More than a Tempest in a teapot
Not your ‘average’ political group, Pasadena Patriots cut their Tea Party teeth on local elections
By André Coleman 08/19/2010
Before she received a Facebook invitation to the first meeting of the Pasadena Patriots, a local arm of the Tea Party, 24-year-old Amy Ellison was just another disgruntled Republican, unhappy with the direction the country is heading. Then, after attending the meeting, Ellison knew she had finally found an organization that wanted to do something about the problems she believes are plaguing the country.
“A lot of people are starting to open their eyes,” Ellison said. “The state of the economy has woken people up and it is not going to change until people get out there. I’m very honored to be part of this group.”
Other like-minded people, like Eric Chan, 35, who had never participated in the election process before, also flocked to the Patriots.
“I think there are a lot of angry people out there, and I agree with the reasons why they are angry,” Chan said. “You also have a lot of middle-class taxpaying people who may not be following the political process because they are busy trying to feed their family and put food on the table. We are trying to promote awareness and educate the average citizen.”
But even if they are informing average people, members of the Tea Party tend not to be average citizens.
A nationwide telephone poll conducted in April by The New York Times and CBS News shows Tea Partiers are mostly well off, married, white Republican men older than 45 who are more educated than the general public. A recent Gallup poll found that 55 percent of the group’s supporters make $50,000 or more a year. An Angus Reid Public Opinion Poll conducted at the end of June found that 29 percent of Americans believed the Tea Party will have a positive effect on politics.
“In all I have seen in news reports and on television, I doubt seriously they are more educated than anyone else,” said longtime local Democratic Party leader Ralph McKnight. “I think they are at the bottom of the educational ring … nothing but a bunch of tidewater crackers who are supported by a small number of garden-variety Uncle Toms. Before [President Barack] Obama got elected, George Bush took the country down the toilet and none of them were out there, and now all of them are supporting the things Bush did. If they say are bi-partisan, they are full of crap. If it walks like a duck and quacks a duck, it’s a duck.”
Maybe one of the reasons people who now agree with the Tea Party were not protesting over Bush is because most of the members agreed with his policies. Fifty-seven percent of the 1,580 people polled by CBS and The New York Times held a favorable opinion of Bush. Further, a full quarter of those surveyed felt Obama’s policies favor blacks over whites, compared with 11 percent of the overall public.
Despite those numbers, Pasadena Patriots co-founder Michael Alexander is quick to point out that the Tea Party is not part of the Republican Party, or any other political party. Rather, he claims the group is a nonpartisan organization that wants to increase voter turnout and place the electoral process back in the hands of the people. It’s certainly not the racist group with an extreme right-wing agenda that McKnight and others like Occidental political science Professor Peter Dreier have portrayed them as.
“The Tea Party has taken over the Republican Party in some states and influenced it in others,” Dreier said. “You can see that in the candidates moving to the extreme right in the states where they have a presence. The Republicans are cultivating the Tea Party because they think they can swing elections.”
Save our schools
Local members of the group may have done just that in May, when they worked with financial consultant Ross Selvidge to help defeat Measure CC, which would have raised $7 million for local schools by hiking property taxes by $120 a year for seven years. Pasadena Patriots made more than 2,000 phone calls and sent out about 15,000 emails to defeat the parcel tax, which only gained 52 percent of the necessary 66.7 percent of the vote needed to pass.
“I think they are certainly energized,” said Selvidge, who is a Republican but not a member of the group. “The main message they had is they wanted to energize people who want lower taxes, smaller government and more accountability. They emphasized that everyone was welcome no matter the political party. I expect most of them are Republican. It is a group that identifies with many people’s concerns and steps up and says, ‘let’s turn these things around.’ It has appeal.”
This spring, the Pasadena Patriots plan to be involved in City Council elections, when district seats held by Jacque Robinson, Margaret McAustin, Steve Madison and Steve Haderlein will be up for grabs. Ellison would not say which seats the group would be pursuing. But, “We will be very involved in the local elections,” she said. “We will be running our own candidates for a bunch of the city positions.”
