Now let him sink into irrelevance, knowing the tea party he helped create is destroying this country:
In a move not publicly announced, former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party.
Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP’s Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in an memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on November 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation. (See Armey’s email below.) Armey demanded that he be paid until his contract ended on December 31; that FreedomWorks remove his name, image, or signature “from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter”; and that FreedomWorks deliver the copy of his official congressional portrait to his home in Texas.
“The top management team of FreedomWorks was taking a direction I thought was unproductive, and I thought it was time to move on with my life,” Armey tells Mother Jones. “At this point, I don’t want to get into the details. I just want to go on with my life.”
Crazy people whipped into a frenzy by inflammatory rhetoric, funded by Koch money, are not easily controlled. The Franken-Armey freak show continues on.
Gary K
Hey, leave the senator from Minnesota out of this!
Smiling Mortician
The who now?
Chris
Also on the job front, Mitt Romney’s post-presidency job will apparently be Marriot.
redshirt
So I wonder: Freedomworks getting too crazy, or not crazy enough? From Dick Armey’s perspective.
Yutsano
@Chris: The only welfare more reliable than wingnut welfare is Mormon welfare.
reflectionephemeral
Can’t tell just what has him all mad. Wouldn’t be surprised if this is entirely personality-driven &, from a policy perspective, substanceless. Sometimes crazy people can’t get along with other crazy people even if they share a common interest like being mad at the federal government for making them desegregate their schhols.
bcinaz
Must really be in GOP jail – not even telling his story to Politico, but to MJ.
The Dangerman
@Chris:
I wonder if he’s already amended his tax return to take all of his deductions?
General Stuck
I been spending a lot of time reading right wing blogs and bloggers since the election. An emerging portrait for the general direction republicans are leaning toward, is one of “let it burn”. As one wingnut commenter put, “there was no point in developing strategy to counter Obama and democrats/ That another civil war is the only way to fix the problem”.
They didn’t say specifically what the problem was, but I suspect it is dawning on the nutters, that there just isn’t enough of them in the purest form to win elections. And they are far too in love with their entitlement to moderate.
One scenario emerging. More use of the debt ceiling funding to burn it down. Or, more likely, force Obama to do this and then try to impeach him, or claim he has destroyed the Constitution and declared martial law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/opinion/22posner.html
Lovely times we live in.
Baud
New tag line?
Spaghetti Lee
The dicks command their own army now!
pseudonymous in nc
So we can be pretty sure that Army of Dick will have a new wingnut welfare operation up and running by the end of the tax year.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@redshirt:
My money is on “not crazy enough”. In fact, it’s pretty much a sure bet.
It sucks that Kibbe is allowed to go on TV and opine like he is the voice of the tea party when in reality he’s the head herdsman for the Koch Brothers. His corporate herdsman’s job is to channel the tea party crazies and manipulate them and the Republican party into doing what his corporate masters want.
Kibbe should be acknowledged as a bought and paid for voice for the Koch brothers and head of one of their many political action committees.
pseudonymous in nc
@Chris:
That’s not a job, it’s a board membership, aka free money from rich corporates. What work there’ll be will entail deciding on the “going rate” for the executives.
Spaghetti Lee
@General Stuck:
That another civil war is the only way to fix the problem”.
Uh huh. And who’s gonna fight that war for you, Freep? The 101st Chickenhawks? The Breitbart.com newsroom? Don’t forget, fellas, that non-officer soldiers voted for our guy.
All this bullshit about a civil war, whoever’s talking about it, is just so much piss in the wind. The teabaggers are too scared to really try to start something. And if they weren’t too scared they’d be too old, too disorganized, and too outnumbered.
Joel
I hope Dick Armey dies in a sword fight.
Baud
@General Stuck:
At some point, the business community really needs to get Republicans to color within the lines, or they are going to lose a lot more money than they believe they will under Democratic governance.
PeakVT
Why doesn’t it surprise me that the first thing Rmoney plans to do now that he’s stopped pretending to be a public servant is make more money for himself and his cronies?
