Tea Party Rise to Power Rebrands GOP
By Seth Sandronsky
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2012
Anthony DiMaggio is a social justice activist who has written a timely book on the myths and realities of the Tea Party, with its ties to corporate and GOP interests, and sheen of a grassroots social movement.
He disentangles big money and media errors of fact in The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama (Monthly Review Press). DiMaggio carefully looks at the reporting on the Tea Party and flawed assumptions. They yield mistaken conclusions.
Thus we see how the public got scant news on Tea Party incumbents’ role in national legislation that laid the groundwork for the housing crash and Great Recession. DiMaggio shows how the same news outlets, with Fox news in the lead, portrayed “insurgent” Tea Party politicians as challengers to GOP incumbents.
Political donors from the health-care, and real estate, finance, insurance and real estate industries laughed no doubt at this tactic. Accordingly, Tea Party railing against the alleged socialism of President Obama’s corporate-driven health-care reform has become a standard GOP talking point to deceive and distract.
For a half-year, DiMaggio and Paul Street, a radical author and commentator, observed local Tea Party chapters in the Chicago metro area. What they uncovered confirmed DiMaggio’s findings from interviews and public polls on the national Tea Party movement….
Read the entire review in The Progressive Populist
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