I’ve generally abandoned political discussions unless there is a serious factual error. For the record, Dale Robertson did not found the grass roots Tea Party Movement. I've previously posted the origins of the Tea Party the last time we went over this. Mr. Robertson simply owns the the website
Welcome to TeaParty.org. He has been described as a fake, a con artist, and worse by frustrated tea party groups across the country. Houston’s Tea Party group, in particular, is so upset at being associated with the man that they sent out the following press release:
1. He is NOT a member of our Leadership team.
2. He owns a website with which we have never been affiliated.
3. He has never been a part of organizing any of the Tea Party rallies in the Houston area, or any other area that we can find.
4. We addressed some issues involving him back in April (2009). Here it is on our website, where Mr. Robertson himself comments:
Something Fishy | Houston Tea Party
5. We do not choose to associate with people that use his type of disgusting language.
Mr. Robertson appears to be somewhat of a publicity whore and he and his publicist encourage the MSM to consider it a mere squabble between various factions involved in the tea party movement. But quick research on the internet shows that no one in the actual tea party movement has wanted anything to do with the man.
Needless to say, left-wing sites (and bloggers here) have been repeatedly drawing attention to him as an example of racism in the tea party.
Boulder City News commentator Dennis Myers quotes a frustrated tea party member:
On one tea party-oriented site, a David Weigel (a tea party leader?) wrote, “The nice treatment of Robertson in the Washington Times … demonstrates just how hard it can be to deny someone “leader” status in the tea parties.”
It's like the narrative that Rush Limbaugh leads the Republican Party or Bill Ayres leads the Democrats.
The left is in search of a means to verify what their prejudiced narrative— that tea party members are racist redneck hicks (paying no heed to the movement’s sizable minority population) and Mr. Robertson and his sign provided them with that bugbear.
It is also apparent; he clearly enjoys his time in the limelight. He does not seem to care how he got there or what kind of damage he is doing to the movement he professes to lead. Like Mr. Gadaffi, he is a self-proclaimed leader with no followers. The left (and many posters on this board), simply don’t understand the Tea Party movement and unfortunately human nature is such that we tend to fear and attack what we don’t understand.
To equate Mr. Robertson to Tea Party Leadership can be likened to saying Rev. Jeremiah Right is the spiritual thought leader of President Obama and the liberal left.
As Domtoni mentioned, we’ve covered this ground before. The facts are that the Democrats had control of congress from 2007 until nine months ago. For over two years of that time they had a filibuster proof control of the senate and the white house. As the passage of health care indicates, the Republicans could stop nothing. Mr. Obama and the Democrats had it there way and have created a disaster. As Mr. Obama’s jobs bill indicated, tragically they have learned nothing from it and are now resorting to political parlor games to try to temporarily shift to center, demonize Republicans and win reelection.
Personally, I’d like to see Mr. Obama win reelection but not the one in the White House, I want the Obama that promised in his 2008 campaign that by the end of his first term the deficit would be cut in half, to restore our international standing, end the influence of special interests, run the most transparent administration in history, keep unemployment below 8% and most of all bring the county together. Needless to say, what was sold wasn’t reality once in office. Unfortunately, it turns out the Obama I want was only a political myth perpetrated by the media and the Democratic Party operatives and as the polls have indicated, the electorate has come to the same conclusion.
