Operation Steele/Armey: GOP, Tea Party Movement Co-Opt Each Other

Originally published in the Huffington Post

Today Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Dick Armey, head of tea party support groupFreedomWorks, held a joint conference call expressing their willingness to work together.

The call was held at 11am and included various members of the right-wing media. According to Politico:

The call is the first joint effort between Steele and the tea party movement -- which Republican candidates have been trying to court since the widespread anti-tax rallies in April that launched the populist uprising. "The two have connected on the matters of this health care bill," said an RNC source.

According to live-Tweeting from Dana Mozie of RockStarPolitics, the two spoke of how Congress had "flipped the bird" at the American people. Michael Steele also mentioned that"the fix is in" as far as health care is concerned. There was also talk about this morning's 1 am 60-40 vote for cloture on the bill being a cowardly move by Democrats. Armey ultimately said that no one can claim to be the leader of the Tea Party movement.

The implicit connection between the two groups is a new and distinctive development that stands in stark contrast to the Tea Party movement's prior aversion to the GOP. Eric Odom is a self-proclaimed founder of the modern Tea Party movement and an organizer of the Chicago Tax Day Tea Party, at which Michael Steele attempted to speak on tax day.

When Steele requested to address the event, however, Odom rebuffed him publicly, going so far as to post his response online. In regards to Steele, Odom wrote:

[I]t appears that he has only just decided to reach out after realizing how big the movement has gotten and how much media is now involved.

During the October ruckus surrounding the special election in NY-23, the GOP endorsed moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava while the Tea Party movement ran its own candidate, Doug Hoffman. Odom flew out to help coordinate the offensive, and even accused the GOP ofopen war against the Tea Party movement:

Not only is the NRCC going to waste donor dollars on a failed candidate with no hope of winning the race,they're also going to attack the actual conservative in the race! At this point, the only logical conclusion is that the NRCC (a huge hub of establishment consultants who leech off of donor money) and the rest of the old guard will arm itself for battle and wage war against the grassroots base rather than give it control.

Dick Armey himself stepped into the race, throwing the support of FreedomWorks behind Hoffman to such a degree that when Hoffman was interviewed by a local newspaper editorial board, Armey was seated right next to him. In fact Armey did Hoffman harm when, after Hoffman was asked about local issues, Armey dismissed the question, referring to such issues as "parochial" claiming this was an election about a national movement.

Scozzafava ended up dropping out of the race and supporting the Democrat, who was able to take a seat held by Republicans since Reconstruction thanks to the GOP and the Tea Party splitting the conservative vote.

Within two weeks of his movement's embarrassing loss, Odom's aggression was tempered. In a November 10 blog post entitled "It's Time to Take Over the GOP" Odom switched his strategy from something out of Rambo to something out of Aliens, seeing the GOP as a host to invade.

I know many of my fellow Tea Party activists are going to hate me for this, but it's time to face reality. The Republican Party must be our vessel in 2010...As a libertarian who voted for Bob Barr in 2008, I find it very difficult to state this in a public manner, but I will now be joining the Republican Party... I'm in no way advocating that we as a movement stand behind the existing Republican establishment. I am, rather, suggesting that we become the establishment... I know many of us in the movement have different goals. Some are to weaken the two party stronghold. This is understandable and a good long term goal... Love or hate the Republican Party... it's our only vessel in the short term. We either unify through it and make a stand strong enough to stop this madness in government, or we fracture over third party efforts and meet uncertain political demise.

Through his organization, American Liberty Alliance, Odom has worked with Armey and FreedomWorks since the spring, and has known Armey since at least 2007, when Odom organized a Conservative Leadership Conference at which Armey spoke. Both groups worked hand-in-glove to support Tax Day Tea Party rallies as well as town hall protests and marches on Washington. Now both organizations are working together to help plan the Tax Day 2010 protests, as well as a conference called the Patriot Caucus to follow immediately after tax day.

Eight months ago, Odom was chiding the GOP as johnny-come-lately tea-party crashers, calling out Steele specifically. Then Odom and Armey worked together against the GOP and Steele in trying to elect Doug Hoffman. Now Odom has capitulated and rejoined the GOP, while Armey and Steele are holding joint conference calls. As one snake bites into the tail of the other and vice-versa, it remains to be seen who will consume who.

Reading Tea Leaves - Part 4: Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement (RecessRally.com)

Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit

Tea Partiers are famous for their raucous protests during the August Congressional recess. They screamed, yelled, stomped and railed against health care reform via town hall meetings and protests across the country.

