One thing that is predictable about the modern conservative movement is that a grifter can always return and can always get a job.
For example, let’s take a look at the real people behind the Tea Party movement and the mad libs rescramble of platitudes also known as the “Mt. Vernon Statement“.
A few weeks ago the Washington Post took a look at the people in DC that are actually doing the work to drive the Tea Party Movement.
Not surprisingly, it was a list of grifters.
Because of my years researching Jack Abramoff and his activities since 1978 quite a few of these names jumped out at me. They also caught the eye of another scholar of the modern conservative movement, Thomas Frank.
Tom is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” and more recently, “The Wrecking Crew“. It was in the Wrecking Crew that Tom took a deep dive into the long history of conservative corruption. In 2008 Tom excerpted The Wrecking Crew in Harper’s Magazine and it is an important tutorial for anybody who wants to understand how corruption works in Washington.
These days Tom writes a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) and it should be on your list of weekly reads. This week he took a look at the names mentioned in the WaPo article and explained some aspects of their grifter past:
What struck me about the Post’s story was the familiarity of it all. In particular, I kept being reminded of that ultimate conservative insider, the now-imprisoned superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the work he did on behalf of the Northern Marianas Islands, where garment factories churned out “Made in the USA” clothing under re-education camp conditions. [snip]
Today, as Washington conservatives scramble to stay atop the growing grass-roots right, the cast of characters is remarkably similar. For example, the “Team Abramoff” lobbyist who ran the Marianas trips program in the 1990s, Patrick Pizzella, is reported by the Post to be the “only paid staff member” of the Conservative Action Project. According to the Washington Times, Mr. Pizzella has also been “involved” in the drafting of the Mount Vernon Statement, a conservative manifesto that is meant to rally the tea-partying base.
Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) also makes an appearance in the Post story, as ATR sponsored the first round of tea parties a year ago and as Mr. Norquist’s famous Wednesday morning meetings for conservative power brokers have provided a fertile medium for the movement’s networking. [snip]
And then there is Dick Armey … as you may recall, Mr. Armey was once one of Congress’s staunchest defenders of the Marianas way. Several of his aides traveled to the free-market paradise, and in 1997 Mr. Armey even wrote a letter jointly with former Rep. Tom DeLay in which he praised the islands’ dedication to “the principles of free markets, enterprise, education choice, tax reform and other innovative approaches to governance.”
Behold your Third Great Awakening, America. Lobbyists, sweatshops, and the junkets designed by lobbyists to make sweatshops seem like liberty are, presumably, the sort of things tea partiers should have trouble with. Will the grass-roots nation call these gentlemen to account for their freedom flimflamming of the past?
I wouldn’t count on it.
There are many other names on the list with connections to Abramoff as well. Take Matt Kibbe, the President of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks–he was one of Abramoff’s junketeers to Saipan and a reliable think tank defender of sweatshops and human trafficking upon his return. Or then there is the reliable grifter-for-hire, Brent Bozell, who runs the Media Research Center–a conservative PR spin shop designed to extrude press releases and commentary on command. Bozell was another traveler to the Marianas Islands and a reliable media voice to defend the abuse ever since. And the there is Horace Cooper who has been indicted in the Abramoff scandal and is awaiting trial for his crimes. Cooper is a former long-time Dick Armey staffer who connects Dick to Jack in a tight and dirty way.
There are more connections as well in the list of names behind the resurgence of the converative movement. Some of these grifters go back to the sixties, some the seventies, some the eighties, nineties and some come from the zeros. Regardless where they come from, the Tea Party movement is becoming a full employment movement for the Republican grifters who drove up the debt, stole from tax payers and got rich during the Gingrich/DeLay/Bush era actively destroying the Government of the United States. To call the movement these grifters are promoting “grassroots” is an insult to astroturf.
Tom Frank is an entertaining fellow. As I drove into work this morning I was pleasantly surprised to here him on C-Span this morning. It is a fun segment and you can find a link to it here.
The Republican Tea Party movement is blatantly embracing the corruptionists who have done so much damage over the last thirty years. This is good new for Abramoff as he can be sure that he will always have a job with the Tea Party movement when he gets out of jail in a few years. After all, his BFF Grover is basically running the scam.
Cheers
dengre
Martin
The GOP is just getting Americans back to work – one criminal at a time. And what are Democrats doing about jobs? Locking up the criminals rather than putting them to work.
Now who cares more about getting America back on track?
(OT, American women skiers have incredibly nice teeth)
Dennis G.
@Martin:
Yes. It is a full grifter employment project.
As Will Rogers used to say about Republicans, “they always have a plan and that’s the problem because it always goes like this, ‘come on in boys and take anything you want, my backs a turned and I ain’t gonna look’…”
cheers
Nikki
Not even remotely a surprise.
SpotWeld
It’s a “Teabag bubble”
It’s like any sort of panic situation. People look for a fast easy explanation for some sort of crisis, then they get soaked by the people who coincidentally tell them they have the solution for the problem.
A newspaper report on a tainted water supply (somewhere). Later in the week a guy in a workman’s uniform taps at your door saying he’s a water inspector (and he has a ID an everything). You take him to the faucet, and he drips a few drops onto the test strip. *gasp* It turns red. He looks at your sternly… have you been drinking this water… have (dun dun dun) the children.
