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Dick Armey does his best to distance himself from the controversy filled Tea Party Convention where Sister Sarah is lining her pocket for her speaking engagement there. Given some of the anger over the event this is not surprising.

From TPM -- Palin Still Psyched For Tea Party Convention Despite Growing Exodus:

It looks like Sarah Palin may be left holding the bag at a Tea Party event that almost no one else in the movement wants anything to do with.

The former Alaska governor still plans to speak at the much-maligned National Tea Party Convention next month in Nashville. "You betcha I'm going to be there," she told Fox News last night.

That pledge comes despite the fact that in recent weeks, other planned speakers and sponsors have rushed to the exits amid concerns that the event's organizer, Nashvillle lawyer Judson Phillips, intends to profit financially from the venture. Read on...

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Chuck Todd actually gets this right on Meet The Press. Gregory played a clip of Dick Armey trying to say that the teabaggers represent the "center" of American politics as bizarre as that may sound and it was Chuck Todd who corrected that lie. FOX News grabbed them, promoted them, sent their hosts to caress and nurture them and were the first network in the history of broadcasting to become true political activists that worked to undermine a newly elected president.

FOX News is the Ministry of Propaganda for the GOP.

Meet The Press:

MR. GREGORY: There's also the issue of the sort of opposition that the president faces. Where is the Republican Party? We talked a little bit about that. Again, part of the conversation we've had outside the hour today in some outside interviews includes one with Dick Armey, a former congressman who's now part of FreedomWorks, who is part of this tea party movement that was influential in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Here's what he said about the center of American politics.

(Videotape)FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): This is the broad center of American politics. Look at the polling data. Right now the tea party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats. And it is becoming increasingly clear to the electorate out there, and they're expressing their understanding, it is the Democrat majority in Congress and the president that's on the liberal fringe and we are on the center. There's no doubt about it.

TODD: I don't know they are in the center. I mean when we did our own polling on this it's clear that the tea party gets a big benefit because there is one news organization that gives them a huge bump all the time. I mean they are favorable among Fox viewers is through the roof and the rest of the country sort of doesn't know a lot about these folks. But the message of the tea party sort of saying the government doesn't work, these institutions and we've got to shrink the size of government, is tapping into what we were just discussing before which is this -- not disgust but sort of this distrust of all institutions that are out there. Government included.

But I think that, I want to go to something E.J. said about the Republican Party. I think the most striking thing about the minority party today is that a Republican can't go home and it's mostly because of this tea party crap cannot go home and sell a piece of pork that they got from Washington. It's now when you bring home something, saying hey, "I brought federal dollars to this," you're on the defensive now. And so that does make the president's challenge -- it's not as if he can trade, you know, go and have these trades with a Susan Collins or an Olympia Snowe or let's say a Lamar -- let's move over to more of the conservative center right -- Lamar Alexander or something like this because they're not getting a benefit at home of bringing something back because we have like destroyed this idea that somehow anything from government that comes through is bad.

The tea party crowd is a hyper-extension of the conservative movement. Sure, it's attracting some hard working Americans who are fed up with the state of the country that the Bush administration left us in, but the base of that movement are the militia, white supremacist, Gold standard, black helicopter, Gospel of Hate movements that FOX News has been trying to main stream into American politics.

When will the media elites (The Villagers) not be afraid to expose this very dangerous precedent that FOX News has set in the media?

(photo via David Weigel)

How do you know who the corporatists like in an election?
Follow the money.

Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate running for the special U.S. Senate election next week, announced yesterday that he would oppose the recently announced financial crisis responsibility fee on large banks.

Brown’s defense of the financial industry has not been ignored by Wall Street. Wall Street’s two largest political enforcers are also out fighting to elect him:

– The Wall Street front group FreedomWorks is mobilizing get out the vote efforts for Brown this weekend. FreedomWorks organized the very first tea party protests, and has used its extensive staff and resources to mobilize rallies and advocacy campaigns on behalf of corporate interests. Dick Armey, who as a corporate lobbyist represented AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during the bailouit, is the leader of FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks is also funded and chaired by Steve Forbes and Frank Sands of Sands Capital Management.

– The Wall Street front group Club for Growth is strongly “boosting” Brown and is expected to run ads in support for him. According to recent disclosures, the Club for Growth is funded by a $1.4 million dollar donation from investor Stephen Jacksons of Stephens Groups Inc, a $1.4 million dollar donation from broker Richard Gilder, and $210,000-$630,000 donations from at least 10 other investors and financial industry professionals. The Club is also supporting a slate of candidates to repeal health reform, while its other endorsed candidates have opposed a financial truth commission.

