Tea Party Served Its Republican Function

The Tea Party’s blossom is no longer clinging to the vine.  I believe it was but a part of a series of controlled creations essential to the survival of the two-party monopoly. Specifically, Fox News and the Republican Party sought a way to rejuvenate their party after the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush.  Republicans had acted as spoilers before in 1994 with the Contract with America.  The Media and Democrats were doing it again with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to rejuvenate their cadres. 

Despite all the publicity and the short memory of Americans, the Tea Party is just a shadow of the most revolutionary spoiler in decades, the altruistic reform movement that challenged the status quo in 1992.  The Ross Perot phenomenon was created by the Media and aided by the Democrats to break the twelve-year Reagan Era by splitting the Republican Party.  Talk Radio popularized the populist message and Democrat complicity allowed Perot into the critical presidential debates. Perot made the ballot in twenty one states. On July 16, 1992 he polled enough electoral votes (284) to have won the election and garnered almost 20 million votes in an election that was to be determined by a plurality. After the victory of Bill Clinton the threat was neutralized in 1996 by ridicule, mockery, denial of paid advertising, a ban from the presidential debates, and the Republican Contract with America that repatriated conservatives and led to substantial gains in Congress.  With the passage of the Communications Act of 1996 the media monopolists bought out Talk Radio.  Pat Buchanan was met with equal ferocity when he balanced the party’s economic message with a spiritual tone that resonated with Evangelicals and reached the suburbs in 49 states.

Tea Party activists cannot form a viable third party. It is not allowed.  The difficulty and expense of ballot access controlled by Republican and Democrat secretaries of state is insurmountable.  State election machinery is in the hands of the same people guarding strategic states like Ohio, Michigan, and Florida.  It’s in the Media’s interest to preserve the multi billion dollar income stream flowing from the two parties.  The refinement of the vote fraud option by the un-auditable electrical impulses of the touch screen and modems ended a fair count forever; officials have no incentive to punish vote fraud because they own the system.  Blocked access to the “private” presidential debates ended all opposition. Lastly, the Media, specifically the Associated Press, tabulates the national vote.  Election outcomes have become an option for America’s most revolutionary class.

The Tea Party was not alone; it was one in a series of four recent creations by the Media and manipulated by the major parties to preserve an illusion.  It will not be the last. Republicans and Democrats will never alter the status quo that made them dominant. They have mastered the art of creation, channeling, and neutralization. The Tea Party’s usefulness will expend itself just as did United We Stand America, Contract with America, and the Reform Party.