Most of the August Tea Party activity was coordinated on RecessRally.com, a website started by Eric Odom in July. Odom previously administeredOfficialChicagoTeaParty.com (February 27 protests) and TaxDayTeaParty.com (April 15 protests). In 2008, long before Odom's tea parties, while he was still a Sam Adams Alliance employee, he founded the #DontGomovement, in support of offshore drilling. In March Odom rebranded #DontGo into theAmerican Liberty Alliance.

One of the hallmarks of astroturfing is the coordinated creation of many small, interdependent groups who publicly support each other. RecessRally.com, which was the driving force behind the organization of the August anti-health care reform rallies, used to tout the grassroots nature of the protests, listing its 15 sponsors: American Liberty Alliance; American Liberty Tour; American Majority; Americans for Limited Government; Americans for Prosperity; Let Freedom Ring; Michelle Malkin; Nationwide Tea Party Coalition; NetRightNation; Patients First; RedState blog, Sam Adams Alliance, Smart Girl Politics, andTea Party Patriots. In reality, the groups were tightly coordinated and fewer than half of those 15 'sponsors' are independent from one another.

Each individual group appears to be an offshoot, partner or affiliate of at least one other project under the RecessRally.com umbrella. American Majority and American Liberty Alliance (Odom's organization) are both derivatives of Sam Adams Alliance. The American Liberty Tour advertised itself as "a collaborative project of the American Liberty Alliance, Americans for Limited Government, and the Sam Adams Alliance." NetRightNation is also a project of Americans for Limited Government. The national Tea Party Coalition site is registered to Michael Patrick Leahy of #TCOT, part of the "original organizing crew" of TaxDayTeaParty.com along with Tea Party Patriots co-founder Amy Kremer. Patients First is a project of Americans for Prosperity.

Patients First, which shares the same street address as Americans for Prosperity, was responsible for the summer's "Hands Off My Health Care" bus tours featuring buses with a giant bloody hand on the side. Its tour events have played host to some of the infamous rallies where official speakers compared Obama to Hitler. At an August tour rally in Pueblo, Colorado, speaker Mark Harrison addressed the crowd:

"Part of end-of-life counseling can be an end-of-life order... What does that mean? End of life. Another word for that is 'death'. Order. What's another word for that? A sentence. Now, you folks review with me a little bit; as I recall, Stalin in the 1920s issued about 20 million end-of-life orders for his fellow Russians. Pol Pot did it during the Vietnam War - he issued about two million end-of-life orders. It's being done in Africa today; Mugabe is doing it every day. Adolf Hitler issued six million end-of-life orders. He called his program the Final Solution. I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours."

Various members of the RecessRally.com coalition also belong to the upper echelons of politics and industry.

FreedomWorks is helmed by Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader, and traces its routes back to Citizens for a Sound Economy, a group founded by David Koch of Koch Industries. Koch is the 9th-richest man in America and Koch Industries is the largest privately-held oil company in America. Americans for Prosperity, once part of Citizens for a Sound Economy, was also founded by David Koch who also serves as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Together the two groups (FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have been the most active supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Howard Rich, a New York real estate mogul who has funneled millions of dollars into anti-big-government efforts (and now also anti-ACORN), is chairman of Americans for Limited Government. He also sits on the boards of the Cato Institute (along with Koch) and the Club for Growth.

Rich has been one of the primary financial backers of libertarian efforts such as Proposition 90 in California, which would have severely limited the ability of the state government to collect new taxes. One of Rich's associates, former executive director of the National Libertarian Party Eric O'Keefe, has served on the boards of Americans for Limited Government, the Club for Growth, and the Institute for Humane Studies. He also worked for Citizens for Congressional Reform, (pdf) a project of Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy. He also happens to be chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance.

John Tillman serves on Sam Adams Alliance's board of directors along with O'Keefe. Tillman also served as president and COO of Sam Adams Alliance during its "start-up phase". Before working at Sam Adams Alliance, Tillman served as president and director of Americans for Limited Government, also during its start-up phase.

Some of the organizations affiliated with RecessRally.com also have a history of media-driven campaigns for conservative causes.

Let Freedom Ring, for instance, is helmed by Colin Hanna, a Philadelphia-based former commissioner. According to its website:

Let Freedom Ring was formed to counter the attacks of anti-conservative groups on patriotic candidates as well as attacks on the important issues of our day - those that affect the core of our society: the family, marriage, the economy, energy, abortion, health care and foreign policy, to name just a few. We also work to keep our constituents and the media informed about what our founding fathers' intentions were and how history shapes laws and our culture today.

Hanna is the man behind a grisly ad featuring planes hitting the World Trade Center in order to drum up support for the Iraq War. The group also worked on a documentary about the faith of George W. Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Zell Miller. Let Freedom Ring is supported by, among others, John Templeton Jr., the wealthy son of a famous investor. Templeton co-chaired the Faith and Values Steering Committee for Republican candidate Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign and supported Proposition 8 in California, banning gay marriage.

