U.S. Gov’t “Cancer” Research: Tobacco Industry’s “Astroturfing” Helped Create Tea Party

Cybercast News Service ^ | February 21, 2013 | Elizabeth Harrington

[Olog-hai]

In a study published online on Feb. 8 by the journal Tobacco Control, researchers from the University of California at San Francisco—using taxpayer funding from the National Cancer Institute—argued that the tobacco industry helped create the Tea Party Movement through a process the researchers called “astroturfing.”

“Rather than being purely a grassroots movement, the Tea Party has been influenced by decades of astroturfing by tobacco and other corporate interests to develop a grassroots network to support their corporate agendas, even though their members may not support those agendas,” said the researchers. …

Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, a national grassroots organization, rebutted the Tobacco Control study. She said the Tea Party movement started after CNBC host Rick Santelli delivered an on-air rant against the $833 billion stimulus package just after it was signed into law in 2009. …

[Peter W. Kessler]

If the left weren’t so frightened of the Tea Party, they wouldn’t be going to such lengths to discredit it.

Besides, I thought the Tea Party was dead.

[cripplecreek]

the Tea Party movement started after CNBC host Rick Santelli delivered an on-air rant against the $833 billion stimulus package just after it was signed into law in 2009.

That's the way I recall it.

[tet68]

There is no depth to which this regime will not sink
in it’s efforts to malign the Tea Party movement.

It only makes me that much prouder of being TEA.
It only makes me that much more resolved to see
this regime consigned to the dust bin of history.

[KC_Lion]

They could not be more wrong.

We all know who is REALLY behind the Tea Party...

[Hugin]

“RULE 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”-—Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

[Louis Foxwell]

Actually it was Planned Parenthood and the Democrat party that inspired the development of the Tea Party. They deserve all of the credit for motivating patriots to find ways to oppose their agenda.

[Proud2BeRight]

The Obamunists are raving lunatics.

[cripplecreek]

Clearly the “murder machine” industry is behind the tea party.

[Jim Scott]

It's transparently obvious that the left is scared witless of the tea party and never ceases to demean it and, they hope, render it 'illegitimate'. This rubbish of blaming some tobacco industry plot is a new approach and just as loopy as the rest that have been tried. The left knows full well that the tea party's resistance to Obama's reckless, leftist policies is based on 'grass roots' activism and they desperately try to deny that reality because it flies in the face of their false premise that everyone in America is totally on board with Obama, the secular messiah, and only racists oppose him. This 'study' tries to tell tea party members and others that they are just being used by evil tobacco companies but it is a total crock. They know it and, more importantly, we know it. The left is scared of the tea party - and that is encouraging.

[Bryanw92]

Big Tobacco created the Tea Party?? I thought it was Big Oil or the NRA. Can’t these idiots on the Left even keep their boogeymen straight?

[cripplecreek]

We could destroy facebook if we could convince liberals that Mark Zuckerberg is behind the tea party.

They might actually get upset about his half billion dollar tax credit.

[KC_Lion]

I am only half way joking when I post those things, here is Occupy Wall Street last year-

I have seen that somewhere before.....

[Paladin2]

That nasty Constitution (and old skool history) created the TEA Party, you teabaggers.

[FreedomPoster]

Recall it!? Heck, I lived it!

There was no “evil tobacco money”. There were hundreds and then thousands of people showing up spontaneously. People who understood that you can’t deficit spend your way into prosperity.

Santelli made his on-air statement/rant about the need for a latter-day Tea Party on 2/19/2009. The first big TEA Party day was Friday, 2/17/2009, and I was there on the steps of the GA capitol building in a cold, driving rain with about 500 others. The legislators who came out to watch from under the eaves didn’t know *what* to think.

Then on 4/15/2009 came the big tax day TEA Party protest with Sean Hannity here, and many others across the nation. We had 15,000-20,000 here. We had a group of FReepers who gathered in Centennial Olympic Park, then marched in front of CNN and down to the capitol.

It has been rolling ever since.

[Iron Munro]

"Make no mistake - We now know that Big Tobacco created
the Tea-Party to fight the legalization of harmless marijuana!"

[DarkWaters]

Well its right up in line with Obama’s lying rant on what sequestration will do. These people are going for the throat now. Its take it all or destroy it all mentality. At some point these people are going to turn violent against us. Its only a matter of time.