If you're going to hold something you're billing as the "First National Tea Party Convention," there are a couple things you really have to do. The first is to invite former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; the second is to invite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.
That's what Tea Party Nation, which is organizing this convention, did. And according to CNN's Political Ticker blog, the group has announced that both women will be speaking, and that Palin will be giving the keynote.
Now, Palin's people haven't yet confirmed her appearance, which -- given her history with announced speaking appearances -- may be a sign that she won't end up going. But we can hope.
WASHINGTON -- Most of the time, the halls of the Cannon House Office Building are pretty sedate. Every now and then, the soles of a pair of expensive loafers clack on the marble, and echo down the corridor; sometimes an eager intern, leading a tour group, breaks the silence with a few choice facts about American history. If there's a vote, bells ring, and lawmakers scurry to the Capitol building. But otherwise, not much is going on in the middle of a Thursday afternoon -- particularly since Congress likes to call it a week around then, anyway.
Unless, of course, you're talking about the Thursday when Rep. Michele Bachmann has summoned a horde of frenzied Tea Partiers to Washington for what she had called, on a preview conference call for conservative bloggers the night before, "the Super Bowl of our freedom."
In that case, the scene on the second floor of the Cannon building, just outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, gets a little more boisterous. A small mob had gathered there for what anti-choice kook Randall Terry billed as a sit-in to protest abortion-related provisions in the House healthcare reform legislation. They wound up mixing with some of the people who streamed in after Bachmann's "House Call" rally ended to tell members of Congress how vehemently they oppose providing universal access to healthcare. Someone tore up all 1,990 pages of the reform bill and scattered them on the floor; a few of Terry's pals got arrested; the crowd started chanting, "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" and just like that, the police were clearing the hallway. "This is the people's House, and we're being kicked out?" one woman muttered as she walked away. "Nancy Pelosi can kiss my fat ass."
That pretty much summed up the message the Tea Partiers' mini-march on Washington was aiming for Thursday: Nancy Pelosi, kiss my fat ass. Facing the prospect of House passage of a healthcare bill by this weekend, Bachmann and the conservative noise machine went into overdrive. Big things were at stake, after all -- socialism in America! "The best way that I know of to actually kill the bill would be if we could bring the town halls, the freedom-loving Americans, here to D.C.," Bachmann said Wednesday night on the preview conference call. "Why wouldn't we go for broke?" Ah, those August town halls; the speeches by Bachmann and her allies dripped with nostalgia for the freedom-loving days when the country supposedly rejected healthcare reform. Now, by November, there was an air of desperation to the appeals. Momentum has shifted back to the side of the reformers, and the chances of something passing look pretty good.
Still, for something organized on fairly short notice -- less than a week -- the crowd was fairly impressive. Thousands of people gathered between the Capitol and the Reflecting Pool, waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags and obnoxious signs about Marxism. (Then again, with the corporate-backed Astroturf group Americans for Prosperity shipping busloads of people in and handing out signs as they arrived, the turnout wasn't that surprising.) "The biggest vote in the United States, the biggest voice in the United States, is your voice -- the voice of the American people," a beaming Bachmann told her minions. "Republicans don't have the votes to kill this bill. We knew that we were limited but what we knew was unlimited was the voice of persuasion of the American people, and that's why you're here today." Democrats were thrilled at the prospect of Bachmann suddenly becoming a major GOP power broker. "If displays like today are what they think is a smart political strategy, all we can say is: go for it," Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan e-mailed reporters.
It was quite a display. At one point, a man in the crowd near me shouted, "No federal government!" -- which would seem to expand the mandate of the march beyond even Bachmann's wildest dreams. For two hours, a parade of Republican House members, talk radio hosts and C-list Hollywood celebrities (Jon Voigt, John "Cliff Clavin" Ratzenberger) made their way to the microphone to gleefully bash President Obama, Pelosi and everything about the healthcare legislation. House Minority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio, got so caught up in the excitement, he confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, reading from the Declaration but telling the crowd it was the Constitution. The mistake was understandable; the Constitution was on a lot of people's minds. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, of Michigan, bashed the healthcare bill for being too long -- especially compared to the "39 pages" in which "our Founding Fathers enshrined freedom in our Constitution for 200 years." In contrast, Hoekstra said, the healthcare bill is "2,000 pages -- and the people in this building behind us want to take your freedom away."
After the first few speeches, it was pretty clear that the House GOP had decided, en masse, that addressing the gathering was all but mandatory. Each speaker gave a special shout-out to the patriots from his or her own state who had come, and most of them also thanked Virginia and New Jersey for electing Republicans Tuesday. There was a lot of talk about the 2010 elections. "You know it's your House, but there's a lot of people there who don't belong there," Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said, asking for help getting rid of the interlopers next year.
