how the chamber of commerce et al lost control of their brownshirts

Cross posted from GD~


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With the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008, Republican backers began to panic. The economic dogma which had obtained since Ronald Reagan’s administration was no longer tenable. The crisis of 2008 promised to sweep away all their most cherished perquisites: lax regulation, laissez faire economics, the slow but inexorable withering of the welfare state. Suddenly bankers and other assorted masters of the universe were less popular than head lice. The world teetered on the precipice of a second Great Depression; the Great Recession which was the ultimate result was nearly as devastating to the US economy; in parts of Europe, it was a Depression in all but name.

Something had to be done, quickly. And ironically, Barack Obama’s election provided the kernel of an idea.

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The Tea Party movement which came into being soon after his inauguration should have been laughed out of the public square, with apoplectic middle-aged white men waving bags of tea and swearing on their sacred honor to “take back our country”. But the now-demonized rich saw an opportunity; the mainstream Republican Party was demoralized, after two landslide defeats. Here was a ridiculous movement, but one which had a passion lacking on the Right as a whole. And the rich became rich by never missing the main chance.

Thus began the astroturfing. The Tea Party went from being a ranting rabble to something slick and organized. It injected the GOP with an energy it had lost in the waning days of George W. Bush’s debacle of a Presidency. Suddenly the supine media was awash in stories about this vibrant oppositional movement. And because our media is a failed experiment, it never looked too closely into who was backing the anarchists, and why. To the media, it was just an upwelling of “people power”, its claiming that the sky was pink treated with as much validity as the accepted notion that it was blue.

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That a group of legislators which represents 18% of the electorate has such an outsized power is due to the rich’s cynicism. The Chamber of Commerce thought it could control the rubes. Once you give someone a whiff of power, they’re not likely to give it back.

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http://theobamadiary.com/2013/10/03/how-the-chamber-of-commerce-et-al-lost-control-of-their-brownshirts/