Tea Party Revolution Suffers Defeat at the Hands of Red-Coated Loyalists to the Two-Party State, Some Carry On the Work of Real Opposition

The National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee represents the public hijacking and cooptation of the tea party movement by the Republican Party. If the attempt proves to be successful, the tea party movement is effectively dead, defeated and absorbed by the entrenched powers it once claimed to oppose. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

In Nashville, the prevailing view was that the Tea Party should not seek to build a third party movement but work within the confines of the two-party system. "I suspect the Tea Party strategy is to commandeer the Republican machine," said Roger Webb, a 65-year-old freelance photojournalist.

In one short year, the tea party movement has gone from being a source of opposition to the ruling parties and powers that be, to a relatively reliable source of support for the order that ensures the continued dominance of the Democratic-Republican duopoly system of government. As conservative Republican propagandists of the two-party state continue their assaults on third party and independent activism, their foot soldiers argue that the best way to fight the Democratic-Republican political establishment is to become a part of it. Consider these "words of advice" to tea party activists from Anthony Del Pellegrino:

Apply that organizational ability and activism into taking over the two Parties that exist. Make those Parties the political organization that represent what you want them to represent, not what the establishment political class wants it to stand for.

This is not a strategy for victory, it is a plan for capitulation. Self-styled tea party "revolutionaries" have proven incapable of maintaining their political independence and are now effectively taking their marching orders from red-coated crypto-communist loyalists of the Democratic-Republican Party. Perhaps the simplest explanation for this development lies in the left's unwillingness to become involved with the movement almost from the very beginning and thus the GOP came to be seen as the movement's "natural ally".

It should be noted here, however, that not all tea party activists are so naive as to believe that the solution to the problem represented by the Democratic-Republican two-party state is to be found by accommodating the Democratic-Republican two-party state. In two little noticed stories reported last week, tea party activists in Connecticut and New York have begun efforts which may well lead to the creation of real independent third party opposition groups in those states.

Update: Writing at a Nashville Post blog, Kleinheider observes:

The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience . . .

The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people’s movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the “Official Conservative Movement” and the Republican Party.

This new tea party bears no resemblance to the one that began a year ago as a reaction to the collapse of our financial system and the subsequent bailout. That movement of ragtag and unorganized libertarians, independents and conservatives was something new and unique.