GOP bosses bamboozle Tea Party patriots

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed to crush the Tea Party, and with help from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in Kentucky, he did, and nationally, he will. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has sent the Tea Party to the back benches, and after the recent defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), is his successor any different than him? No. Did anything change? No.

The Tea Party is not being done in by Democrats; it is being done in by the party of big business, crony capitalism, big money from insider Wall Street and big banks, the Chamber of Commerce and the corporate lobbying wing of the Tea Party’s real nemesis: the big bosses of the GOP!

{mosads}One of the great achievements in modern politics is how the big bosses of the GOP have bamboozled the Tea Party patriots into doing their work to perpetuate the rule of crony capitalism and big government in league with big business.

Isn’t former Gov. Haley Barbour (R) of Mississippi spectacular? There are reasons this uber-GOP insider is paid the super-duper bucks to peddle the interests of crony capitalists in their program to thwart the Tea Party patriots every bit as much as the liberal populists.

In the spirit of giving the devil his due, let’s give Barbour credit. Only days ago, he induced black Democrats, who celebrate the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, into taking over a Republican primary, destroying the hopes of the Tea Party candidate, electing the favored candidate of the big-money Republicans, and advancing the interests of the corporatist and crony capitalists who are the true bosses of the GOP, for whom Barbour has worked assiduously and been paid handsomely.

Meanwhile GOP bosses, in the spirit of Marie Antoinette, an analogy I have made about them before, offer the Tea Party a taste of the cake about why they should hate liberals, while they offer the big-money barons the real prize: more crony capitalism, achieved with Tea Party support where possible, and over the politically dead bodies of Tea Party candidates, when necessary.

To my Tea Party friends, at least I am honest with you. I disagree with you 85 percent of the time, and say it, but try to work with you against crony capitalism and the surveillance state when possible. By contrast, the bigwig bosses of the GOP pretend to be your friends, but like the big bad wolf, their real agenda is to eat you for lunch while they pretend they love you!

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net.