When a disgusting group like Dick Armey's Freedom Works stumps for a candidate you know where their politics are.
Will Massachusetts wake up to the fact that Brown is not going to help them?

From The Rachel Maddow Show Dec. 30, 2009. Rachel vows to keep covering the right wing extremists that her show has done such a wonderful job of going after all year in 2009. So all you astroturf groups, tea baggers, religious zealots, gay bashers and C-Street Family members, you're not going to get a break in 2010. Good for Rachel.

Anyone else think they ought to have her on earlier instead of giving Tweety two hours -- one a reair most of the time -- to pollute the airways for the most part before her show comes on? She's got the best news show on cable television, hands down IMHO.

MADDOW: So, happy new year. When this show launched in September of last year, there was absolutely no ambiguity about what we would be spending most of our time covering. We started the show during the very last lap of the presidential election.

And we here at MSNBC and at this show, specifically, covered that election wall to wall for what sometimes felt like 25 hours a day. There was election night coverage itself. And then after Obama won but Bush and Cheney were still in office, there was the "Lame Duck Watch" to attend to. Remember the "Lame Duck Watch" intro?

(MUSIC)

I live and hope for there to be another duck-related presidential news item that would justify us using "Hail to the Chief" with the quack at the end of it. We do have it on file in case that ever happens.

After the lame duck period was over and the inauguration happened, this new young show of ours, along with everybody else in the media, settled into a year of covering this new presidency and the news and politics of our country this year.

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What hath Republicans wrought?

Sure, they believed, as John noted the other day, that when they were unleashing what Bill Kristol likes to call "guided populism", they were in fact opening the gates for right-wing populism. And now they're looking not only at a a phenomenon much more popular than the standard Republican brand, but a movement that is about to swallow them whole.

And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:

MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.

KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.

All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.

Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:

MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?

KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.

MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?

KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?

KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.

And he's your role model.

KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.

KIBBE: Right. Right.

MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?

KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.

MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?

KIBBE: No, certainly not.

Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.

Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.

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Oh lookie here. Chris Matthews decided to have himself a little astroturf tea party with FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe and Americans for Prosperity's Tim Phillips. Never during the interview did Matthews talk about or ask either of these guys who funds their groups. I'm sure Dick Armey is grateful Chris. Maybe he was just trying to make up to Tim for the pummeling he received on Rachel Maddow's show.

I will give Matthews credit for this at least pointing this out about Ronald Reagan to Matt Kibbe:

MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody -- your grandfather`s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?

KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.

MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?

KIBBE: Oh, he -- he said that we shouldn`t spend money we don`t have, and he said that the government shouldn`t get involved in things that it`s not very good at doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?

KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history. And he`s your role model.

Here's the treatment Tim Phillips got on Rachel's show--Maddow Blasts AFP's Tim Phillips as "Parasite", "Bad for the Country" Quite a difference from the warm and fuzzy interview Matthews did with him today.

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Full transcript below the fold via.

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From Face the Nation, FreedomWorks' Dick Armey claims that the GOP's purity resolution is not a litmus test for candidates. Sure looks like one to me Dick. I'm not sure what else you'd call it when you're using it to purge moderates from the Republican Party. Steve Singiser at DailyKOS has a post up on how this push to the right could end up being good for Democrats in the 2010--On Party Purity and Eleventh Commandments.

SMITH: The headlines out of the GOP this week, this notion, the Republican National Committee considering a list of 10 principles. Some have called them the GOP 10 commandments, which include things like support for the surge in Afghanistan or opposition, for instance, to the Obama health plan.

As a candidate, if you agree with the eight out of 10 -- with eight out of 10, you’ll get support from the national GOP, and if you don’t, you’re out of luck.

Dick Armey, is this litmus test a good idea?

ARMEY: First of all, it’s not a litmus test. Secondly, it is being offered for consideration in the party.

SMITH: Right.

ARMEY: And I think, thirdly, it is seven out of the 10. But if you -- if you read the list, at least five of the 10 are right at the center stage -- center post of the big 10 of American politics today, fiscal conservatism.

I think it’s -- if the Republican Party is going to win any future elections, it has to be presented as an alternative to the Democrat Party’s fiscal spending. And -- and in fact, it’s a very reasonable thing to say, if you want the support of the Republican Party, demonstrate some allegiance to the primary positions taken by the party.

That’s not a litmus test. That’s just saying, if you want us to give you our money, our support, our -- our troops in the field, our endorsements, then demonstrate that you’re someone like us.

