Minuteman to Tea Party: A Grassroots Rebranding

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201105240028

Last August, more than 600 right-wing activists gathered for a Tea Party Nation rally on private land near the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, Arizona. Fluttering in the desert breeze were hundreds of tiny American flags attached to a border fence of 15-foot-tall rusty poles.

Rally speakers included Tea Party candidates for the US Senate and House of Representatives, as well as marquee names from Arizona's anti-immigration movement. The headliner was Fox News favorite Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the swaggering lawman whose ski-masked deputies terrorize suspected "illegals" in controversial round-ups, and whose idea of a good photo op is the forced march of shackled Latino immigrants down a city street. Arpaio shared the stage with Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, the chief architect of Arizona's infamous Senate Bill 1070.

Grinning on the sidelines behind mirrored sunglasses was Glenn Spencer, the leader of the border vigilante group American Border Patrol and the owner of the Tea Party Nation rally site. Spencer's founding of American Border Patrol in 2002 pre-dated the first Minuteman "civilian border patrols" by three years. Before his ranchland became a Tea Party rallying point it served as both meeting grounds and temporary housing for high-ranking members of various border vigilante factions.

Over the past two years, more than a dozen former border vigilante leaders have taken on key roles in the Tea Party movement. Some, like Spencer, continue to maintain their hard-core nativist personas. Others have sought to separate themselves from their Minuteman identities in pursuit of mainstream political legitimacy. The Tea Party offered a broader political agenda that appealed to rank-and-file Minutemen. Their concerns over border security and non-white immigration had been equaled if not displaced by distress over the financial meltdown and the election of President Obama.

the terrorist wing of the Republicant Party.

is not a terrorist in one from or another?

Economic Terrorists are currently more of a threat than these racist tools.

Isn't that like record attendance for the fuckbags?

at our rally in solidarity with Wisconsin back in February here in Nashville.

You're just a gun-toting racist douchebag, and nobody with an IQ in the triple digits gives a shit about what you think. If you were looking at the wrong of a gun, you'd shit your pants.

They're a party started by a crazy racist billionaire and a propaganda network, that's what they are.