Political doubletalk
The Pasadena Patriots began in Michael Alexander’s office at Green Street and Mentor Avenue in April 2009, about 90 days after Obama’s inauguration. The group had its first big event on Tax Day, April 15, on the steps of Pasadena City Hall, attracting more than 100 people as similar events were being held around the country.
The group’s agenda includes smaller government, a flat tax, environmental reform, preservation of private health care, dismantling of the modern welfare state and preemptive deterrence against America’s enemies. The bulletin board in the group’s office is filled with dozens of political campaign buttons, each promoting a Republican candidate.
Despite this obvious partisanship, during a recent interview Alexander at times claimed to be nonpartisan and willing to support a fiscally responsible Democrat. Later on, however, he said he was a Libertarian — forced to register as a Republican and at odds with both Republicans and Democrats on the issue of public education.
“You won’t find any [Democrat buttons], but I can assure you, if you know a Democrat who advocates lower taxes, significantly less regulation, a restoration of limited constitutional government, we would be glad to support him. In fact, you and I can make some money because there is a reward out there for any information leading to the identification of a Democratic candidate who shares Tea Party principles.”
Given what’s happening in the city of Bell and even here in Pasadena to some degree, with government officials collecting sometimes ridiculously high salaries and pensions, part of the Pasadena Patriots’ agenda must resonate with a lot of people — folks who work hard, raise kids and have no health care, pensions or other safety nets to save them when disaster strikes.
“The last century witnessed the rise of a new and privileged class in America: The Government Class,” reads No. 2 on the agenda for the Patriots, an affiliate of the Tea Party Movement that’s come to be embodied by so-called “maverick” politicians like Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and, most recently FOX News contributor Newt Gingrich.
“It is an insidious alliance of elected officials, bureaucrats and special interests who receive the largess of government and profit from its decrees,” the agenda goes on. “This parasitical class has risen not on its merits but on its influence. It rules by decree instead of the consent of the governed. It arrogantly claims the right to seize and redistribute the wealth of private, productive American citizens. They grant themselves extravagant salaries, benefits, pensions and privileges of which others can only dream.”
Although they may have never thought of it very much before, these days average Americans are coming to understand that the basic question of all politics is this: What should government do for us?
From that falls those who say it should do everything (think communists) and those say nothing (libertarians). Then from those two extremes flow a host of in-betweens on both sides. On the left are ecologists, socialists, peaceniks and people who support regulation, civil rights, immigrant rights and public schools.
On the right there are those who oppose regulation, hate taxes, support big business, unquestioningly support war and are suspicious of immigrants. These days, these are typically Republicans and are interchangeably called that and conservative.
Most people in all categories on both sides of the aisle concede that government is a necessary evil. Even if they don’t like it, most think “the system” could work if it ran more efficiently and with less corruption. Even Republicans, who are also major benefactors of government largesse, believe at least this much.
But Tea Partiers, or Tea Baggers, as their critics have come to deride them as, don’t see things quite that way. They are more libertarian than even most conservatives, meaning they are even more extreme in their views about goverment than most Republicans.
Today the Tea Party and its Pasadena Patriots also seem to be embarking on a campaign that appears to be as much a fight against racial inclusion in the political process that President Obama respresents as it is about abolishing taxes and the so-called Nanny State created by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who, like Obama, was also labeled a socialist in his time and is the president that Obama is most often compared with.
Not surprisingly, some of these principles of the Patriot Party remain unclear to many, according to former Democratic congressional candidate and occasional Pasadena Weekly columnist Barry Gordon.
“Obviously, when the economy turns sour, groups like this come out of the woodwork and press everybody’s emotional buttons,” Gordon said. “Unfortunately, so much of what they say is not based in fact and is not rational. They seem to use a lot of cognitive dissonance in the sense that they want incompatible things at the same time. They want lower taxes and less government, but most of the folks from that group I met at health care town hall meetings say keep your hands off my Medicare. I don’t know if they know what they want.”