Linda Featheringill
@Chris:
It would probably be good for Mitt to have a job, to have something to do. Whoever offered him that position probably threw him a lifeline.
Go for it, Mitt. Stay busy and enjoy life.
Gin & Tonic
@The Dangerman: I don’t wager much (or often) but I’d bet the house that this was done by Nov 8 or so.
SatanicPanic
@General Stuck: They’re reaching the right wing equivalent of dropping out and levitating the Pentagon. Can’t believed we’re finally seeing it happen to their side.
Chris
@General Stuck:
Haven’t spent as much time on wingnut blogs this time around, but what’s filtering through to my ears is, especially, the theme of “there are now more makers than takers.” Which is their way of saying they’ve awakened to the demographic time bomb. And like you said, the “let it burn” reaction to that is palpable…
… and it’s a huge difference from after 2008, when you had a general sense of “yeah, this sucks,” but also a sense of “we’ll be back, motherfuckers!” Not feeling that last part right now. Maybe they’re just in temporary post-election shock.
General Stuck
@Baud:
The problem is there are quite a few tea tard whackjobs in the House, and we have a lily livered wingnut Speaker, that cares more about his position, than the country. This could be fixed regarding the insane use of raising the debt ceiling as leverage, by Boehner just putting his foot down and willing to use democratic votes to get it done.
I don’t think those tea partier congressmen give one shit about business, or anything else other than sticking it to the hated liberals.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
I agree. Because even in a time of economic crisis, I think they country’s still too comfortable for people to want to risk what they have in civil war.
Bismark said a safety net for the public would be a safeguard against revolutions for the government. I think he was right.
Hkedi
@Spaghetti Lee:
Don’t forget too fat and out of shape too.
Phoebe
Poor Al Franken has always had a problem with this: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78ofranken.phtml
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
I’m assuming that’s a sixties reference I’m too young to get and didn’t read about in history class…
If so – I said at the time the teabaggers emerged that I hoped they’d be the right’s version of the New Left, the moment where the then-dominant party pushed far enough away from the mainstream that you had a backlash and the country shifted in the other direction. It’s looking like it might indeed turn out that way.
Baud
@General Stuck:
They may not care about business, but I bet they care about going against business’s money in an election. This last election, business supported the GOP hard even though they were reckless during the prior debt ceiling fiasco. Until that well runs dry, the country will no time soon get past tea party intransigence.
Bunker
@Spaghetti Lee: They’re counting on the Military to help out.
General Stuck
@Baud:
And that intransigence seems bolted down tight with most of the tea partiers in the House, and their sympathizers in that body, holding highly gerrymandered districts for wingnuts.
There are at least 50 of them outright tea partiers, and quite a few more that are mostly with them, or terrified of going against them.
ding dong
Speaking of Texas pols whatever happened to Tom Duhlay dah hammer. is he still out of jail on appeal?
Spaghetti Lee
@Bunker:
The military won’t help them. There are some nutter elements in the military (just like other professions) but the military as a whole is loyal to actual authority, not “We’re Real Americans, so we’re always in charge” Teabagger authority.
SatanicPanic
@Chris: Yeah, I’m not that old either, but I’m thinking Dick Armey is their Abby Hoffman? Ron Paul is their Timothy Leary?
Redshift
@Baud: And bizarrely, they seem to have convinced a lot of business owners to believe that Republican policies are better for business, despite their long track record of being worse.
Xecky Gilchrist
@The Dangerman: I wonder if he’s already amended his tax return to take all of his deductions?
Probably even before he cancelled the staff credit cards.
SatanicPanic
FYWP, forgot about the boner pill joke ban
Jim, Foolish Literalist
David Corn wrote that? I’m gobsmacked. I thought it had to be Halperin or a Politico typist. I cannot imagine a single case of Romney acting “folksy” and I can’t imagine anything other than the fact that he was politically based in Texas that would make someone say that about him. He is/was mean, cold hard and nasty every time I saw himn.
I think Molly Ivins used to single Armey out as one of the far right nut bags who was not actively stupid. I wonder what hobby horse it is the Koch Bros won’t give up.
