Manufacturing Tea Party dissent against Ron Paul

The Atlantic has an article up claiming that Ron paul isn’t loved by Tea Partiers. The basis for this story is a recent loss of a call-in tele-conference poll to every other candidates except Utah Governor John Huntsman. The candidates got to speak their piece, and then the listeners voted.

The article goes on at some length about what this means about how Paul’s views are too out there for security conscious tea party voters. You can quibble with a lot about this article. Who are the Tea party Patriots? Who gets on their lists for these tele-conferences? The writer asserts that the poll was scientific, mentioning a sample size of 23,000 but mentions nothing about how those people were selected. It could easily have been some kind of poll specifically geared towards making Paul look bad. You can argue that, but you’d be easily dismissed as a kook or a crank.

The article was posted at 1:18 PM ET. Just in time for lunch hour for most of the country. The article got most of it’s 11,447 views as of this writing. Tea party folks who read it thought again about what they saw at the debates. “The rest of the tea partiers are worried about Iran, maybe I should be too.” Some Paul supporters read it and may have gotten a little discouraged. Some Republican donors brushed off what little enthusiasm they had gotten for Paul’s straight talking. All in all a little depressing.

And all completely manufactured.

Sometime between the all important lunch hour and 6:46 PM ET a small clarification was entered:

“Clarification: Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman weren’t on the conference call.”

So Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum — advocates of the Bush doctrine that brought our country so much foreign policy success — got on a conference call and talked to a group of 23,000 hand-picked people. I would love a transcript of this call. Somehow, with no opportunity to respond, Paul managed to lose this conference call. Absolutely extraordinary.

The Tea Party Patriots should be ashamed. The candidates involved should be ashamed. Jon Huntsman, and shockingly Rick Perry are too decent to be involved in something like this. The Atlantic should be ashamed. The rest of us should be disgusted. This sort of thing is to be expected from candidates, and whatever the Tea Party Patriots are. The Atlantic, a publication I love, should be disgusted with itself. Talk about tarnishing a legacy. Incredibly disappointing.

Robert Morris Tweets @TheFederalGovt, posts video as the More Freedom Foundation, and has written a quick pamphlet that can be found here.

UPDATE BY STEPHEN VANDYKE: Tea Party Patriots has a post on this as well (sorely lacking in details and no transcripts). It seems to me like the Tea Party Patriots is having a serious identity crisis, just contrast their supposed core values of “Fiscal Responsibility”, “Constitutionally Limited Government” and “Free Markets” with the winning candidates’ values. Well, Michele Bachmann’s history of government aid just makes me shake my head:

posted Dec 20th, 2011 by MoreFreedomFoundation
  • chafed

    Ron Paul pulled in an addition $4 million
    during a three-day money bomb over the weekend that marked the 238th
    anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. No other candidates have had the
    balls mount a similar Tea Party day challenge. Manufacture dissent from
    that.

  • chafed

    Ron Paul pulled in $4 million during a three-day money bomb over the weekend on the 238th 
    anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. No other candidates have had the balls mount a similar Tea Party day challenge. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, haters.

    http://www.thestatecolumn.com/texas/ron-pauls-tea-party-money-bomb-meets-4-million-goal/

  • http://twitter.com/usernamenuse sailing

    The tea party patriots asked Ron Paul to speak at an event of theirs in AZ, almost insultingly late, but he did, and there was a straw poll, and since it was so late, they told us we could pay a fee, watch the event online and vote in the straw poll.  You had to pay and sit there all weekend waiting for the embedded code, so I saw their entire event, and I know a lobbiest organization when I see one.  At the end, Ron Paul won the straw poll overall, and they broke it out (they didn’t say in advance they would) so that Cain’s win of those ‘in person’ where he had been slated to be the keynote speaker from the beginning, was the main headline. that Paul won ‘overall’ and ‘online’ as well was mentioned by only a few as if it weren’t a registration event on line.

    so of course none of us bothered this time. Would you?

  • Free Nation

    Tea Party member here. Come to the local meet-up, not a single bad word for Ron Paul. We have actually endorsed him ourselves.

  • Anonymous

    Need to get the names of the people co-opting the Tea Party for the republican establishments gain.  Post them online and let the world know who the scuz bags are.

    I only have one more nut job at work that does not like Ron Paul, the rest love him.  I’m working on him though.

  • Jackson Baer

    Ron Paul will win Iowa and then either win New Hampshire or come in a very close second to Romney. Either way, he has a legitimate chance to win the Republican nomination. What will the Republicans do? They can’t stand Paul because of his foreign policy.