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Rachel breaks through some of the spin on the election results from last night. Unlike most of the pundits in the “mainstream” media who have been doing their best to paint what happened in New Jersey and Virginia as some sort of shift by the electorate back to the Republican Party, Rachel does a very nice job keeping the results in perspective. As Rachel also notes, the Tea Baggers are gearing up for more conservative challengers in 2010 and for some more Astroturf protests on Capitol Hill, undeterred by the loss in NY-23.

MADDOW: But we begin tonight with the end of election 2009 and the very exciting beginning of election 2010 -- which, of course, starts with the breathless spinning of last night's results.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR ®, MISSISSIPPI: There's no question that these elections propel Republicans into 2010.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won one in California, we won the big one in New York 23, where the Obama agenda was at play were in the two congressional races, both of which were won by Democrats.

REP. ERIC CANTOR ®, VIRGINIA: Taking away from this, you know, we look to '010. People have clearly made a choice in our state. They have said no to the one-way street of the economic policies of the Obama administration and the Pelosi Congress.

MICHAEL STEELE, RNC CHAIRMAN: Assume the Heisman position. Yes, baby.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I told you!

STEELE: There you go. That's my moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Yes, baby.

Spin aside, the political map in this country did change last night. Before last night, here was the partisan breakdown of governor seats across the country: 22 Republican governors and 28 Democrats.

After last night, this is what it looks like. Yes, I know, stunning, right? Republicans picked up Virginia and New Jersey. So, we're now at 24 Republicans and 26 Democrats.

In terms of congressional races, last night California's 10th district stayed blue, but it got a little blue-ier as moderate Democrat Ellen Tauscher was replaced by progressive Democrat John Garamendi.

The congressional race that got all of the attention last night was, of course, in the northeast. It was New York's 23rd congressional district.

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This week's Bill Moyers' Journal takes a look at former Texas congressman Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, its role in formenting the Tea Party movement, and Armey's role in opposing just about anything that threatens big business. (He led the opposition against the Clinton health care plan.)

He points out that FreedomWorks is the results of a man who proudly says, "Politics is 97% fiction and 3% imagination."

Isn't this interesting? Armey (who's had government health care all along) is suing to keep his Cadillac federal employees health care plan instead of Medicare.

"Dick Armey is the epitome of those people with power and privilege who are insured against the vicissitudes of life and want no government assistance for any suffering except their own," Moyers says.

"Government out of health care" for thee, but not for me! Republicans are consistent that way.

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Rachel reminds us that all that's old is new again.

But we begin tonight with a dramatic day in D.C. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina officially reprimanded by the House of Representatives today for screaming, “You lie!” at President Obama as the president addressed a joint session of Congress nearly a week ago. By a vote of 240 to 179, the House passed a formal resolution of disapproval for Congressman Wilson‘s breach of decorum. Now, that‘s the mildest form of punishment the House can administer, and they did it not for what Congressman Wilson said to the president but for when and where he said it.

It was not a party line vote against Mr. Wilson. Five Republicans voted for the resolution. A dozen Democrats voted against it. And another five Democrats just voted present, including Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who said in advance of today‘s vote that, quote, “I think it is bad precedent to put us in charge of deciding whether people act like jerks.”

Beyond the disapproval vote against Congressman Wilson vote today in Congress, the political importance of this “You lie!” incident is probably more evident in the reaction to it outside the House chamber, where Joe Wilson is being hailed as a hero by a lot of the conservative movement right now. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota repeatedly telling a tea party crowd in Minnesota this past weekend, and I quote, “Thank God for Joe Wilson.”

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As Contessa Brewer notes in the beginning of this segment, ACORN is threatening legal action against the filmmaker who posed as a pimp at their offices and Fox News which ACORN "calls an advocacy organization for right wing interests".

Dylan Ratigan then brings in ACORN's Scott Levenson to discuss the matter and this has to be one of the more infuriating interviews I've watched on MSNBC for a long time. Ratigan was so desperate to prove his preconceived notion that what ACORN does is somehow a left wing alternative to Dick Armey's FreedomWorks that Scott Levenson may as well have been having a conversation with himself here.

Ratigan: What is your explanation for that video?

Levenson: Well there is an explanation for this video as an attack on the work that ACORN is doing. We got a hundred and fifty thousand people into their first home. Kept fifty thousand people free of foreclosure, this year, done unprecedented work in health care, unprecedented work in education, so we see this as a coordinated attack driven by Fox entertainment, and not news, Fox entertainment, on the work and the members of our organization.

Ratigan: I was thinking about the conversation that you and I are about to have and about the one I was fortunate to have with Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks who’s a conservative organizing group, a different agenda and we were talking about the frustration that exists I this country about the government process…

Levenson: And thank you for asking me…

Ratigan: …and the banks, I agree with you from what I can see journalistically that you have been targeted from conservative groups, but… when they target you they find things that are unsettling and so (crosstalk) that’s what I said when I look at Matt Kibbe, I understand your issue but I look at the, when you say “Oh kill Obama this, not kill, but kill Obamacare” so when the radicals (crosstalk).