Spaghetti Lee
@Baud:
I wonder if/suspect that they do in fact know that economy does better under Democrats and that stated right-wing goals would destroy their business, but they’ve come to the conclusion that they’d rather lose the money in some noble fight against tyranny rather than suffer the indignity of having it taxed. Not all of them feel that way, I’m sure, but I don’t doubt the sentiment comes up occasionally. These are people who think Ayn Rand was a hero, remember.
Chris
@Bunker:
Which is the weirdest and most delusional thing about those ravings. The military’s got a tradition of submission to civilian control (even in the Civil War, Lee and the rest were obeying the civilian authorities of their states, not starting a revolution on their own) that it’s not about to break. And even if it was, there are enough liberals and moderates in the enlisted ranks that a clean coup’s pretty dubious.
Nope, it’s just going to be a few militias and lone wolves, hoping and failing that bombing IRS buildings and abortion clinics will inspire the country to rise up, and being sadly disappointed as the country yawns through it until the FBI comes and locks them up.
ETA: or what SL said.
Capt. Seaweed
Yeah just leave a big, stinky fart in the elevator then get off at the next floor, Dick.
Publius39
@The Dangerman: Well, he’s got three years to do it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he filed about a year from now, on a Friday afternoon where something major happened.
Redshift
Reading that, I’m wondering — is it common for a nonprofit to have a “president and CEO” and a “chairman,” or is this just another instance of conservatives setting up something that looks corporate so “their” people will feel comfortable with it?
danielx
Yeah, armed resistance to the US government, that’s the ticket – it’s always been so successful in the past. Have these guys, like, checked with Crazy Horse or David Koresh to see how that worked out for them?
Given Armey’s insistence that…
and his comment about…
It does cause one to wonder just what direction the top management team of FreedomWorks is taking. A direction that would cause active attention from the Justice Department, maybe? Armey is an ass, but not a complete fool, and it sure sounds like he’s not letting the grass grow under his feet in getting away and making it absolutely clear that he has no role whatsoever with the organization. It’s kind of unusual that a guy like him would up and run, not walk, from what has to be one of the cushier gigs in wingnut world, monetarily speaking.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.
Warren Terra
@The Dangerman:
As I recall, Mitt Romney promised to release two years’ tax returns “by the end of the year” and only released one and predictions for the other (or less, depending on whether you expect his tax returns to include the overseas banking disclosure form he was required to submit to the Treasury and not to the IRS). The end of the year is now fast approaching. He’d better get on it; we wouldn’t want him to be accused of breaking his word, after all.
MikeBoyScout
Sorry, but our country would be better off if this Dick just died, like the 19th century bullshit he spews.
Goodnight Dick.
Capt. Seaweed
@danielx:
Does no good to close the barn door after the
tea partycrazy horse has got out.Sly
In related news, first comes the binge then comes the purge
PurpleGirl
@Redshift: Some years back, maybe 10 or so, non-profit leaders began to call themselves president and CEO instead of executive director. They think it sounds more corporate. (The head of the non-profit I worked for began using the president and CEO titles; she was a attorney and liked that corporate feeling.)
Just Some Fuckhead
In other news, Dr. Frankenstein disavows monster of same name. “I just want to get back to my laboratory and do electrical research. I have no comment on the hideous scourge of hell that is ravaging the countryside.”
jl
@Warren Terra:
Dick Armey also has a great nose for fifth column subversion. He is the one who discovered that Alexander Hamilton’s wonky number cruncher economist assistant Tench Coxe subverted Hamilton’s unregulated free market dream while drafting Treasury reports. and poor Hamilton was not ept enough to revise and fix the damage in time, which is why millions of our precious innocent youth mistake Hamilton for a big government commie.
So, maybe Armey smells something amiss in his think tank.
I wept a little when I read Armey’s nutcase theory about why Hamilton’s reports do not fully reflect unregulated free market bliss. I could see Hamilton furiously revising and scratching out and scribbling, up to his neck in broken quills, screaming “Ink! Ink! I need more ink! Alas, I have no time to fix it, the country is doooooommmmmmed!”.
