Demonize The Tea Party Through Association With Republican Establishment

Steve Watson - Democrat leaders have finally realised that anti-establishment sentiment is the driving force behind the Tea Party movement, announcing a plan to demonize it via a national campaign to associate the GOP and the Tea Party as one and the same.

The Associated Press reports:

“Democratic National Committee sources say the party’s strategy is to pose the November midterm elections as a contest between Democrats and a joint GOP-tea party plan for the country.”

The campaign will see grassroots activists painted as tools of the Republican establishment and the GOP associated with “extremist” ideologies.

The official launch of the campaign was made Wednesday by DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.

A website at www.republicanteapartycontract.com, a play on Newt Gingrich’s 1994 GOP “Contract With America”, along with a crudely produced video, mark the direction the DNC is taking.

The video urges viewers to “GET THE FACTS”, as it outlines a 10-point blueprint on what policies Tea Party candidates would enact if voted into power.

The items on the “Tea Party Contract on America” are:

1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act (Health insurance Reform)

2. Privatize Social Security or phase it out altogether

3. End Medicare as it presently exists

4. Extend the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil

5. Repeal Wall Street Reform

6. Protect those responsible for the oil spill and future environmental catastrophes

7. Abolish the Department of education

8. Abolish the Department of energy

9. Abolish the environmental protection agency

10. Repeal the 17th Amendment which provides for the direct election of senators

These are mostly libertarian rooted positions that various tea party affiliated candidates and incumbents have espoused, except for numbers four and six, which are more direct accusations.

The video features images of Rep. Pete Sessions, who runs the GOP’s effort to elect House candidates, and Republican Caucus Chairman Mike Pence, as well as Senate candidates Rand Paul and Sharon Angle, amongst others.

The idea is clearly to depict such positions as outside of mainstream political thought, yet multiple recent national polls indicate that such a notion is deeply misguided.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has described the campaign as part of an “increasingly desperate strategy that remains ignorant of exactly why independent voters are fleeing them in droves”.

The key flaw in the Democratic campaign is that voters are now painfully aware that it is not the Tea Party and the GOP that are one and the same, it is the two establishment parties.