St. Louis Tea Party Excuse is Doubly Flawed

Twenty-eight Missouri Tea Party groups signed a letter making clear that they did not endorse Roy Blunt as a "tea party candidate." The St. Louis Tea Party refused to sign on to their letter. However, their excuse made no sense. Here was the excuse Bill Hennessy gave for not signing on to the letter:

We decided a long time ago not to endorse candidates in the primary. That means we don't un-endorse, either.

But compare that to the text of the letter signed by other Missouri Tea Party groups:

The following list of Tea Party organizations, from across the state of Missouri, have NOT endorsed Roy Blunt in his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat. When we received a notification that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a strong supporter of Tea Parties nationally, and the originator of a “Tea Party Caucus” in Washington last week, will be coming to Missouri on July 31st to make phone calls with Roy Blunt from the St. Louis GOP headquarters, and to be a featured speaker at a Blunt fundraiser that night, we were shocked. We believe she has been grossly misled if she understands him to be a Missouri Tea Party candidate.

Tea Party participants believe the spending in Washington has to STOP. Roy Blunt voted for TARP and Cash for Clunkers. For Michele Bachmann to come to Missouri and give the impression that all the Missouri Tea Parties support Roy Blunt is an abomination of everything we have been standing up for. “Most Tea Party supporters I know will be baffled by Michele Bachmann helping someone with a record like Roy Blunt before the primary vote,” said Jedidiah Smith, a Tea party leader in Franklin County, Missouri.

"Missouri Tea Party groups are proud of our steadfast position not to endorse candidates and to remain independent of political parties. We encourage all voters to examine the voting records, positions, and values of all candidates, to determine whether they promote the core values of the Tea Party Movement: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally-limited government, and free markets." said Eric Farris, a Tea Party leader in Branson, Missouri. There are sixteen candidates running for the Missouri U.S. Senate seat and the consistent message, among Tea Party participants, has been to check each of them out before voting in the August 3rd Primary.

So what the letter says is that they haven't endorsed Blunt and that they are remaining independent of political parties by not endorsing, and Hennessy claims that the St. Louis Tea Party can't sign the letter because they don't want to endorse? Clearly, Hennessy's claim is ridiculous and is a cheap cover for supporting the establishment candidate, who has voted for large spending programs like Cash for Clunkers and TARP, and whose record does not come close to living up to the tea party's stated goal of "balanced budgets." Hennessy's true motive is evidenced by multiple writings yesterday by St. Louis Tea Party members defending the decision to vote for "less than perfect" candidates in GOP primaries. In fact, Hennessy himself got in on the act, writing:

In such a perverted environment, I believe we have a duty to stop the descent into tyranny, even if that means supporting a candidate who falls short of our ideal.

In other words, the St. Louis Tea Party has preemptively decided to support Roy Blunt in the Republican primary, but is not honest enough to say so in their statement to the Post-Dispatch, which is an incoherent claim that they can't sign a letter saying they haven't endorsed Blunt because they have a policy of not endorsing candidates.

But not only is their claim ridiculous in that sense, it also does not jive with their record this past year. Earlier in the year, the St. Louis Tea Party very clearly put their support behind Adam Andrzejewski in the Republican Primary for Governor. Here's what Bill Hennessy said about Andrzejewski on January 25:

Adam Andrzejewski is a “reform activist,” according to The Daily Herald. According to people I’d trust with my life—or my kids’ lives—he’s about America, the Tea Party ideals, Illinois, and a whole bunch of other things before you get to GOP. That might not sit well with career Republican activists, but should sit well with independents, conservative Democrats, and Republican voters. Not to mention the center-right coalition that includes Libertarian and Constitution Party members.

If the Tea Party movement is about anything, it’s about cleaning up government. Springfield, Illinois, is the most target-rich environment for corruption curing on the planet. Perhaps most impressive, Polish liberator Lech Walesa will be in Chicago on Friday, January 29, to speak on Adam’s behalf...

Illinois is a key partner for Missouri. Dealing with the corrupt, nearly bankrupt mess left by Blagojovich is too much work for an ordinary politician. But the Tea Partiers are cut for this kind of crap clearing. And we’ve been preaching the need to win primaries for real reformers. Andrzejewski is the real reformer in this race. Let’s go all in. Let’s help clean up Barry’s home town.