Now, see, Armey demonstrated that if you just cross out a few words every paragraph, and substitute in words that Hamilton meant to write (if only the text had not been treacherously subverted), and add some ‘not’s and stuff, you can read what Hamilton really meant.
A silly story, but Armey actually wrote such nonsense in a ‘scholarly’ article pumped out by this think tank. I read it myself, and I laughed an evil commie laugh which reverberated through the dark endless corridors of the immense commie library. And I can never help myself when I have a chance to bring it up.
Sorry. I apologize.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe Armey has finally sobered up.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: Hell I thought he was in jail. But what was I thinking? Republicans don’t go to jail even for attempted murder.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Yutsano: You are confusing him with his Texas Cohort In Corruption, Tom “Motion For” Delay.
El Cid
Who knows — the direction they wanted to go in might have involved paying Dick Armey less. Or making him do more work. Hence the outrage.
fuckwit
If you’re going to teabag a whole country, you’re going to need… a dick army.
LeftCoastTom
From the email at the Mother Jones link..Armey expects to perform no duties after November 30, and he expects to be paid through December 31.
Sounds like a teatard.
Biff Longbotham
@SatanicPanic: Middle-aged guy here had to cringe when I read your (hopefully unintentional)insulting comparison of that asshole Armey with Abby Hoffman. Abby was smart, funny, motivational, and not looking for personal power or financial gain. Dick Armey, on the other hand, is a Texan.
Redshift
@Sly:
I find it increasingly hilarious how “conservative” has come to mean “one of us” to the point where it has been drained of all other meaning. They’re all conservatives in the sense that they are defenders of inherited wealth and privilege, and long for a return to a mythical past, and yet every faction loudly refers to themselves as conservatives and implies that their opponents aren’t real conservatives.
GregB
Fiscal cliff! Benghazi! Socialism! Obama is indoctrinating schoolchildren! Michelle Obama is eating cake and forcing our children to eat broccoli! Death panels!
Life must suck being perpetually outraged about absolutely meaningless things.
Xenos
Top Management? Armey is CEO, but he is not top management?
Why not just say ‘the Board of Directors’ or ‘the donors’ if that is what he meant?
I think you are right to smell a rat hopping off a ship.
Mandalay
@ding dong:
Yes, the little weasel is still out on appeal. You can contribute to his legal defense here if you feel so inclined:
https://tomdelay.uscontributions.com/
This is pretty cool: The Legal Defense Fund may accept contributions of any type or amount and it is structured so that contributions are not taxable to Tom DeLay. Donations will be deemed gifts to Tom DeLay for U.S. income and gift tax purposes.
The slimy grifter makes Mitt look like an amateur when it comes to avoiding taxes.
Jay S
@Baud:
I think a lot of the support is because of this recklessness. These folks see themselves as the masters of the universe who will come out on top in any crisis/opportunity.
Maude
@GregB:
They’re bored.
Chris
@Redshift:
Conservative tribalism reduced to its most basic element.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Redshift:
.. may I be the first to say..
SPLITTERS!
RyMaN600
@Spaghetti Lee:
Not to mention too out of shape. I’ll bet 95% of these people are incapable of running a city block.
I’d love for one of them to explain to me how they see this “civil war” fantasy actually playing out. Do they picture themselves picking off ATF agents from their suburban picture windows?
Ash Can
I’m betting it’s all about money. The Tea Party (TM) astroturfers shook a lot of people down for a shit-ton of cash, and now I bet they’re fighting over the cut.
SatanicPanic
@Biff Longbotham: I’m just throwing out 60’s counterculture names, that was before my time. No insult meant to the Steal This Book guy.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Biff Longbotham: Abby Hoffman. Don’t you mean Abbie Hoffman? Or maybe Barry Freed?
I regret not meeting him when I was visiting the Thousand Islands and he was working with Save The River.
cinesimon
Tee-hee.
They may as well be Al Franken’s Army!