Perhaps Gordon has a point. For example, Alexander assails Obama for Obamacare, the deficit and the president’s lack of experience. He claims that the Tea Party’s main focus is to inspire people to take hold of the electoral process by increasing voter turnout.
On the other hand, the group supports Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who also lacks experience and has not voted in almost 30 years. To his credit, Alexander admits that Whitman’s failure to vote all those years is a problem for him.
Alexander also said one-time Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — who pushed a program almost identical to Obamacare in forcing Massachusetts citizens to purchase health care, and also included government assistance for those who couldn’t afford it — is qualified to be president.
Alexander further said John McCain “in many ways is closer to Obama-Reid-Pelosi than he has been to the conservative wing of the Republican Party.” However, Alexander stopped short of holding Palin to the same standard. Palin has been a Tea Party darling, speaking at several events to sold-out crowds chanting “Run, Sarah, Run.”
“There is nothing quite like Sarah Palin to take a conversation off-center,” Alexander said. “It’s like mentioning Obama in a biker bar. It immediately distorts the discussion. We’re witnessing political loyalty, but I am not going to defend her. I think she is a charming and attractive woman, but she doesn’t define us. In fact, we spend remarkably little time talking about her or even the next president. We’re very focused on our problems.”
The race card
According to Dreier, Tea Partiers can’t really hurt Democrats — at least not yet.
“The difference between white councils, you know, the ones from the South, and the Tea Party is today we have the Internet and they are able to organize and communicate,” Dreier said. “They have mastered the Internet and the blogosphere. It is not just the Tea Party; it’s FOX News, Glenn Beck and all the rest of them. Not more than 10 percent of the electorate supports them. There are strong racist elements within the Tea Party that will never support a Democrat.”
Accusations of racism have dogged the group ever since last year’s town hall meetings. In March, civil rights leaders and House Majority Whip James Clyburn told reporters that just before he voted for the health care bill, he heard people saying racist things he had not heard since demonstrating for equal rights in the 1960s. Tea Party supporters have denied those claims.
However, four months later, after the NAACP passed a resolution denouncing the group as racist, Mark Williams, one of the group’s national leaders, was kicked out of the organization for a mock letter that he wrote. The letter was from the NAACP to Abraham Lincoln denouncing emancipation.
“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!” wrote Williams in the letter which also mockingly states that bailouts are just big money welfare which is what the NAACP wants all “coloreds” to strive for.
Despite that, Alexander insists race is not an issue for him, just as he is adamant that the group is more than a bunch of gray-haired white men worried about losing privilege and power.
“One of the big strategies is to put me on defense [by asking me] whether I am a racist or not and to try to get me to sit here and have these little speeches and to say some of my best friends are black folks. Well, they’re not, and I am not going to sit here and try and tell everybody how down for the struggle I am because I am who I am and frankly I don’t give a damn. As far as how many racists we have, I probably have as many racists as the NAACP,” Alexander said. “We are a human organization.”
Going forward
Either way, it is a human organization that continues to draw new people who agree with the message. On Fridays, the group holds open houses that attract 50 to 100 people — some of them minorities — for wine, soda, beer and snacks. There are only two rules: no sermons and no calls for donations.
The Pasadena Patriots have grown so rapidly that Tea Party chapters on the East Coast have contacted them to find out how they are doing it.
With the country facing a $13 trillion deficit — with anywhere from $600 billion to $1.4 trillion of that inherited from Bush — Alexander doesn’t want to hear it when people blame Bush for the bad economy, as well as the fall of the banking and auto industries.
He also can’t seem to explain why none of these movements started when George Bush, Bush the elder or Ronald Regan were in office. Alexander said the modern movement started with Obama, but it goes back 70 years to when Franklin Roosevelt was in office.
“Obama is not in and of himself the story, but what we experienced last year was unique and that was the emergence of one-party rule in Washington in a way in which it had not existed before, grafted onto a highly socialist agenda consisting of massive bailouts and regulation of industry, wholesale takeovers of major parts of the economy,” Alexander said.