On January 28, Hennessy wrote:

In Illinois where the Tea Party movement began a year ago with Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC, the only true Tea Party candidate, Adam Andrzejewski, is surging. Surging! And it couldn’t happen at a better time....

I’ve heard that another candidate in the race is claiming to be “endorsed” by tea parties. It’s a crock. Adam Andrzejewski is the only organic Tea Partier in the race. And while there’s no polling data of any kind from the last week (that I know of), a review of mentions on twitter, facebook, Google, and Technorati all show a marked increase in energy and attention for Andrzejewski in the past week. But enough to win?

On January 31, Hennessy hilariously claimed that Andrzejewski was "surging." Dana Loesch also supported him on her web site. And even after Andrzejewski was completely crushed in the Republican primary, Hennessy said on the St. Louis Tea Party web site "Let's Celebrate Our Accomplisments" and pointed to the fact that Andrzejwski did well in Madison county.

In other words, it was pretty clear that the St. Louis Tea Party endorsed and pushed for a candidate in the Illinois Governor's Republican primary race. So their excuse that they "don't endorse in Republcian primaries" is false, in addition to being a non sequitur.

Roy Blunt's Political Money Carousel

Great video from The Very Worst of Washington:



Is this why real conservatives (but not the astroturf leadership of the St. Louis Tea Party) are rushing to support Chuck Purgason's campaign?

Roy Blunt, Feeling the Heat, Pretends He's Not in Congress

FiredUp Missouri asked last week if Roy Blunt would have to hit the airwaves early because of the momentum Republican Primary challenger Chuck Purgason was gaining. I guess the answer is "Yes" as Blunt is set to put out his first Senate campaign ad next week:



Several people have noticed an interesting feature of the ad.

CQ Politics:

Maybe everybody in Missouri already knows that Senate candidate Roy Blunt has been working on Capitol Hill for just short of 14 years. Blunt's new campaign commercial doesn't mention his expertise as a Washington insider at all...

What Blunt doesn't say in his first statewide commercial: He is a member of Congress, and more -- for part of the time when Republicans had control, he was majority leader.

FiredUp Missouri:

Politico's Dave Catanese reports this morning that Blunt's first television ad makes no mention of his ignominious record in the Washington GOP leadership:

As you'll see, it's quite different from Blunt's last competitive election, in which he emphasized his many years in the GOP leadership and "links to the [existing] leadership's system of power and favors."

Politico:

The 30-second spot, which begins running statewide Tuesday, places Blunt on a farm and never mentions his seven terms in Congress or his party.

It's the clearest signal to date that while Blunt managed to escape a highly competitive primary challenge in a restless cycle, he still has work to do with a portion of his base which remains unsettled by his prolific earmarking, prominent role in the bank bailout and deep ties to Washington.

Why, it's almost as if Roy Blunt thinks he's Chuck Purgason!

The Tea Party Could Topple Roy Blunt if They Wanted To

If the St. Louis Tea Party put their full weight behind one of Roy Blunt's more conservative primary opponents, such as Chuck Purgason, they could dramatically shake up the 2010 elections and draw national attention to the state. Now it may seem strange for me to be saying this, given that I've repeatedly pointed out the dwindling crowd sizes at tea party rallies and their ineffective organizing during the Proposition A campaign. And it's true that I'm skeptical about their ability to significantly impact a general election. This is because in order to alter a general election they would need to either convince people who would normally vote for a Democrat to vote Republican, or to motivate people who normally wouldn't vote to vote Republican. Given that polls show that the tea party is overwhelmingly made up of conservative Republicans, and that this group is likely to vote in general elections anyway, I don't see any strong evidence that the tea party's organizing will be likely to affect the 2010 general elections.

On the other hand, they would be in a prime position to challenge Roy Blunt if they really put their weight behind the effort.  Check out the findings from a recent Gallup Study: 

Conservative Republicans outnumber moderate/liberal Republicans in the general population by about a 2-to-1 margin; among Tea Party supporters, the ratio is well more than 3 to 1. More generally, almost 8 out of 10 Tea Party supporters are Republicans, compared to 44% of all national adults.

In other words, the segment of the population the tea party has a huge influence over is precisely the segment of the population that could determine a Republican Senate primary in the state of Missouri. The St. Louis Tea Party has already gotten a large share of media attention; if they were able to take out a powerful D.C. insider like Blunt I'm sure the resulting noise would be insufferable.

