The zombified Tea Party created by establishment Republicans and headed up by media darling Sarah Palin is taking heat for a spate of bad behavior around the country in response to the imposition of Obamacare. It is not clear who is responsible for the foul language and threats directed against Democrats but this has not stopped them from blaming their ideological twin, the Republican Party. Dems are demanding the Republicans denounce their creation — the hijacked and transmogrified Tea Party sworn to uphold the Republican platform of big government and endless war against phantom enemies.
It’s not just Democrats who get to play victim. Earlier today House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia held a press conference and said somebody fired a bullet at his campaign office on Monday. Cantor admonished Rep. Chris Van Hollen and DNC chairman Tim Kaine for fanning the flames of hysteria and attempting to gain politically from the media circus swirling around the isolated incidents of outrage over the “socialization” (more accurately the corporate monopolization at gunpoint) of health care.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn went on MSNBC’s “Hardball” this afternoon and characterized the obscene phones calls and emails as domestic terrorism. Clyburn said people are getting “signals” from Republicans on how to behave and that lawmakers need to “disown” the activity before it gets out of control. He suggested his colleagues were culpable. “If we participate in it, either from the balcony or on the floor of the House, you are aiding and abetting this kind of terrorism, really,” Clyburn said.
“I think it’s part of a pattern,” said Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter after an act of vandalism at her office in New York. Slaughter, at the command of Nancy Pelosi, was ready to force through the Obamacare monstrosity without a vote in the House. Such an unconstitutional maneuver turned out not to be necessary because the Democrats twisted arms and promised the moon to get the votes required for passage. Holdout Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, was promised airport grants for his district if he abandoned his opposition. In other words, Stupak sold his opposition to abortion for a barrel of pork at the expense of the American people.
Libs over at the Huffington Post have taken up the domestic terrorism angle. It will not be members of the Borg hive Republican Tea Party that will engage in domestic terrorism, argues Jeff Schneider, but the radical fringe (in other words, the real Tea Party). “While the attack will not come from the Tea Party proper, more radical members and affiliated groups that have allied themselves with the movement are beginning to mobilize,” he writes today. “What began as the corporate funded, Dick Armey led, FreedomWorks organized, anti-health care rallying Tea Party movement has grown into something beyond what its founders intended.”
The Tea Party (if we can call it such) has entered into a series of loose alliances (of convenience or common purpose) with fringe groups like The Oath Keepers, the Committees of Safety, and the Three Percenter Movement (to name a few). While the rhetoric from Tea Party groups is vitriolic, its protests (to date) have been predominantly non-violent — but while many Tea Party protesters may be peaceful, their rhetoric, and the rhetoric of fellow traveler politicians like Rep. Bachmann and former Gov. Sarah Palin, is echoing through the Tea Party to its fringe elements — and the threat of domestic terror from these groups, or individuals who belong to them, has risen exponentially.
Closely following talking points issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Schneider connects the Oath Keepers to white supremacists, the Keystone State Skinheads forum and Stormfront. Schneider insists the “fringe” Tea Party movement is dangerous because it is linked to Gun Owners of America.
Gun Owners of America has over 300,000 members. It is the “only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington,” according to Ron Paul.
The Oath Keepers advocate that its members — who are current and former U.S. military and law enforcement — uphold their oaths of service and pledge to protect the U.S. Constitution. Even though the group is pledged to non-violence, Mother Jones has deemed it the “Tea Party’s military wing.”
The demonization of constitutionalists and patriots (minus absolutely any evidence they are involved in threats and obscene phone calls to the Congress critters who violated the Constitution this week) has moved from a concerted government and corporate media propaganda effort to a possibly more concrete and dangerous level.
“Law enforcement authorities are investigating the discovery of a cut propane gas line at the Virginia home of Rep. Thomas Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was targeted by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill,” Politico reported yesterday. “While officials are not willing to characterize the exact nature of the incident because of the ongoing investigation, it did not involve an immediate threat to occupants of the residence. However officials are taking the incident very seriously and conducting a vigorous investigation,” Lee Catlin, community relations director for the Albemarle County Fire Marshal in Virginia said in a statement.
The FBI — America’s premier political police force with a long track record of cracking down on groups and individuals opposed to the government — is involved in the investigation.
“As of Wednesday afternoon, the FBI was investigating whether a severed gas line at the home of Congressman Perriello’s brother was related to a comment posted on a local ‘tea party’ website for activists to ‘drop by’ and ‘express their thanks’ for his healthcare vote and to ‘remember exactly what it is their constituents are saying and how they are telling them to vote,’” the Christian Science Monitor reports.
“Should something violent happen, Republicans know it could further discredit the Tea Party movement, and the conservative outrage that is fueling it, in the eyes of the wider American public. That explains, in part, the preponderance of condemnations now being issued by GOP congressmen, including Boehner, and by grass-roots activists,” reports Fox 31 in Denver, Colorado.
“These threats are likely coming from rogue, outside sources,” Lesley Hollywood, the director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party, told Fox. The Northern Colorado Tea Party is affiliated with Glenn Beck’s 912 Project.
The Republican Tea Party and Beck’s 912 Project have nothing to fear. If and when the Oath Keepers, Gun Owners of America, Alex Jones, and patriots not affiliated with establishment “conservative” groups are accused of domestic terrorism and the state responds in typically blunt and brutal fashion, they will be safe.
Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Glenn Beck will not be arrested and detained indefinitely as their friend in the Senate, the neocon Lindsey Graham, has recently proposed.
At the same time, efforts to integrate North America under the Security & Prosperity Partnership and other related agreements have continued to undermine national sovereignty in general, and the 9th & 10th Amendment sovereignty of states like Arizona in particular. The SPP was first established by Presidents George W. Bush, Vicente Fox and PM Paul Martin, then continued by Presidents Barack Obama, Felipe Calderon and PM Stephen Harper. Calderon has been particularly duplicitous in this regard– he bellowed about the ’strict’ immigration laws established by Arizona (despite Mexico’s stricter laws) and further restated Mexico’s ‘claim to stolen land.‘
