Jane Hamsher takes a screaming, prancing leap over the shark

I do not understand why Hamsher, Borosage and others signed up with John Whitehead and Phyllis Schlafly to demand an audit of the Federal Reserve and a hold on Ben Bernanke's nomination. I think it was very unwise and unnecessary. Whitehead, the head of the Rutherford Institute is a Christian Reconstructionist, or, a hard dominionist. Schlafly, head of Eagle Forum, strongly opposes gays, feminists, and immigrants in a most offensive manner. She is the purveyor of conspiracy myths. Making common cause with her is unfathomable. But, I can understand that they want to tap into the populism of the Tea Party movement. But the Tea Party movement is nativist (the Federation for American Immigration Reform linked to a racist white nationalist John Tanton is giving a presentation at the Tea Party convention); it is increasingly adopting the rhetoric and symbols of the Christian Patriot militia movement (see Adele Stan's article on AlterNet); its key messaging comes from Christian Right stalwarts such as Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Jerome Corsi (who was a possible presidential candidate for Phillips' Christian Reconstructionist Constitution Party); and, its objectives follow the Christian Right's Gospel of Supply Side Jesus as well as the health care and energy corporations funding the Tea Party movement. There is nothing to be gained by a progressive by getting into bed with this movement or their driving-force organizations. Progressives have a much better message about what to do about the undue influence of corporate money on democratic governance. They don't need to roll around in the gutter with Whitehead, Schlafly, other signatories, and the Tea Party movement.

But, it gets somewhat worse. The other three right-wing signatories to the audit the Fed and put a hold on Bernanke are Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, Duane Parde, president of the National Taxpayers Union, and John Tate, president of Campaign for Liberty.

All three sponsored the 9/12 Tea Party march in DC. Norquist wants to destroy the federal government and de-fund the Democratic Party and labor unions. All of the Tea Party events have featured racist depictions of President Obama and anti-Semitic signs, let alone rhetoric comparing the president to Hitler.

But this cozying up to the Tea Party continues. Politico reported that MoveOn co-founder Joan Blades had dinner with FreedomWorks vice president of public policy Max Pappas to talk about cooperation on corporate welfare, transparency, and privacy. Why legitimize the corporate-sponsored thuggery, as Rachel Maddow put it, by cooperating with FreedomWorks?

Now, Jane Hamsher wants to cooperate with the Tea Party movement to defeat health care reform. There is much to dislike about the process and substance of the health care reform bill. But defeating rather than improving the bill in the House-Senate conference is strategic stupidity. Helping the Christian nationalists and white nationalists destroy Obama's presidency (remember DeMint's Waterloo remark?) borders on reckless disregard for political realities and long-term strategy.

I am not saying that cooperation with the Right cannot be pursued under certain conditions, for example, in reforming the Patriot Act. Maybe even the issues the MoveOn co-founder discussed with the VP from FreedomWorks. But, there is a great risk in legitimizing FreedomWorks and its Tea Party movement that is probably not worth pursuing.

But, in 1999, Chip Berlet closed his very long review article on right-wing attempts to build cooperative links with progressive organizations (“Right Woos Left”) with a quote from George Seldes: ” ' The enemy is always the Right. Fascism and Reaction always attack. They have won against disunion. They will fail if we unite. ' “

To me, there are no sound strategic, political, or ethical reasons for pursuing a coalition with the Tea Party movement, if the desired end result of that cooperation is badly damaging, if not destroying, President Obama's presidency.

Hey,
There are two kinds of populism here. There is rw Andrew Jackson/Ronald Reagan style of “smaller central govt, more local control, nativism, militias.
There is the lw populism represented by FDR/JFK/LBJ in which govt does have a role to level the playing field, more and better opportunities for all, protecting the weak and otherwise dienfranchised, (the labor movement, women's sufferage, civil rights, environmental, anti-war).

Both have radical tendancies and the left has been the whipping boy because the other side has some seriously big money to fund their campaigns, and there is legitimate anger from the right and the left because of the same issues (namely the economy is not working for most of us now), but the right has been better at harnessing the anger because they use “think-tanks, lobbying firms, and the nature of GOP and Conservadem lawmakers. This is how the GOP gets people to vote against their own interest. The right uses people's natural selfishness to lie, cheat ans steal from their own constituents and then blame everyone else for the problem.
Although the new John Birch, libertarian has some appeal because our govt hasn't been working so well for a long time namely aligning itself with big coporate interests although Jon Birch and the tea baggers are funded by corporate interests (less govt, less reg, corporate welfare in the form of tax cuts and turning over govt functions to the private sector). Of course the GOP doesn't have anything remaining in the arsenal except the usual blame game and MORE TAX CUTS, LESS REGULATION, LET THE MARKET, BE FREE……..like that has worked sooooo well. Here is the economy a smoking pile of rubble because of less regs, more “free market”. Enabled legalization the lying cheating and stealing, waste, fraud and abuse, all perfectly legal (apparently).
Thanks for letting me rant

If you recall from Am History…………Jackson killed the bank and chaos insued. There was serious economic upheaval afterward. Jackson's actions wrecked Van Buren's term and there was alot of economic upheaval until the Wilson administration created the Fed.

That said, I am not a fan of the fed, so how about making it work better. For example, the fed could do something to create jobs. This may require a change at the chair, not killing off the entire thing. Although it would be satisfying to get rid of something that seems to creates welfare for banks. I also am not a fan of Norquist, so if he is against the fed, then I am for it. He and his friends have not done anything except to create a climate of fear and hatred. Can win elections with that, but can't govern very well.

The MO of the Conservative movement is to destroy anything that actually helps the American people. They couch their actions in terms of freedom, and personal responsibility. The one problem with that is there are alot of bad folks out there who create and do very bad things, but make alot of money.