I personally think that Roy Blunt probably has a better chance of winning the general election than does Chuck Purgason. But the advantages Blunt has are precisely the things that the tea party claims to be opposed to: connections to other insiders, the ability to raise funds from large special interests who ask for favors from the government, etc. He also has a lot of conservative baggage, most notably voting for the Big Bank Bailout and for Cash for Clunkers. And consider how the Republican rhetoric could change if Purgason was their candidate:

They could talk about the evil of deficits without sounding like ridiculous hypocrites.

They could attack the idea of "political dynasties."

They could rail on "insiders."

And they'd be supporting someone who, from what I have seen, genuinely believes in the conservative ideology that the tea party claims to stand for, rather than someone who uses that ideology to preserve his own power (as candidates on both sides of the political spectrum often do).

Most importantly of all, they could run a statewide campaign that could be described as "grassroots" without producing fits of laughter.

Tea Parties in some parts of the state have already endorsed Purgason. However, in St. Louis, the support has been spotty at best. More pure conservatives like Darin Morley at Reboot Congress seem to support Purgason . On the other hand, it seems unlikely that political insiders like Gina Loudon would do anything that ruffled the feathers of the Republican establishment. As for the official "co-founders" of the St. Louis Tea Party, Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy, they have yet to really make a full effort in support of Purgason. Both threatened Roy Blunt if he didn't endorse Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 race, but he ignored their threat. Loesch has been showing some signs of supporting Purgason, having him on as a guest on her show and expressing disappointment that Blunt has been afraid to debate the primary opponents. Hennessy, on the other hand, has been completely silent on the issue. In fact, other than using extremist rhetoric and tactics against Democratic targets, there's really been no evidence that Hennessy wants anything other than a return to the same old GOP establishment.

I know the tea party doesn't really care what I think, but whether they care or not it seems pretty clear that they are now faced with a choice. They can endorse Roy Blunt, thereby gaining the favor of mainstream Republican insiders at the cost of any non-laughable claim to truly be a "grassoots conservative" movement. Or they can endorse Chuck Purgason in line with their stated principles but at the cost of losing Roy Blunt's huge war chest and insider support. I don't know how they'll choose (although, since I think they've been astroturf from the get-go, I have my suspicions), but it's important to point out that it is a choice for them. They have the power to replace a D.C. insider with a grassroots conservative, but it's not clear if they have the desire .

Reminder: St. Louis Tea Party Still Hasn't Followed Up on Threat to Blunt

Another interesting feature of St. Louis Tea Party founders Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy's recent reflections on the tea party loss of popularity is their emphasis on the fact that the "tea party" name might go out of existence while the movement survives and works towards the 2010 elections. I see this as a very subtle way of laying groundwork for their support of candidates like Roy Blunt who don't in any way live up to the "small government" and "balanced budget" ideals the tea party claims to care about (Blunt voted for both the Wall Street bailout and Cash for Clunkers). In fact, Loesch spends a considerable amount of time justifying the vote for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) in her recent post.

I'd expect much more of this from them as we approach the August primaries, but the basic thought isn't new for the astroturf St. Louis tea party. In fact, after a brief flirtation with actually standing for conservative values, the St. Louis Tea Party has demonstrated repeatedly that they're really only interested in supporting the same old GOP of the Bush years while furthering their own careers in the process. They had a brief moment where they threatened that they would "come for" Roy Blunt and "vote him out of office" if he didn't endorse Doug Hoffman, but Blunt completely ignored their threats and they were too cowardly to ever do anything to follow up on their statements. Now it seems to me that if you make a grandiose public threat to politician with a specific demand, and that politician ignores you and doesn't meet that demand, a failure to follow through on the threat is a pretty clear signal to Blunt that he can do pretty much anything he wants without risk of the tea party challenging him.

Though some other tea parties around the state like those in St. Charles and Poplar Bluff are willing to strand up for the actual values they claim to believe in, the St. Louis tea party has never shown signs of actually working for these values. This is why even former members of the St. Louis tea party criticized them for carrying water for establishment Republican politicians. As we get closer to the elections, watch as they shift their rhetoric to talk about how they should pragmatically support Roy Blunt in spite of his lack of fiscal conservative credentials, while ignoring the fact that they could easily challenge Blunt by supporting a true conservative like Chuck Purgason.