When libs at HuffPo start quoting Goldwater and Reagan you know you’re in for some great fun(nies).
Conspiracy Theory Conservatism
If the rash of 'Tea Party' protests planned for Tax Day 2009 is any indication, the Right Wing in American politics may finally abandon all pretense at what Barry Goldwater once called the "conscience of a conservative." Instead of that lofty, albeit tattered ambition, the Right Wing of 2009 is rapidly embracing a wild-eyed, media manipulated, and self-destructive "conspiracy theory conservatism."
If I were a Republican leader, I would be very worried about this change. Should it come to pass that conspiracy theory conservatism wins out once and for good over Goldwater conservatism, the Republican Party will be doomed, broken, kaput.
And then there is the ever lovely, vivacious and estimable Jane Hamsher.
The Corporate Lobbyists Behind the Tea Parties
Maybe they're afraid that if people knew that those behind the demonstrations were the very same lobbyists and influence peddlers the teabaggers claim to decry, the whole thing would be revealed to be what it is -- a hollow excercise in extremist right-wing hypocrisy.
This one from the Atlantic is fun. Hoogly boogly men behind every tree. Hoogly boogly being shorthand for conservative libertarian.
The Santelli Conspiracy?*
Update: As Megan McArdle notes, this story appears to be completely bogus.
Was Rick Santelli's "Chicago Tea Party" a spontaneous expression of populist outrage? Or was it a carefully orchestrated media campaign that was planned long before Santelli's now-famous socialist-bashing CNBC rant? Mark Ames and Yasha Levine suggest that Santelli's mini-movement was in fact bought and paid for by a network of right-of-center moguls led by the Koch family, best known for their outsized backing of libertarian causes.
Then there is the respected journalists at Playboy. Feminists all. Too bad Playboy found out this story was completely bogus and took it down. That's just proof that people buy Playboy for the articles. Not the pictures.
Playboy dips a toe into investigative journalism
What we discovered is that Santelli's "rant" was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a "Chicago Tea Party" was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.
And then there is Cooper who is a big part of why CNN has become a joke. It's always funny to share vulgar gay humor with one's audience.
CNN's Anderson Cooper: 'It's Hard to Talk When You're Tea-Bagging'
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper followed his colleague David Shuster into the gutter on his Anderson Cooper 360 program on Tuesday in making a vulgar “tea-bagging” joke about Republicans/conservatives. After CNN’s senior political analyst David Gergen remarked that Republicans were “searching for their voice” after two electoral losses, Cooper quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging.” [audio available here]
Andy keeps them rolling at any Bar & Bath or over at Blogger Interrupted who stole Andy's line to humor all of us with his witty and self deprecating headline.
Seems that JournoList memo made it to everybody.
