Teabagger claims Palin and the GOP "hijacked" tea party

[ProSense]

Quote of the Day: Has the Tea Party Movement Now Been “Hijacked” by Palin and the GOP

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.

Our political Quote of the Day comes from a must-read-in-full column by Nashville Post Politics’ Kleinheider on the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin and the GOP. Here’s the first part of his piece:

The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience.

Sarah Palin didn’t give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purely political speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn’t there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.

The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people’s movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the “Official Conservative Movement” and the Republican Party.

This new tea party bears no resemblance to the one that began a year ago as a reaction to the collapse of our financial system and the subsequent bailout. That movement of ragtag and unorganized libertarians, independents and conservatives was something new and unique. An authentic protest movement angered not just by the new President, Barack Obama, who had presided over the bailouts but the president who started the ball rolling and whose incompetence had led to the crisis in the first place, George W. Bush.

AND:

For over a year the media has struggled to try and define just what exactly the movement was. Now they have a definition.

Sarah Palin.

AND:

The fact that Palin even has the temerity to position herself as a leader in the movement (and despite her protests that’s exactly what she was doing) is offensive to any student of very, very recent political history. Palin, as mavericky and rogue as she likes to paint herself, was the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 2010. She ran with John McCain and defended the Bush legacy. A project she continued last night in front of a faux-tea party audience.

Here's a better definition: lunatics

[rpannier]

1. Palin Highjacked the Tea Party

You Betcha

But...They invited her in.
She's been their standard bearer

[ProSense]

3. "The tea party movement is dead. "

I suppose that's not good news for some. Frankly, calling it a movement is a joke. A bunch of opportunist making money off a bunch of lunatics is far from a movement.

[rpannier]

8. I would argue this from a different perspective

This IS all about Palin.
The Tea Party-ers made her their standard bearer and she quickly made it about Sarah Palin. Much the same way she did the 2008 General Election.

All the missteps and failings are someone else's fault, because she is a star.
She has complained bitterly that the McCain camp didn't use her properly. That they tried to script her, instead of letting her do what she does best - be Sarah.
Yet, when they did, she made a complete ass out of herself:

Katie Couric: What magazines do you read?
Palin: All of them.

Then she complained that it was a gotcha question.
She made a similar fool out of herself with Glen Beck regarding her favorite founding father -- All of them.

She tried to closely tie herself to Glen Beck, by suggesting he could be her running mate. I'm sure in an attempt to gain a huge influence with his audience.

She is like a tick. She latches on, sucks the host dry and moves on.

[ProSense]

9. I was really talking about the organizers, but

you are exactly right about Palin.

[arikara]

12. They not only invited her in

they paid her big for it. Didn't she make something like $120,000 for that speech?

[Whisp]

18. she tea-bagged the teabaggers.

:O
I wonder if they know what the new definition of 'tea-bagging'is.
Doubt it, these people don't know 'squat'! heh

[Cha]

2. Oh boo hoo...the teabags, palin, and teabag wannabes

can all rot in their blithering ignorance.:nopity:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. They apparently don't realize that they're a wholly owned subsidiary of the GNOP

They've never been their own independent entity.

[peaches2003]

5. They're too stupid to know

that they only have themselves to blame. Anyone with a brain knows she doesn't give a damn about them or "the cause" whatever that is. She's a narcissist and a pig.

[ThatPoetGuy]

6. This is just BEAUTIFUL:

"any student of very, very recent political history. Palin, as mavericky and rogue as she likes to paint herself, was the Vice-Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 2010."

"in 2010"!

[BlueIdaho]

7. Uh oh - trouble in paradise.

Looks like a spat between the self anointed and the self deluded.

That sucks.

[tanyev]

10. I think he's deluding himself about the origins of the teabaggers,

but I'll give him some props for his conclusions about the current state of baggerism.

[Raine]

11. well it's definitely a wing of the repig party, it was obvious

that not one speaker critized the repiggies, they only went after the Democrats.

[AlinPA]

13. That's a joke. Republican party=teabaggers/birthers.

[Avalux]

14. How can a movement be hijacked when it doesn't exist?

500 people in the meeting room of a hotel does not a movement make. But hey, let them fight about it.

[AwakeAtLast]

15. They didn't seem to complain much when their popularity was gaining

and no mention of Glen Beck hmmmm........

[old mark]

16. Sarah Palin is a natural born very talented manipulator who is out

to gain everything she can get for herself, and who does not care who she has to destroy in the process. She really has nothing to say or to offer to any serious cause or organization. Other than a low cunning,and an evil personality she is the definition of an empty suit.

I have no sympathy for the 'baggers-they were just targets of opportunity for a lot of people, but they evidently pinned some hope on Palin and she proceeded to shit in their punchbowl, and charged them $100,000 to watch her do it.


mark

[EmeraldCityGrl]

17. There's an opportunity here that Democrats need to exploit...

Kleineider should be on Olbermann next week and this article needs to go viral.

Split the movement and discredit that scheming opportunist to the point even
Faux won't want her.