Luckily he has a small supply of the filtration pills that he was issued from the dept. He’s supposed to save these for the people on “the list”, but you’re honest god-fearing folk, the sell them to you (he needs the money since the gov’t won’t pay for the overtime he’s working.)
And it’s the same scam in a simple neat package.
1) general panic
2) panic is then directed specifically at you
3) solution is presented.
4) recompense is demanded
5) repeat as needed…
This happened with that “Minuteman Movement” too, if I recall correctly.
GregB
Round up the usual suspects.
-G
General Winfield Stuck
I saw that. love the guy, A space cadet in a good smart way.
Angry Space Cadet
Oh come on Dennis G, you really expect me to believe that there is former GOP congressman named Dick Army? What’s next? Senator Jesus Petroleum?
monkeyboy
I’m not sure where this team thinks it is going to be getting the big bucks from. I wouldn’t think contributions from TeaBaggers would be all that lucrative.
My guess is wingnut welfare – contributions from rich sugerdaddies and corporations.
CyberNewsService, Bozells news reporting arm has a glowing story about Mt. Vernon whose only mention of Bozell’s involvement is: (Disclosure: CNSNews.com President L. Brent Bozell III is one of the conservative leaders who signed The Mount Vernon Statement.)
JK
More links to Thomas Frank please.
@Angry Space Cadet:
Dick Armey has a name that would tickle Charles Dickens pink
General Winfield Stuck
@Angry Space Cadet:
I that is Senator Demented.
Kevin Phillips Bong
Tom Frank is such a smart guy, and a really wonderful writer. I can highly recommend What’s the Matter With Kansas of course, but you should look up his stuff from his magazine The Baffler and move on to the Conquest of Cool and One Market Under God. Clear, well thought out arguments supported by entertaining writing.
sfinny
One problem is that no matter how much the framework is determined by such grifters, they pull along people who honestly feel part of a grassroots movement. And yet the more we try to show the rot at the center of the movement, the more we reinforce the idea that we are dismissing them. Quite a dilemma.
JK
Why the Mount Vernon Statement was comedy gold
h/t http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/02/18/insult/index.html
TenguPhule
Good, we can save on bullets if they’re all in one spot.
freelancer
Great post dengre, really substantive. I’ll be sure to listen to the C-span segment with Frank tomorrow at work.
I know you’re a newly minted frontpage contributor here, and hopefully that’s permanent, but couldn’t you be more like TNC’s and Sully’s guest bloggers and talk more about important things like video games?
Yutsano
Plus ca change never fit so well. I’m glad you are on the case of this denge, I wouldn’t mind getting the word out, especially on right wing blogs. Of course they’re certainly capable of denying the truth even if it stares them in the face.
Oh and thanks for posting. I was wondering where you had been for the past few days.
Anne Laurie
@Angry Space Cadet:
Yes, and while he was still in Congress, he got in trouble with the Liberal Media for calling Barney Frank “Barney Fag” on-camera… and then trying to claim it was just a perfectly ordinary slip of the tongue which had nothing whatsoever to do with his political disagreements with Rep. Frank, or his very public disapproval of Frank’s non-heteronormative personal life . “Dick Man Walking” was truly one of those smaller-than-life characters that future generations of historians will dismiss as an obvious spoof inserted into the public records by mischievious pranksters.
middlewest
@freelancer:
What’s really funny is that guy on TNC’s blog obviously doesn’t know much about video games at all.
Anne Laurie
@SpotWeld:
So, since the GOPsters are bound and determined to repeat every single stupid scam & stunt from the original Gilded Age… What’s the 21st-century equivalent of anti-comet pills, and how can we make a few bucks for the Tunch fund by selling them to gullible idiots like B.o.B. and the Church Lady?
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Oh man, I remember the smarminess when Armey tried to cover that up with the “slip of the tongue” comment. When the video of it came out, he was backpedaling so fast I thought he would get dizzy. He was out the next election (I believe) although that had more to do with his impending indictment (which as far as I know still stands and has just been sitting there not going forward. Holder would be my hero if he would pursue that fiercely.
gex
@Anne Laurie: I just like how B.o.B.’s initials make me think of Outkast.
Brick Oven Bill
George Washington, after learning that his cousin Lund, had sent the British warship there to burn Mount Vernon and ravage his fields provisions, in an act of subservience, wrote this:
“It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your non-compliance with their request, they had burnt my house, and laid the Plantation in ruins.”
You really don’t want to mess with the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. I would not put too much faith in the people jumping to the front of the line to take credit for a leaderless movement.
Tonight I bowled next to an uber-retard, a no-shit Special Olympian. I got a 120 and he made me look bad. Barack bowled a 39.
Angry Space Cadet
@Anne Laurie:
Yeah, according to wikipedia my former congressman Randy Duke Cunningham joked about Barney Frank and rectal examinations. We the people really do elect class acts.
