Thread: Tea Party activists bitter about GOP ‘hijacking’ movement

Revelations about the connections between a Republican lobbying firm with a long history of astroturfing and one of the two main factions of "Tea Party" protesters are raising fresh concerns that the GOP has successfully hijacked the right-wing Tea Party movement.

A Libertarian political consultant interviewed by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow agrees that in many places the tea partiers' struggle against being coopted is already "a lost cause."

"In some places it's being fought out," Stephen Gordon told Maddow on Tuesday. "In some places it's always been a lost cause. ... People are trying to do the right thing, but GOP organizations and campaigns are effectively taking over the Tea Party movement in some places in the country."

The involvement of the Republican lobbying firm of Russo, Marsh, and Associates with the group known as the Tea Party Express has been apparent for some time, but Talking Points Memo backed up those suspicions on Tuesday with hard numbers from FEC filings. The filings show that between July and November of this year, the PAC behind the Tea Party Express spent almost two-thirds of its $1.33 million budget on payments to Russo, Marsh or people connected with it.

As Raw Story reported last month, the firm's apparent goal is to channel populist Tea Party discontent into Republican electoral victories in 2010 and 2012. Members of the more genuinely grassroots Tea Party Patriots have been expressing their anger over this for months, and Talking Points Memo has now obtained an email from one Patriot asking, "What would the true grassroots people think if they knew their money is being spent in this manner?"

Indeed FL Patriot, who the hell in their right mind would want to be associated with any of the so called dominant parties!?

democrat or republican? whore or prostitute? The similarities overwhelm the differences.

Thank you for the heads up on this issue, I've been wondering how that 'slam-job' was working out.