“I find it very discouraging to point out that we have these economic problems and the only response is Bush-Obama, Republican-Democrat, conservative-liberal. When it is all over and done with, we still have a multitrillion-dollar deficit we have to deal with,” Alexander said. “We have a failed state, a rehash of the old arguments and a hurling and application of the old labels and back into the white, pink, purple, brown and polka-dot argument is just so debilitating and discouraging that I don’t know what to say. These problems are not going to go away just by offering ‘abracadabra Bush, abracadabra liberal.’ All we have is our proper places on the Titanic. You’re on port. I’m on starboard.”
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Comments
"longtime local Democratic Party leader Ralph McKnight. “I think they are at the bottom of the educational ring … nothing but a bunch of tidewater crackers who are supported by a small number of garden-variety Uncle Toms."
You have got to be kidding me! How in the world does he get away with these racist comments. Imagine what would happen to a political leader who used the N word. People are disgusted with the hypocrisy of both parties and this is an excellent example. This guy should be removed ASAP!
posted by n2shotokai on 8/23/10 @ 05:34 a.m.
The reason why the TEA (Taxed Enough Already?) Party is being vilified so comprehensively by the ensconsed leaders of the Capitalist Political Party (CPP) is that it is definitively NOT part of the status quo (that being the CPP's Democrat/Repub paradigm).
But there's no real worry here, because the CPP's corporate master-class has already suborned the TEA Party movement by causing its less savy and politically more neophyte, elderly crowd to characterize themselves as "Tea-Baggers," which is a (mostly San Francisco) way of saying that you'd like to have some switch-hitting hetero he-man repeatedly drag his nasty, hairy testicles across your face.
Fox News has also made sure that the original TEA Party was appropriately commandeered and reclassified among its quite unofficial leadership as a mostly Hitler-worshipping, Billy-Bob style of Slingblade wannabe, White supremacists.
SO, as a legitimate political alternative, the TEA Party movement is functionally (at least as conspired with capitalism's corporate media) stillborn and dumpster-dumped.
DanD
posted by DanD on 8/23/10 @ 08:16 p.m.
Well, DUH!...These folks should be yelling about WHY there are no $$.
If they would widen their perspective, they'd find a silly war is consuming more than a MILLION DOLLARS. daily...Back to Accounting 101...
...On a personal note, the poster pictured in your article, this tiny brained mind surrounded by extra blubber should be replaced,..... .....
posted by pascaljim on 8/25/10 @ 01:39 p.m.
McKnight was right, full of crap!!!!!!!!!
posted by pascaljim on 8/25/10 @ 01:42 p.m.
McKnight is just a Democratic water boy who feels it's infinitely okay for him -- as a man obviously possessing both white and black ancestors -- to use racial epithets exclusively at the cracker-class But hoo-boy, just let somebody from a pastey neighborhood even remotely refer to his house-nig()ger conduct shilling for the current Mulatto warmongerer in the White House and the corporate media will do all his corporate media-delivered character-assassination for him!
Besides the goose/gander paradigm, McKnight really should be smart enough to understand that a significant number of people who have been coopted by the TEA Party were also Democrats who are completely fed up with the Obamanation's ostensible vacillation of "trying to work with" a half-thousand minority of Congressional, MIC Corporate sellouts. After all, it is in fact the corporate masters of these bought-and-paid-for shills who so much prefer a nation divided simply because it's so much easier to ruthlessly exploit the greater mass of America's technologically oppressed voters.
As a consequence, McKnight's own bullschit racism surely convinces those millions of voters disaffected with both sides of the Capitalist Political Party TO NOT want to listen to the driviling alternatives of either CPP propaganda team. Instead, they are looking for something different, but America's over-the-top corporate media provides them only with the fake alternatives of dumbed-down and CPP infected political theater.
Anyway, seeing as how Barry O. is actually out-Bushing Bush on America's soldier-consuming war-crimes front, it seems obvious to me that the Democrats are just as sell-out as the Republicans ... They're just using a different P.R. model to advertise their own subtily vicious brand of Contitutional treason.
DanD
posted by DanD on 8/25/10 @ 06:40 p.m.
the tea party is ruled by fear.