What made the healthcare bill such a menace? That was easy. "It's gonna be from cradle to grave, controlled -- everything you do, controlled by the government," Larry Herwig, an ex-Marine from Washington, N.C., told me. "They're gonna control everything you do, from what you eat, what doctor you get, what medicine you get -- everything, controlled." I told him I didn't think that was true. "Go read the bill," he said. "Have you read it?" The crowd buzzed with Fox News conspiracy theories. "Where's the Freedom Czar?" one sign asked. When Bachmann mentioned her favorite political philosopher, someone shouted out, "I bet it's not Mao" -- a reference to Glenn Beck's recent obsession with a flip comment by a White House official.
Eventually, the endless droning by the House GOP drove people over to the office buildings to start lobbying, many of them before the talks were over. Lines wrapped around the corner as the Tea Party masses waited to get through security. Bemused Capitol Police officers had to keep telling them to avoid bunching up at the metal detectors at each entrance. The protesters stormed through the halls urgently, propelled by their righteous indignation. "They work for us," said Sherry Warren, a real estate agent from Fairfax, Va. "They would not exist if it was not for us, the American citizen who votes and pays taxes."
Talking with Warren and her husband, David, I was a little surprised they opposed the healthcare bill so strongly. Both had gone years without insurance, they told me; only when David Warren's uninsured brother got sick, and ran up a half-million dollars in medical bills, did they decide to buy their own coverage. Not long after they did, both David and Sherry found themselves dealing with their own expensive medical problems. In spite of all that, though, Sherry Warren was adamant that healthcare reform was an attempt to solve a problem that simply didn't exist. "I don't believe them when they say that people who have major health issues in this country cannot get coverage," she said. "You can walk into a hospital -- they cannot refuse you. They're not allowed to." The whole thing was a power grab, an attempt to finish what the New Deal kicked off. "This all started with Roosevelt, and it needs to stop," she said.
When I asked her how she knew the motivation behind the bill was so nefarious, she patted me on the shoulder. "You haven't lived long enough, darling," she said. "It's obvious to all of us people out there that what they're doing is, increment by increment, taking away our liberties." And with that, the Warrens and their comrades-in-arms headed off to fight socialism some more, one page of legislative text at a time.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is the conservative hero of the day for having organized a protest against Democratic healthcare reform proposals that's taking place on Capitol Hill Thursday. In preparation for that protest, she participated in a conference call with supporters and press on Wednesday night.
While on the call, she gave this rundown of where she gets the information she needs to do her job as a member of Congress:
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning out of bed, I grab my cell phone and I look to RedState ... and I feel like I at least am kind of prepared to get out of bed, and then I go read the editorial page of Investors Business Daily or the Wall Street Journal for a wider background of knowledge for the day... I just find it is one of the most credible sources of information out there.
Yes, Bachmann's "wider background of knowledge" goes from the conservative blog RedState -- led by a guy whose idea of a brilliant political tactic is sending fake dog poop to a Democratic congressman -- to the WSJ's notoriously ideological editorial page and then to the IBD editorial page, which is sort of a poor man's WSJ for people completely uninterested in anything but a strict conservative line.
As a rule, special elections held to fill open congressional seats aren't the most exciting events. But the campaign in New York's 23rd congressional district is starting to get pretty interesting, with an intra-party squabble on the Republican side of things getting more juice by the day.
The district leans Republican, and the seat has been in the GOP's hands to this point -- the race is being held because Rep. John McHugh resigned when President Obama named him secretary of the Army. But it's still upstate New York, which may be more conservative than the state as a whole but is still pretty moderate by comparison to other Republican-dominated areas of the country. So the party chose a moderate, State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, as its nominee. That enraged conservative activists, who've given their support instead to third-party candidate Doug Hoffman.
Scozzafava still enjoys the support of establishment Republicans, but her campaign's been imploding quite publicly lately under the strain of Hoffman's candidacy. Now, the independent is getting a further boost as the GOP continues to splinter over the race. In an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., appeared to endorse Hoffman, saying, "Hoffman is on the ascendancy,” she said, “and we have to win this seat, and people need to get behind the winning candidate, and it looks like that’s Hoffman.” (As David Weigel points out, Hoffman's actually polling in third place; the Democrat, Bill Owens, is in first place.)
