Behind the Tea Party: Grassroots or Astroturf?

I was listening to NPR Friday, Sept. 17, 2010, when I heard a story about how the Tea Party isn’t as much of a grassroots movement as we have been led to believe. True, there are many people who of their own volition have joined together to share their displeasure with the way our government is being run. The Tea Party could be a case study of how the “New Influencers” (or “people like us,” as Paul Gillin defines them) are using social media to build communities without the interference of traditional institutions and organizations.

But then, as radio great Paul Harvey used to say, here’s “the rest of the story.” It turns out that much of the money funding the “spontaneous” outpouring of political angst within the Tea Party actually comes from some of the same people who funded (and continue to fund) the tobacco debate. Rather than simply being “grassroots” operations of and by “the people,” both the National Smokers Alliance and the Tea Party movements either arose as “astroturf” – or fake grassroots – movements or were hijacked by special interest groups.

Let’s look at the tobacco story first.

Over the years, Philip Morris hired two PR giants – Burson-Marsteller and APCO International – to mobilize smokers to “fight for their rights” by forming the National Smokers Alliance, among other things. These PR giants used time-tested strategies to persuade smokers that the issue really wasn’t about “health” but rather about “free choice.”

By denying any wrongdoing, Big Tobacco argued that lots of things cause cancer and that the link between tobacco smoking and cancer was never “proved” beyond a reasonable doubt. They attacked the character of their opponents, saying that anyone who tried to educate people or legislate against tobacco was simply trying to create a “nanny state.” (You hear this same argument today regarding healthcare and the global climate crisis.)

[For more information about how PR has been used to reframe the issue of smoking and cancer, read “Do the Right Thing” and “Climate Cover-Up” by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore. These authors also show how PR strategies and tactics – not science – are being used to persuade people that the global climate crisis is not real, despite significant scientific evidence that it is.]

Big Tobacco advocates also spoke of “sound science” (or anything that contradicted the link between tobacco smoking and cancer), implying that “regular science” (which showed a clear link between smoking and cancer) was somehow not “sound.” The tobacco companies reached out to other industries – especially the Big Energy companies (oil, gas, coal) – to join the “sound science” crusade. And Big Energy answered the call.

Now, let’s look at the Tea Party movement.

Ron Paul, libertarian candidate for president in 2008, has been pushing the Tea Party agenda for years. In 2007, he broke the one-day online record for fundraising up to that point, raising $4.3 million from 40,000 individual donors in support of his Tea Party campaign. So lots of people supported Paul’s approach to governing. But something interesting happened along the way.

On Feb. 19, 2009, CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli gave what has been dubbed the “Santelli Rant,” urging viewers to create a Chicago-style Tea Party to show their displeasure with the way the Obama administration was handling the mortgage crisis. Santelli claims his remarks were not scripted to start a Tea Party movement. And that may be the case, despite the claim in a “Playboy” article by journalists Mark Ames and Yasha Levine that “Santelli’s tirade was a ‘carefully planned trigger’ for the Tea Parties.”

But “someone” WAS ready to start a national Tea Party movement. Within hours after Santelli’s piece aired, the blog OfficialChicagoteaparty.com went live, registered to Eric Odom. Ames and Levine report that this is the same Eric Odom who, in 2008, organized a Twitter-led “DontGo.com” campaign to press Congress and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “not go home” until they had passed an offshore oil drilling bill. Odom has an interesting résumé, among other things serving as the “new media coordinator” for the Sam Adams Alliance (as in the historical Sam Adams, who led the original Boston Tea Party). The Alliance is affiliated with Koch (pronounced “coke”) Industries. Let’s take a look at that company.

A major beneficiary of an offshore drilling bill is Koch Industries, which, according to SourceWatch.org, “is the largest privately owned company in the United States … . Operations include refining, chemicals, process and pollution control equipment, technologies, fibers and polymers, commodity and financial trading and consumer products.”

According to an Aug. 30, 2010, article by Jane Mayer in “The New Yorker” magazine, Koch Industries is one of the top 10 polluters in the U.S. and spent even more money than ExxonMobil to fight climate change legislation. So the company has a vested interest in any movement that intends to limit government regulation of the energy industry.

Brothers David and Charles Koch, Mayer reports, have funded “foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies – from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program – that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.”

Mayer describes the huge role the Koch brothers have been playing in the Tea Party movement, funneling $45 million just for the midterm elections through such groups as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, of which David is a founder.

In an Aug. 28, 2010, op-ed piece in “The New York Times,” Frank Rich wrote about yet-another Tea Party sponsor, Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. “Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks received $12 million of its own from Koch family foundations.”

And in a front-page story in the Sept. 19, 2010, edition of “The New York Times,” reporters Janie Lorber and Eric Lipton wrote about the Tea Party Express, run by long-time Republican operative Sal Russo. “Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.” Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell, who just won the Republican nomination for senator from Delaware, specifically thanked the Tea Party Express for its help in her win.

So be careful when you hear about “grassroots” organizations. While some of their members may truly embrace the messages of “freedom” and “the right to choose” and “small government,” it’s also quite likely that these groups may also be “astroturf” organizations, funded behind the scenes by industries that stand to prosper greatly from their success. But don’t take my word for it; do your own research.

Not all “New Influencers,” I would argue, are “people like us.”