Yet another Big Lie: Traditional Democrats are extremists, like Tea Partiers or Trumpers. [View all]

[merrily]

Let's be clear: The modern Democratic Party traces its origin to New Deal and Fair Deal policies, which New Democrats want to eliminate, then leave behind. New Democrats are the innovation in the Democratic Party and the Tea Party is the innovation in the Republican Party.

Let's also be clear: Senator Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. Democratic Socialists believe in working through both capitalism and the Democratic Party. Specifically, Sanders is not advocating anything remotely like overthrow of the government, government ownership of the means of production or elimination of capitalism. However, I don't even want to get too hung up on what Senator Sanders is or is not about because this issue is even bigger than that.

Traditional Democrats want to see the Democratic Party return to its roots as the Party of people who need to work to eat and who understand that those who cannot work need to eat, too. The Tea Partiers and other extremists in the Republican Party are not seeking a return of the Party to its Lincoln roots or even to its Hoover or Eisenhower roots. Rather, the Tea Party is the novel element in the Republican Party. So are the Trumpers, which, as best I can tell, are, on so-called "cultural issues," are the closest thing to neo-Nazis "boasted" by a major political party in the United States. Comparing liberals to Trumpers is a vile smear that could not possibly be more lacking in truth, yet it is being spread broadly.

New Democrats and the Tea Party share a root ball, starting with, but not limited to, the Koch brothers and Koch Industries, one of the biggest polluters on the planet, among other things. The Tea Party was the brain child of the Koch Brothers, who began thinking about an organization like the Tea Party in the 1980s and were very involved with Americans for Prosperity. At about the same time that the Koch brothers were ruminating about something like the Tea Party, those same Koch brothers were sitting on the Executive Council of the Democratic Leadership Council, which incorporated in 1985 and Koch Industries and other mega corporations were providing the funding for it.

From an August 2000 Newsweek article, The Soul and the Steel, about Joe Lieberman's selection as Gore's running mate (Lieberman and Gore being, like the Clintons, founding members of the DLC):

His selection may also complicate Gore's efforts to depict Bush as a patsy for big business. Since 1995 Lieberman has chaired the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the centrist think tank that eschews liberal dogma and promotes market-oriented approaches to policy. Like many similar groups, the DLC (of which Gore is a founding member) has never disclosed its funding sources. But last week, in response to requests from NEWSWEEK, it turned over a list of top donors. If Gore still hopes to score populist points by bashing Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies that oppose his plan to add a prescription-drug entitlement to Medicare, he may have some explaining to do. Among the DLC's biggest benefactors last year (contributions of between $50,000 and $100,000) were ARCO, Chevron and the drug giant Merck. Other big underwriters include Du Pont, Microsoft and Philip Morris (which has kicked in $500,000 since Lieberman became DLC chairman). There is no evidence that the DLC has trimmed policies to accommodate its patrons, but some contributors say the money has helped ensure an open door to Lieberman. "We've been able to have a dialogue with the senator and his staff," said Jay Rosser, spokesman for another DLC benefactor, Koch Industries, an oil-pipeline firm that is also a big GOP donor.

IOW, the Koch brothers, Koch Industries and other mega corporations were taking the country to the right by infiltrating, first the Democratic Party and then the Republican Party. This way, no matter which Party wins, big business wins. (Big business doesn't care if you have an abortion, or with whom you have sex.)

The true mirror image of the Tea Party within the Democratic Party is not the Party's traditional New Deal wing, but its New Democrat wing; and the Big Lie is saying otherwise. Another Big Lie: that all Democrats are liberals and therefore actual liberals/traditional Democrats are extremists.

Sources

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations
http://americablog.com/2010/08/koch-industries-gave-funding-to-the-dlc-and-served-on-its-executive-council.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6211673 (Hillary, DLC/Third Way, Neocons, PNAC, Etc. and sources cited therein)
http://www.democrats.com/node/7789 https://samsmitharchives.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/6467/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Democratic_Leadership_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Labels