Bachmann has a fair amount of conservative supporters these days. But she doesn't have anything close to the star power of another woman rumored to be ready to endorse Hoffman: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
At this point, even an endorsement from Palin probably wouldn't be enough to put Hoffman over the top. But it could certainly have an impact, if not on this race than on the candidates Republicans pick for 2010; the national party would probably be forced to go farther to the right than it would like in some areas, which could benefit Democrats.
WASHINGTON -- A few months ago, a typical Washington mini-scandal erupted after Fox News reported that the White House was sending e-mail to people who never signed up to receive it. Now it looks like a conservative Republican could soon be doing the same thing. Just how long will it take Fox to get around to noticing?
On Rep. Michele Bachmann's Web site, there's a link to sign up for "Bachmann Bulletin," her newsletter. The Minnesota Republican put a link on Twitter Wednesday asking people to go there or text "MN6" to 467468 in order to subscribe.
That had some Democrats wondering if Bachmann wasn't effectively going to be spamming people soon. All you have to do to sign up is put in an e-mail address and a name; there's no requirement that you confirm the subscription before receiving messages. I signed up Salon's Alex Koppelman and our editor Mark Schone before adding myself to the list, as well. No message of any kind seems to have shown up to any of us alerting us that we were subscribed.
Which basically means some people -- Koppelman, and my boss, to name just two -- could soon be receiving mail from Bachmann even though they never asked for it. (This could also be a fun new prank -- sign your friends up to get updates from Bachmann!) When the White House was doing the same thing, of course, that was a big deal for Fox, which reported on "hundreds" of people who complained to the network that they were getting unsolicited messages from David Axelrod about healthcare reform. The network's White House correspondent, Major Garrett, had a sharp exchange with press secretary Robert Gibbs over it. After a few days of hectoring by the network, the administration changed its e-mail policy so groups couldn't sign people up to receive White House messages without their knowledge.
So far, though, Fox hasn't done any sort of follow-up about Bachmann's newsletter -- quite predictably, Obama allies say. "Given how obsessed they were to make a federal case out of this when it came to the White House, you would think that Fox 'News' would be asking all sorts of questions of Republicans about the same practice," one Democratic official said, adding the quotes around "News." "But apparently not. Maybe there's a breaking story about how ACORN is planning a swine flu vaccine that will indoctrinate children so they will support a world currency that will undermine the dollar that they are covering. But more likely, the disparate treatment here is just further evidence that Fox 'News' is an arm of the Republican Party."
UPDATE: Bachmann's press secretary, Debbee Keller, writes in to point out that several Democratic lawmakers have the same feature on their Web site. Which is true -- sort of. Signing up on the Web sites of two of the six Democrats Keller pointed out, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Rep. James Oberstar, of Minnesota, generated verification e-mails that require recipients to confirm they want to receive mail before they're added to the list. But three others -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina -- appeared to sign me up without any confirmation at all. The sign up link for the sixth, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, was broken.
Bachmann's office also pointed out that all the e-mail her newsletter sends includes an "unsubscribe" link on the bottom of the message. But then again, so did the e-mail from Axelrod that so upset Fox News in August.
Something strange has happened to rank-and-file Republicans since President Obama took office. These past few months, standard-issue gray lawmakers have sounded like fire-and-brimstone demagogues. Conspiracy theories and over-the-top legislation to fix imaginary wrongs are flying wildly around formerly mainstream GOP circles.
It turns out that like so much of what ails the world today, this can be traced back to Glenn Beck. Some fifth-term Iowa senator might be railing against death panels, but it's really Beck's voice you're hearing. With his show on Fox News, Beck has successfully positioned himself as the weirdo right's ambassador-at-large to the rest of the world. When the patron saint of the Tea Parties lets his freak flag fly, seemingly normal right-wing functionaries have been known to line up and salute. Republicans parrot Beck's crackpot notions and pet issues routinely -- sometimes running with his manias the morning after he first airs them.
Take Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. In the middle of the Senate Finance Committee's debate over healthcare reform legislation last month, he broke out with an analogy about frogs failing to jump out of boiling water, one that seemed to have little to do with what he was discussing. "Sounds to me like it's the old story about the frog in the pot of water on the stove that pretty soon the heat's turned up so slowly that the frog doesn't know it's cooked," Cornyn said. Where might he have gotten the idea? Perhaps from Beck -- who the night before had pretended to boil a frog on TV. "You know the old saying, if you put a frog into boiling water, he's going to jump right out, because he's scalding hot, but if you place the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it won't realize what's happening and die?" he asked viewers (who, apparently, included the junior senator from Texas). "We have been tossed quickly into boiling water!"
