THE PLANK SEPTEMBER 18, 2009
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From Politico's report on tea parties and right-wing activism, including Dick Armey's FreedomWorks:
“As an organization, we have been very closely studying what the left has been doing,” explains FreedomWorks press secretary Adam Brandon, who says he was given a copy of “Rules for Radicals” when he took his current job . Brandon describes the Sept. 12 rally in D.C. as the “culmination of four years worth of work” and says that organizers were “incredibly conscious” of the symbols they chose.
With the logo, he explains, they were “trying to evoke the imagery of the counterrevolutionary protests of the 1960s that captured the imagination of the world.” And as for the phrase “March on Washington,” Brandon says, “this is something people said in the office. If we had been alive back in the 1960s, we would have been on the freedom bus rides. It was an issue of individual liberty. We’re trying to borrow some from the civil rights movement.”...
Dick Armey did not, in fact, participate in the freedom rides of the 1960s. Brandon said the former House majority leader was an undergrad in Jamestown, N.D., at the time, working his way through school putting up electric poles, and “wasn’t politically active at the time."
Well, naturally. Besides, the breaches of liberty occuring during the 1960s -- denying people the right to vote, beating anybody who objected, etc. -- weren't the kind of thing that would make a freedom-minded young person want to become politically active anyway. It's not like today, where the government is trying to provide health insurance for people who don't have it. You've got to prioritize.
5 comments
Analysis, please? Ad hominem jejune rants we can get anywhere.
- malahat
September 18, 2009 at 2:31pm
bl462, what is there to analyse? Sometimes somethings are funny in and of themselves. To claim that Dick Armey's dick army is inspired so much by their leader in a way that makes them wish they were alive to participate during the Civil rights movement, all the while knowing that Dick Armey himself didn't is pretty funny. Beyond that, there is pretty much nothing coming from the Republicans except "No!" in every form, they don't like the Public option, fine, it is gotten rid of. They don't like subsidies to 400% of income, it is dropped to 300%, again every concession is met with "No!" Their only goal is to prevent a bill being passed and they will lie and obstruct as much as they can. Can you tell me what the Republican plan is, besides tax cuts for the rich (oh, sorry, tax free health savings accounts which only the rich can afford)
- blackton
September 18, 2009 at 2:50pm
Hi Blackton, I thought it would be interesting to read analysis related to whether the teapartiers are trying to take over the Republican Party or vice versa, what the implications are, and that it's interesting in itself that the so-called "archictect of the Republican Revolution" is publicly stating that he is appropriating Alinsky's "rules for revolutionaries", not so subliminally labeling the Obama Administration and the Democrat Party as the Establishment and the Republicans? Teapartiers? whatever as the revolutionaries.
- malahat
September 18, 2009 at 3:08pm
This brilliant article reminds of a story from the NY Times from about a month ago, in which they interviewed a white couple in the early 60s from Southwestern Georgia who were so concerned about the Obama health plan that they attended their Congressman's town hall meeting for the first time in their lives. The man commented about how he recalled anti-Vietnam War protests from when he was in his 20s, but admitted that he never joined those protests. About 2/3 into the article, the writer inserted the shocking revelation that the couple were lifelong Republicans who got most of their news from Fox and were regular listeners to Limbaugh and Hannity!
- wildboy
September 18, 2009 at 3:08pm
jc: Dick Armey did not, in fact, participate in the freedom rides of the 1960s. george: Why do we know this? Because Richard Cheney infiltrated the freedom riders for Richard Nixon and has pictures of all the conserative Republicans who were on the buses. All none of them. But Armey did polish his own shoes once to see what it was like to be a slave. "Hell, that wasn't so bad", he said. Later he went on to divorce his wife and marry one of his economic students. "I just wanted to see what it was like to make a mockery of conservative family values", he assured his colleagues. "Things went too far. I'm human". He was forgiven by Tom Delay and went on to form FreedomWorks, an organization dedicated to securing the freedom of rich white male health care executives everywhere. And from that day on, he has never once polished his own shoes. He hired Michael Steele to do it. gw
- iambiguous
September 18, 2009 at 4:47pm