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By 2008, President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress had damaged the Republican brand so badly that party operatives were looking for a new label; they found it in the tea party.
Republicans, such as former Rep. Dick Armey operating through his FreedomWorks Foundation, helped initiate and fund some of the first tea party demonstrations. The Republican consulting firm, Russo Marsh, organized the "Tea Party Express" bus tour. The same political action committee that raised cash for McCain-Palin raked in the money raised by that tour. And Republican mouthpieces, such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, hyped the movement.
Just look at the ideology. The tea party agenda is indistinguishable from that of the Republican Party: anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant and pro gun, all wrapped up in a God-loves-America-best strain of religion. The tea party even shouts the same slanders against President Barack Obama that the Republicans used in 2008: he was born in Kenya, he is a socialist, he is a Muslim, he is Hitler.
The anti-tax, free market fundamentalism preached by the Republicans contributed mightily to the federal debt and to capitalism's meltdown. Now the preachers of that destructive creed are back, masquerading as the tea party, pretending to be a new movement but selling the same old snake oil.
Raymond Dominick
Bluffton