Democrats watch this all with some bemusement. "In the absence of any new leadership and an unwillingness to put forward any new ideas, the Republican Party has become the party of cranks and conspiracy theorists," Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan says. "And that's exactly why their popularity rivals that of swine flu. And they will remain marginalized so long as they continue to talk to the tinfoil hat crowd." But Beck is more than a harmless -- if deranged -- entertainer. His ability to push the GOP from rhetoric to action means he can inject toxic ideas and fears directly into the body politic. It was Beck who raised the most alarm over Obama's czars and his allegedly totalitarian instincts, after all. Here's a guide to some of Beck's greatest hits, and how they wormed their way into the real world.
Overthrowing the czars
Beck's central theme is that our country is being taken away from us by shadowy, menacing figures (though in the end, the most menacing figure of all seems to be tall, skinny and wearing a Nobel peace medallion). He usually focuses his general panic on specific, shifty-seeming characters. Often, because he wants to invoke Russia -- and is apparently ignorant of both the history of Russia and the thoroughly ironic origins of the term's use in the states -- he calls these people czars.
March 17: Talking to guest Kevin Williamson of the National Review, Beck has his first discussion of the supposed proliferation of czars in the administration. But the only explicit complaint comes from Williamson, who says, "We have way too many people named czar in their job title."
May 29: Beck makes his own first comment. "And, I'm so excited. We're getting a new czar, everybody! Yes. Can we stop with the czars, please?" He continues to refer to the phenomenon almost daily over the summer. Obviously influenced by Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism," Beck links the czars to early American progressives like Woodrow Wilson, and through him, naturally, to Hitler, Mussolini and Lenin.
July 15: Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., introduces the "Czar Accountability and Reform (CZAR) Act of 2009." By September 16, the bill has 99 co-sponsors, including one Democrat.
July 30: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor writes an op-ed in the Washington Post accusing the Obama administration of making an "end run around the legislative branch of historic proportions." Notes Cantor, sagely, "At last count, there were at least 32 active czars that we knew of, meaning the current administration has more czars than Imperial Russia."
Sept. 12: Conservative protesters inspired by Beck head to Washington, D.C., where the czarist (and also, somehow, communist) power grab is a common theme of signs and chants.
Sept. 13: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison -- locked in a bitter Republican gubernatorial primary -- writes essentially the same czar-fighting op-ed as Cantor, also in the Washington Post.
Sept. 16: On the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., holds up a chart showing 34 "czars," saying rather darkly, "I don't think you know who these people are." A number of the people on the chart were, in fact, confirmed by the Senate.
Sept. 29: Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., announces plans to hold a hearing of his Judiciary subcommittee on the "czar" issue, which -- by going bipartisan -- officially jumps the shark.
Attacking Cass Sunstein
Though Beck's diatribes against Obama's czars have mainly hinged on the word's association with Russia -- and by tortured implication, communism -- he's also singled out specific enemies for periodic close-ups. A curious favorite this summer was Cass Sunstein, a legendary legal scholar, and Obama's nominee to run a regulatory office in the White House. Before Beck was on the case, it was mainly progressives who disliked Sunstein, a well-known centrist.
July 22: Shortly after one conservative senator lifts his procedural hold on Sunstein, Cornyn, of Texas, places his own hold on the nomination. A spokesperson tells Fox News, "Sen. Cornyn finds numerous aspects of Mr. Sunstein's record troubling, specifically the fact that he wants to establish legal 'rights' for livestock, wildlife and pets, which would enable animals to file lawsuits in American courts." That very day, Beck mentions Sunstein for the first time, saying:
The latest nominee for the regulatory czar, a Harvard law professor, oh, and a guy Barack Obama knew in Chicago, is Cass Sunstein. He's a friend of Obama's. Wait until you meet this guy. He embraces the ever so popular senior death discount. That's the idea that will calculate the lives of younger people as having greater value than those of the elderly. He also believes in giving legal rights to livestock, wildlife and pets. So, your pet can have an attorney file a lawsuit against you.
Aug. 7: Another senator anonymously places a hold on Sunstein's nomination, slowing down the move toward a vote.
Aug. 31: Beck increases the frequency of his Sunstein attacks all month, eventually asking, "Is he just a control freak? What is this?"
Sept. 3: Beck writes on Twitter, "FIND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER".
Sept. 10: By a 57-40 vote, the Senate confirms Sunstein. Several Democrats vote against him.
Van Jones: Beck's great triumph
The anti-czar crusade is also, of course, where Beck met his Nicholas II: so-called "green jobs czar" Van Jones.