    RON PAUL 2012

    http://www.whatthehellbook.com/the-book/

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Lucero/568137667 Paul Lucero

    Best article I have read in the past day!

    THanks!!!!

  • Anonymous

    Best breakdown of the phony ‘Tea Party’ Neo-Con propaganda fest put on by the GOP Lobbyis- er… “Tea Party Patriots’. The lengths to which the GOP and DNC Establishment are going to discredit Ron Paul are both breathtakingly shocking, and shockingly transparent. These people (unfortunately for them) think they can operate by the old 20th Century political paradigm, whereby they can ‘manage the message’ with a captured media and astro-turfed ‘grass roots’ organizations. Fortunately for the American Electorate, their lies, obfuscations and crass, baseless  attacks are readily discredited and widely and instantaneously disseminated though the NEW paradigm of the 21st Century- ‘Them Interwebs’ as they probably call them. 

    ABC News Jason Volack put out a horrific hit piece with mis-quotes and outright lies about a Ron Paul Town Hall in NH tonight, of course without video that would prove him a liar. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/ron-paul-attacked-for-views-on-health-care/  Within minutes of his story being posted, video of the event and even REBUTTALS on video were posted and widely disseminated. His blog was flooded with angry (and better-informed) Paul supporters who ripped his lame attempt at smearing. I’ve seen an equally amazing response to most of the attacks from the captured media. These old-school ‘old media’ attacks may work for some isolated and out-of-touch  people. But even folks like my 87-year-old father who has never logged on to a computer can see through the BS, and there are many sons, daughters, brothers and sisters and grandchildren who are spreading the word about the media’s bias every day.

    keep up the good work, Robert. Your posts contain more sanity and logic than 99% of what you see in the corporate captured media!

  • Ejespady

    I’m a state coord for TPP and I’ll tell you what happened. Ron Paul was not on the call so many of his supporters weren’t on there. They said he had prior commitments but I’m checking on the truth to be sure. Also, this article is wrong b/c only 4000 out of those 23,000 voted. Some national coords have tried to clear this up in the media but articles like this aren’t stating the truth behind the poll. Newt really only had 1240 votes out of 23000 on the call so barely only 5%. Seek the truth!

  • Marcharr3

    The thing that is most troubling to those of us true grassroots conservatives in the Tea Party Patriots (disenchanted Republicans and Democrats, Independents, and DTSs) about Ron Paul is the irrational zeal Ron Paul supporters have for him.  Yes, he is a reliable Constitutionalist, and he is to be commended highly for that.  But faced with the very real possibility that Obama gets another 4 years and will succeed in his NWO agenda to turn America into Greece, one thing is indisputable: ALL conservatives MUST UNITE behind a single conservative candidate by next November.   Here is the evidence of the troubling distinction between rational patriots and irrational Ron Paul supporters:  I will very gladly unite behind and support Ron Paul if he becomes the nominee.  Will ANY RP supporter make the same patriotic, America first/personalities last, statement if RP does NOT get the nomination?  Anyone???  Just as we feared: silence.  

    You cannot serve America, the Constitution, AND a personality too.  That is a cult.  When I hear Ron Paul make this same “just in case” statement to his supporters, I will stop worrying about him and you folks.  Otherwise, I salute your love of American and our Constitution.  I mean that.

    Not a hater, so stop with the Alinsky ‘victim’ tactics, eh.  That just makes you look like Obots who have infiltrated the RP movement in order to divide the conservative vote and gaurantee a victory for the Obamanation.  (Oh, you worry about chemtrails and the Bilderbergers, but not about the cunning and ruthlessness of the left’s political wickedness??)  Make sure you are not what THEY view as “useful idiots”.  And the Tea Party Patriots will make sure we are not the same for the hacks in the GOP who we are justifiably  agree are just as bad as the Democrats.

    God bless America!

    • http://twitter.com/TheFederalGovt Leviathan

      I think you mis-judge the extent of Paul’s appeal.  I personally am considering voting for a Republican rather than a Libertarian for the first time in my life.  Others are considering leaving the Democratic party to vote for him.  Like Reagan, Paul could actually significantly grow the Republican party.   Your insistence on tearing down the only Republican candidate beating Obama in the polls, and calling his supporters cultists, strikes me as a bit mis-guided. 

  • http://twitter.com/TheFederalGovt Leviathan

    I think you mis-judge the extent of Paul’s appeal.  I personally am considering voting for a Republican rather than a Libertarian for the first time in my life.  Others are considering leaving the Democratic party to vote for him.  Like Reagan, Paul could actually significantly grow the Republican party.   Your insistence on tearing down the only Republican candidate beating Obama in the polls, and calling his supporters cultists, strikes me as a bit mis-guided.