 in Chicago, 50 in Denver, 6 in Helena, and 50 in San Bernardino where they also spoke Hitlerian rhetoric to power. In the nation’s second biggest city, Los Angeles, the Teabaggers showed up 13 strong.

Tea Party

WOW! If this isn’t a demonstration of just how engaged and relevant the Tea Party is, I don’t know what would be. Clearly they have the political punch of a drunken gerbil. Nevertheless, the media will continue to prop them up as if they were actually influential. The press will ignore factual data like that presented here and fluff the baggers excitedly in the hopes of producing a climax of contrived controversy.

The truly depressing part of this is that the failure to recognize the impotence of the Tea Party will only embolden the minority fringe caucus of the Republicans in congress and encourage them to persist in their obstructionist strategy that has been so hurtful, divisive, and regressive socially and economically.

In a few weeks this will all have been forgotten and, if recent polling is any indicator, the President will be more popular than ever, and the GOP congress will hit new lows. In the meantime, it’s going to be a summer of frustration as little progress is made on the real problems that plague our nation. Too bad.

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8 thoughts on “Have “Scandals” Sparked A New Tea Party Revival?

  1. This kind of crap always reminds me of the media’s hyperventilating and blanket coverage of relatively small tea party rallies after completely ignoring the hundreds of thousands who marched against the attack on Iraq.

    • Yeah. Thirteen to fifty people will show up in my small county seat coordinated with cities across the state, does it get national coverage? Heck no.

      I guess it’s news that these people would bother, but… Really, someone should point out that their protests are tiny compared with the ones that happen more regularly.

  2. This whole scandal was a set up by these tea party groups. The forms they filled out for their c4 status weren’t even required to be filled out. They only did it hoping they would be scrutinized which some were, even though none were denied their status. Now they are saying the IRS committed the equivalent of Nazi atrocities on them under the direction of the President. Stephen Colbert did a segment on his show about his super pac c4 status and brought out his attorney who explained they got their status without filling out the form, which any good tax attorney will advise(as he did). The only time you fill it out is if the IRS asks you to fill it out, which they did not do in these cases, they were all filled out voluntarily by these groups to create a big stink over nothing and they have succeeded. As far as I’m concerned, according to IRS regulations, none of them should get c4 status, it’s a scam and is the reason Colbert set his up was to show it as such. They have now filled their form out voluntarily and submitted and are waiting to see if he gets scrutinized by the IRS.

  3. Shouldn’t ALL organizations, Right and Left, who apply for 501 c4 tax-exempt status be looked at to see if they meet the requirements?
    The IRS was doing there job, just not going far enough.
    I have a friend who started a Wrestling Club for Grade School and Middle School kids and filed for 501c4 tax-exempt status to help with donations and fund raising for uniforms, equipment, and travel costs.
    These political organizations simply jeopardize legitimate groups in my opinion.

    • Is it the system that bothers you or the idea of organizations with which you disagree existing at all? I get your concern over the system being what it is – but if your justifying bias by a government agency against political positions you oppose, doesn’t that concern you at all? Would you be as forgiving if a republican administration did the same thing against progressive groups and openly admitted it?

    • Only a quarter of those examined were Tea Party related groups, even. What about the others?

      • Look, the IRS admitted what it was doing so your attempt at spin is unnecessary. These are their admitted activities,not my creation or someone else – stop making excuses for their behavior.

  4. We had a TP protest here in Middle GA outside of a local bank. The total number of participants was about seven or eight.

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