Yutsano
@Brick Oven Bill: Expect a nasty phone call from Bible Spice. You have angered your Queen BoB, you shall repent or face the consequences.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I have missed you, honeybunches! And, this doesn’t surprise me at all. La Palina fits right in with this bunch.
John Quixote
@Yutsano: It’s only offensive when libruls do it. When conservatives do it, it’s satire. It’s very subtle.
Ian
@Anne Laurie:
This.
freelancer
Gonna end the night with a moment of shameless blogwhoring.
A post I’ve worked on, and have been improving for the past 24 hours, and I feel pretty solid about it. You could call the shorter: “Fuck the Angry White Guy!”
http://thegreatamericandesert.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/of-tribalism-nomenclature-and-freedom-fighting/
bago
@freelancer: Back Off, Man. Mass Effect 2 Rocks!
Wrex will never die!
Wow, caps for every word in the first sentence. Impressive.
Tax Analyst
Nice job of spotlighting some excellent muckraking, Dennis. We could sure use a whole lot more writers and journalists doing work like Tom Frank.
freelancer
@bago:
In case you haven’t noticed, I am one of the regular commenters here who is also a console gamer (note the date). I’ve taken a couple weeks off in order to help a couple friends move and catch up on other mediums of escapism, but in that post, my tongue was thoroughly in cheek.
I need to wrap up Assassin’s Creed II, and right now, I am still in the 10th hour of ME2, currently on the Krogan recruiting mission after 1 failed attempt (caught in the open and took a couple rockets in the dome).
Michael
This was why I was genuinely sad that there wasn’t an “Inglourious Basterds” ending to either that Mount Vernon Declaration meeting or CPAC.
The least I could hope for would be an outbreak of Norwalk virus at the CPAC spit swap.
A Mom Anon
Is there some sort of family tree type of chart linking these people and groups? Dick Armey isn’t funding this crap himself,nor does Norquist or the rest of the bastids. So where’s the money really coming from? Is it just the usual suspects(the Koch family,the folks who own Coors,etc)? Or are there any new big donors on the scene? I know the teapartiers have some small donations,but that’s not where the big funds are coming from.
JohnR
I just thought I’d mention how much I appreciate BoB’s posts here. They’re like a refreshing breeze of frosty non-seguituriousnessosity. I sometimes wonder if BOB is actually some liberal comedian doing a Colbert but not quite getting it right.
WereBear
Sometimes, the only thing that gives me hope is that they still struggle to lie and obfuscate about the true nature of their goals.Those moments where they tell the truth and get slapped down for it are wonderful.
chopper
i just love the titles these guys use. ‘tea party’? the original tea party was a protest against a major corporation getting a tax break. and i’ve been to mount vernon and i still can’t figure out what the hell these guys have to do with washington. in fact, if washington were alive today i’m sure he’d punch those assholes in the neck.
colleeniem
@A Mom Anon: There was an excellent NPR segment this morning all about that. (NPR? I know, it was fund raising week).
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123859296
SGEW
@JohnR:
Opinions are split on this.
artem1s
man, read the comments on Frank’s piece. They’ve got their heads so far buried in the sand. My wingnut libertarian uncle used to rant on and on about how the media conglomerates were all controlled by the new world order. when I pointed out how unlikely it was they could do that but not infiltrate the little independent rag he was getting his info from he looked like he’d been gut punched. I always felt a little guilty for fueling his paranoia even further.
danimal
@SGEW: Some of us suspect BoB is really DougJ, despite his spoofing disavowal. I’m almost certain there are multiple BoBs, and some are pretty funny.
schrodinger's cat
@SGEW: Some say he is DougJ.
catclub
As a paraphrase to Senator Scott Brown’s mealy mouthed comments on white guys angry at the IRS,
I just realized that flying planes into the WTC was terrorism because businesses were there, but flying into the Pentagon
was due to being disgruntled at big government.
After all, corporations have all ( and more) of the rights of citizens, but government does not.
joe from Lowell
I would just like to add that Ron Bailey, chief climate-change denier at Reason Magazine, went along on that junket to the Marianas, and then came back and wrote a puff piece.
S. cerevisiae
Every American should have the right to work in a sweatshop! Why do you hate freedom?
Mike in NC
Now that he’s done time behind bars, maybe Randy “Dick” Cunningham is the new expert!
SpotWeld
@Anne Laurie: Easiest thing is to sell crap merchandise that allows them to outwardly prove thier patriotism. Little miniture Constitution pins. Constitution branded rum. Sam Adams branded gun cabinets.
(Of course, any right-winger pointing out that they shouldn’t have to buy stuff will be derided as a socialist since they obviously want the governement to give it to them).
Even better, start soliciting for “investors” to help fix then “market inbalance” caused by excessive liberal goods.
Get them to pay you money so you can stock up on “excessively progressive” goods, edit them and resell them.
You probably make a mint taking S. Carolina flags and mugs and such, removing the (excessivly muslim cresent) and pasting on a “Stars and Bars”
Batocchio
Tom Frank’s great. Thanks for the link.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@schrodinger’s cat: BTD will be along any moment to berate you for your use of anonymous sources.
Nancy Irving
“to make sweatshops seem like liberty” –
But sweatshops are what conservatives MEAN by “liberty”!