They’re not quite as skillful in the comedy department(though of course they most certainly have their moments of genius) – but they darn sure are as effective at furthering the lefty agenda!
Gian
they spent several fortunes in the right wing think tank industry and in takeovers of business schools.
they have “true believers” in their whacko ecconomic stuff, all the freaking lipstick about trickle down, about “shareholders being #1” when they really mean CEO and board members.
people who daily deal with reality – and run a small business may have a serious hurdle to overcome in an econ education which was bought and paid for propaganda.
the ones you can reach will respond to empirical evidence, but to be clear, we humans are a lazy race and when it comes to changing views based on facts, many people would prefer to ignore the facts and just well continue what “they know”
policy wise, you can see this in the panic inspired by right wing shill economists abou the minimum wage. Every fucking time the wage is raised there are howls of “oh shit we have to lay off the people you want to help” and then, for some reason, the managers just don’t want to clean toilets, and the employees stay on and get a raise.
I know there’s a limit, not every employee is gonna be worth the money A-Rod is paid (like A-Rod) but the fact that wal-mart educates employees on how to get food stamps is a motherfucking scandal.
If a job can’t buy an employee a roof, food, clothes, healthcare and a chance to take time off and save some cash, it’s not a job the fucking country should have for anyone other than high school kids working part time, or a retireee looking for extra income, or a spouse picking up some extra cash while the kids are in school.
this whole work for wal-mart, get food stamps shit is an abominstion in my eyes. in the days of the company store and scrip and shit did the company force the cost of feeding the worker on the government?
EriktheRed
Ok, what’s this “Franken/Armey” stuff?
jonas
@Xenos: Exactly. Remember how Romney was CEO of Bain, but apparently had retired years earlier?
NonyNony
@Xenos:
Just looking at that Mother Jones article, I’m not exactly sure how FreedomWorks is organized. The first bit of Armey’s email resignation is:
So there’s apparently a “FreedomWorks, Inc.” and a “FreedomWorks Foundation”. Possibly there’s some separate entity called “FreedomWorks” as well (though that second FreedomWorks in there is probably just FreedomWorks Inc. again).
And Armey lists himself as the “Chairman” rather than as the CEO.
It may be that Dick Armey was a useful figurehead as long as he agreed with the rest of the organization, but as soon as he thought that he was more than a figurehead and tried to dictate a response to the election loss last month, he found out that he was powerless. Guys like Dick Armey don’t like finding out that they’re powerless.
debbie
This is great news to wake up to! Now, when is it Rove’s and Luntz’s turn?
liberal
@General Stuck:
But he doesn’t need to do that. He can use the platinum coin trick, which is completely constitutional and legal.
JasperL
@danielx:
My thought too. He’s not just leaving, he’s fire bombing the bridges on his way out. We can’t know what he’s running from, but Armey’s exit is consistent with someone who wants to put some legal distance between himself and his former employer.
brantl
I like the way Armey is quitting now, wants his name removed from everything RIGHT NOW, but expecting to be pair through the 31st. Dick is the right name, all right.
Howlin Wolfe
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Right. I mean, nobody elected him, did they? It’s not like the tea partiers had a convention and elected him. The Kochs just put him up there and the MSM just goes along with the conceit that he is some sort of grass roots spokesman. Yay Politico! As Nate Silver said, Politico covers politics like sports, and not in a good way.
leeleeFL
As I once told my then teenage son and his buds, Abby wasn’t always right, he was right often enough to deserve to be listened to. I miss that little firebrand. He was quite the inspiration. @Biff Longbotham:
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Redshift:
At the macro level, the GOP is definitely worse for business. At the micro level, not so much. Part of it is taxes, but the other part is that Democratic governments empower regulatory bodies that can be a pain in the butt to businesses.
Howlin Wolfe
@Redshift:
“conservative” has come to mean “one of us”: it is of the essence of the conservative tribe. It is a tribe, or more accurately, a cult.
Howlin Wolfe
@Chris: I figured someone would say this before I did, damn your eyes, Chris!
Aries Moon
Does anyone else smell a book coming, replete with Bartlettesque indignation?