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Bullshit. The Tea Party was swept into power because they had financial backing from rich extremists and mass media support. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the poi
by bluedanieru 14y ago
Bullshit. The Tea Party was swept into power because they had financial backing from rich extremists and mass media support. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the point you're trying to make, but you could not have picked a worse example.
Yes, the Tea Party started out as a grassroots thing, but it was quickly co-opted by the existing power structure and its message lost.
- Cushman 14y agoI'm not talking about grassroots, and in fact I don't really believe the Tea Party was ever anything more than a covert big-money lobby that got wildly out of hand. But money is not what wins elections— it's the votes that get counted at the end of the day. We're all so predictably unparticipatory that spending a hundred million dollars to move the needle a few tenths of a percent one way or the other makes good political sense. If everybody showed up to vote, that would simply not be true. That's the point I've been making this whole time.