Levenson: You’re absolutely right. Process matters. Process actually matters so it’s very important to look at these films as you’ll see none of these people got a loan. None of these people got a mortgage. None of these people filled out an application. None of these people even filled out (crosstalk) let me finish the point. None of these people even filled out an intake form. So we at ACORN have a multi-step process that keeps people from doing the wrong thing. These people never got to first base.

Ratigan: If you look at the vulnerability, like in other words let’s assume that you or Matt Kibbe or any of these organizations, that the intention is good. That the intention is to manifest political interest, but that those on the left or right are willing to behave when not properly monitored, in an unethical, manipulative, distorting, destructive manner that ultimately comes at the expense of the country. And I don’t care if it’s on the ACORN side, the FreedomWorks side or any other side. Obviously you’re process could use some improvement.

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Rachel Maddow weighs in on the fringe elements of the conservative movement taking over the Republican party and she hits the nail on the head with this statement:

MADDOW: It doesn‘t make sense anymore to talk about the relationship between the extreme fringe of the conservative movement and the modern Republican Party, because you can only discern a relationship between two things if you can tell those two things apart.

She followed up with Lincoln Chafee who believes this is going to assure they continue to lose elections since there is no room left in the Republican party for moderates.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Princeton's Melissa Harris-Lacewell about the latest astroturf "9-12" protests being used by the likes of Glenn Beck and FreedomWorks to exploit the memory of what happened on 9-11.

MADDOW: No right-wing fury over anything President Obama does is complete until we‘ve heard from former half-term Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin.

Her take-away from last night‘s speech on health care reform, according to her Facebook page, was this—quote, “President Obama delivered an offhand applause line tonight about the cost of the war on terror. As we approach the anniversary of the September 11th attacks and honor those who died that day, and those who have died since in the war on terror, in order to secure our freedoms, we need to remember their sacrifices and not demonize them as having had too high a price tag.”

OK. Never mind that the president‘s remark was a cost comparison between health reform and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and never mind that the Iraq war and 9/11 still have nothing to do with one another despite how inconvenient that is, Sarah Palin is staying in the news now by using 9/11 to try to score political points against President Obama on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks.

But that cynical patriotism, it turns out, is merely an appetizer before the main course of exploiting a national tragedy that this year has been prepared for September 12th by the sous chef of politics as performance art, Mr. Glenn Lee Beck.

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On this morning's Meet the Press, Rachel Maddow backs former congressman Dick Armey (head of the Freedomworks lobbying group) against the wall and lets everyone know exactly what his radical opinion is on Medicare:

MS. MADDOW: Do you really think that there’s a major uprising of seniors wanting to get out of Medicare? I know you’re suing the government for your right personally to get out of Medicare.

REP. ARMEY: Right.

MS. MADDOW: But do you really think that’s the problem...

SEN. COBURN: Is it...

MS. MADDOW: ...that Medicare—that seniors hate Medicare and they want out?

REP. ARMEY: No, I didn’t say that. Most seniors—I was talking to my minister the other day. My minister says, “Dick, I’m so fortunate I’m in Medicare.” I said, “Bless you, my, my friend that you get to be in it if you choose to be so.” But if you give a government program and you let me choose to be in or choose to be out, that’s generosity. If you force me in, irrespective of my desires, that’s tyranny. Now, if Medicare’s $46 trillion in the red, with no idea how we’re going to pay for it, why, why do they not let people who don’t want to be in out?

MS. MADDOW: This is...

MR. GREGORY: Let me—I want to get it...

REP. ARMEY: I mean, that’s...

MS. MADDOW: Just—I—very briefly.

REP. ARMEY: This, this, this defies logic.

MS. MADDOW: This is a really important point. The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY: I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW: This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY: Right. Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW: You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY: And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW: Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

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Here's a little preview of the B.S. we can expect FreedomWorks' Dick Armey to be spouting on Meet the Press this weekend. He faced off against Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch on The PBS Newshour Thursday night. Armey uses people buying into his disinformation campaign as proof that there must be something wrong with the health care bills making their way through Congress. I agree there are problems, but for the opposite reason Dick Armey does, and somehow pursuit of the truth doesn't look like it's at the top of his organization's agenda. Protecting the insurance and health care industries' profits are.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings.

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks: Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is -- estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means...

DICK ARMEY: Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So tort reform would be an important change for the system?

DICK ARMEY: That would be a good place to start.

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