There is no tea party! It is a figment of the extreme right

[mfcorey1]

wing's imagination. If you called for a gathering, they would be lucky if three hundred showed up. They were simply elderly and radical republicans who were paid to make a showing. Now that the scare for the end of medicare and social security faced them, the elderly quit. When the racist, hateful rhetoric of the rest was exposed, they returned to the earth. What you have left is talkers who the media search out, label them Tea Party leaders and put them in front of the camera. There is no Tea Party!!!!

[XemaSab]

1. I've been to their meetings

There is totally a Tea Party, and they are a serious political force here in Northern California.

[Taverner]

4. Agreed. Granted, they are the mainstreaming of the KKK, but they exist

As does the KKK

[Hugabear]

2. Um, okay...

Call it what you want, but it's a force. How do you explain the rash of "Tea-Party" extremists who have taken office in recent years? Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, etc etc etc.

We ignore these people at our own peril. If we decide to stay home and not vote on Election Day to somehow protest that Obama isn't progressive enough, then don't be surprised if someone like Santorum or Paul winds up elected.

[WingDinger]

3. More likely, there is no more John Birch society.

[KansDem]

5. The John Birch Society was co-founded by Koch Bros. father,...

...and Tea Party was financed by Koch Bros.

John Birch Society

OriginsThe society was established in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 9, 1958, by a group of 12 led by Robert Welch, Jr., a retired candy manufacturer from Belmont, Massachusetts. Welch named the new organization after John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and U.S. military intelligence officer who was killed by communist forces in China in August 1945, shortly after the conclusion of World War II. Welch claimed that Birch was an unknown but dedicated anti-communist,[6] and the first American casualty, Welch contended, of the Cold War.

One of the founding members[21][22][23] was Fred Koch,[24] founder of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in America.[25] Another was Revilo P. Oliver, a University of Illinois professor who later severed his relationship with the society and helped found the National Alliance. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new member receiving a copy.[9] According to Welch, "both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a 'one-world socialist government.'"[26][27] Welch saw collectivism as the main threat to Western Civilization, and liberals as "secret communist traitors" who provided cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with a one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but Communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction."[27]

The society's activities include distribution of literature, pamphlets, magazines, videos and other educational material while sponsoring a Speaker's Bureau, which invites "speakers who are keenly aware of the motivations that drive political policy".[28] One of the first public activities of the society was a "Get US Out!" (of membership in the UN) campaign, which claimed in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] UN is to build a One World Government."[29] In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to: "Join your local P.T.A. at the beginning of the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise, and go to work to take it over."[30] One Man's Opinion, a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed American Opinion, and became the society's official publication. The society publishes the biweekly journal The New American. [8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html?pagewanted=all

Guess when the JBS folded, the Koch Bros. had to invest in some kind of ultra right-wing movement.

[Worried senior]

6. I know there is the John Birch Society

in Appleton, WI.