July 23: Picking up on commentary at right-wing website WorldNetDaily, Beck mentions Jones for the first time on-air. "This is a guy who is a self-avowed Communist," said Beck. "And he is in the Obama administration -- this guy wasn't a radical, and then was arrested. He spent six months in jail, came out a Communist." It was the first of dozens of instances this summer in which Beck went after Jones.
Aug. 24: Beck suggests that the Apollo Alliance -- an environmental group on whose board Jones sat -- had rigged the stimulus so they could "raid the U.S. Treasury."
Aug. 25: At a town-hall meeting held by Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., a constituent asks, "Who wrote all of these thousand-pages bills? And did the far-left Apollo Alliance have any influence on any of them?" Buyer has no idea what she's talking about, but people in the crowd begin shouting audibly about Jones. It's the first in a series of such confrontations between furious constituents and understandably befuddled representatives. But Beck's show would wind up enlightening them all.
Sept. 4: The day after it emerges that Jones had signed a so-called "9/11 truth" petition, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., calls for his resignation. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., calls for hearings on his fitness for office. Says Pence, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate."
Sept. 5: Jones resigns.
Obama the totalitarian
Beck's notion that the president is some kind of czarist fits in neatly with a larger effort to brand the decisively elected president as a dictator. Every Democrat gets called a socialist, but Beck has given the charge an especially dark twist, with repeated references to 1984, communism and fascism. His frequent, Goldberg-influenced musings on the Progressive Era give a surreal veneer of historical basis to the incoherent hysteria. Beck got going on this topic early.
Feb. 4: Beck does a segment on the stimulus bill and children's healthcare legislation that he calls a "Comrade Update." Fox News obligingly covers the screen in Soviet symbolism.
April 1: In a now-famous segment, Beck declares with horror, "They're marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they're marching us to 1984. Big Brother. Like it or not, fascism is on the rise." In the background, Fox plays video of goose-stepping Germans.
June 23: A Republican women's group in Maryland issues a statement saying, "The president and Hitler have a great deal in common."
Sept. 12: The 9/12 protest produces an outpouring of comparisons between the president and the Third Reich. Says one attendee, "I'm afraid he's going to do what Hitler could never do." The event, of course, is heavily promoted by Fox News and addressed by a number of prominent Republican figures.
Sept. 22: Beck's new book, "Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government," comes out -- featuring an oh-so-subtle cover image.
School indoctrination?
Beck was one of the first commentators to attack Obama's plan to give a back-to-school speech to students. The event was almost tailor-made for Beck's road-to-tyranny hysterics.
Sept. 2: Beck gives the story of the president's back-to-school speech some of its first national media attention. Says Beck, "Isn't that great? The teachers have a little plan on what they can talk about. How much do you love the president? How can you help the president accomplish his goals? This is fantastic. It doesn't sound like propaganda to me at all." On the radio, Beck called the speech "indoctrination," and said, "you have a system that is capturing your kids."
Sept. 3: In an opinion piece for Fox News, former Reagan official Peggy Venable writes, "When recruits are children, doesn't that constitute indoctrination, even brainwashing?"
Sept. 4: Just two days after Beck raises it, aspiring Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty says of the president's speech, "I don't think he needs to force it upon the nation's schoolchildren."
Art as propaganda
In Beck's world, Obama isn't content just to use the school system for indoctrination. He's also getting artists -- presumably, decadent and perverted ones -- in on the action.
Sept. 1: On his show, Beck raises the bizarre idea that the National Endowment for the Arts has been instructed to tilt the politics of funded projects leftward. Says Beck, "There is a propaganda arm now, engaging artists and the art community using your tax dollars in propaganda." He would keep at it all month.
Sept. 24: Commenting on a different brainwashing-related story, he throws in this aside: "Maybe we could have had a giant statue of Barack Obama made with your taxpayer dollars from the National Endowment for the Arts. Wouldn't that be grand?"
Sept. 26: Again, just two days after Beck discusses an issue, the GOP responds. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accuses the administration of trying to turn the NEA into the White House's "strategic communications firm." Says Issa, "Activating artists and art groups reliant on NEA funds under the implied threat of withholding future grants is a Chicago-style tactic that should have been left on the campaign trail."
Money, money, money
March 24: Talking to former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Beck asks, "Ambassador, everybody is calling for global currency. I think part of this is a game, but I think, also, part of it is -- I mean, now the U.N. is saying, you know what? We should have a global currency. It's also a movement to tie the entire globe together into one big government. Am I wrong or right?"
March 25: The very next day, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., asks Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke, "I'm wondering, would you categorically renounce the United States moving away from the dollar and going to a global currency?"
With additional reporting by Mike Madden.
