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From: Cliff on 21 Jun 2010 05:44

http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article10023-tea-party-confessional-runs-in-playboy.aspx
"Tea Party Confessional Runs in Playboy"
[
The new Playboy magazine has an anonymous confessional from a K Street
consultant who lifts the curtain on many of the politically crafty, somewhat
seedy underpinnings of the Tea Party movement.
.....
Among the author's various claims are the following:

Tea Party strategists have "quietly acquired Service Employees International
Union shirts to wear at Tea Party rallies," which he or she describes as the
equivalent of "handing out TSA uniforms in Kabul."

Sarah Palin isn't the leader of the movement. Big Government's Andrew Breitbart
is. "Breitbart is one of them, except smarter, better connected and angrier;
compared with him, Palin is Las Vegas dinner theater. That's why he is loved by
Tea Partyers in a way Palin can never hope to be loved."

Actual elected officials are bowing down to the Tea Party throng in ever-growing
numbers. Describing a meeting he held with his finance team at the Richard Nixon
suite at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. the consultant writes that
members of Congress came in and asked for a list of what to do. "The second
meeting drew 10 congressmen," the consultant writes. "There we sat, inside the
Capitol Hill Club (which shares the building that houses the Republican National
Committee), sharing ideas on how we can work together. The third meeting drew 17
congressmen."

Strategists deliberately try to stir up rage among average Americans,
calculating that it's much easier to push a political movement if it's deeply
frightened than if it's entirely hopeful. "We're playing to the reptilian brain
rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage
the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives," the
consultant writes. "In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that
causes road rage."

Along these lines, the strategists behind the Tea Party movement are using
variable-print technology to send out thank-you notes "from an imaginary Wall
Street executive to working-class taxpayers."

The Tea Party is distrusting if not disdainful of the conspiracy theorists with
which they are often associated. The consultant writes that during one
candidate-interview process, two simple questions are asked. "(1) Are you a
birther? (2) Are you a truther? If the answer is anything but "no" or "hell no,"
the conversation ends right there. If the candidate answers correctly, the
conversation continues."

.....
But the piece certainly dispels the myth -- if it still existed -- that the Tea
Party is some sort of folksy grassroots movement merely trying to add a modicum
of sense to today's corrupt political process. In fact, the movement gets giddy
pleasure from sticking it to institutional powers but is quietly dependent on
the type of politicking they deplore, as even the author admits.

"[T]he worst thing I can say about the Tea Party I work for is that it can make
lots of noise but can't win without professional help. I love the irony of
helping run this organization from the St. Regis Bar [one of D.C.'s fanciest
hotels]."
]
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