The backers of these groups have known and worked with each other for years. Including many political elites from right-wing American politics, the connections behind RecessRally.com seem to demonstrate less a spontaneous groundswell of government opposition than a synchronization of populist outrage with old-school conservative campaign strategy.

Read full coverage detailing the various parts of the Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement:

• Tea Party Patriots
• FreedomWorks
• Tea Party Express
• Americans for Prosperity
• American Liberty Alliance
• Sam Adams Alliance
• American Future Fund
• RecessRally.com
• The Media

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Reading Tea Leaves - Part 4: Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement (FreedomWorks)

Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit

FreedomWorks, formed in 2004 through the union of Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America, two conservative think tanks. A year before that merger, an ugly schism within CSE produced another splinter group, Americans for Prosperity. Oil billionaire David Koch founded Citizens for a Sound Economy and went on to start Americans for Prosperity, while FreedomWorks became more of an independent offspring. Koch is the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held oil company in America.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future has been on the scene since 2007. Last year, the organization fought to expand offshore drilling. The campaign was dubbed "Drill Here, Drill Now" but is better known as "Drill, Baby, Drill." American Solutions for Winning the Future and an online movement known as #DontGo both began their pro-drilling campaigns around the same time, in August of last year. Gingrich and American Solutions also lobbied for coal and advocated for tax breaks for coal companies. Such acts directly benefited Peabody, the world's largest private-sector coal company, whichdonated at least $500,000 to ASWF in 2008 and 2009.

FreedomWorks, currently headed by former US House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has advocated for corporate interests since its inception. In December of 2005, Armey appeared on CNBC to lobby for a company known as RX Outreach, which is run by a company called Express Scripts, a mail-order prescription drug program for the poor. A week later FreedomWorks put out a press release praising RX Outreach. It was later revealed thatFreedomWorks worked with Express Scripts's public relations firm and that Express Scripts planned to donate money to FreedomWorks, which critics charge may call into question the group's tax-exempt status.

Recently Armey had to step down from his job at lobbying firm DLA Piper, when it was suggested that his ardent opposition to health insurance reform might be influenced by DLA clients such as Metropolitan Health Networks, a "leading provider of health care services to people with Medicare in Florida", drug manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis and the American Council of Life Insurers.

FreedomWorks and #DontGo are credited with initially taking the reins of the Tea Party movement. #DontGo was founded by Eric Odom and Allen Fuller in Chicago in the summer of 2008. Odom eventually dubbed himself the executive director of American Liberty Alliance, shortly after he began organizing Tea Parties in February. Though FreedomWorks only appears on the Tea Party Patriots website, it supported both the Tea Party Patriots and theTea Party Express this past summer. FreedomWorks's Florida Outreach Director Tom Gaitensmanages the Tea Party Patriots email list.

In April, Paul Krugman attacked FreedomWorks for "manufacturing" protests. Brendan Steinhauser of Freedomworks responded:

If journalists actually did their job, did some journalism and reporting, and talked to local organizers, they'd see that this is a grassroots movement... If Paul Krugman doesn't want to believe me, that's fine. But this came from the ground up.

Yet on February 9, 2009, two months prior to that statement and ten days before Rick Santelli's rant, Steinhauser set up a pre-Tea Party. He contacted Mary Rakovich of Florida, who had attended a FreedomWorks training session, and recommended that she organize a protest in response to President Obama's visit to Ft. Myers. FreedomWorks staffers called local supporters across the country within hours of Rick Santelli's Feb. 19 rant on CNBC, asking if they were willing to organize a Tea Party. FreedomWorks hosted the first event with $20,000, four staff members and a volunteer intern.

Read full coverage detailing the various parts of the Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement:

• Tea Party Patriots
• FreedomWorks
• Tea Party Express
• Americans for Prosperity
• American Liberty Alliance
• Sam Adams Alliance
• American Future Fund
• RecessRally.com
• The Media

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Follow Dawn Teo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dawnteo

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Reading Tea Leaves - Part 4: Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement (Tea Party Patriots))

Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit

The Tea Party Patriots is a nationwide coalition of Tea Party groups, that is the de facto face of the movement.

The local groups it represents may include grassroots activists, but the coalition's backers and organizers are among the nation's most powerful strategists, operatives and financiers. TeaPartyPatriots.org lists two major heavyweights among its partners:FreedomWorks, helmed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, andAmerican Solutions for Winning the Future, a 527 group created by former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The American Liberty Alliance is another listed partner.

It makes sense that the American Liberty Alliance would support the Tea Party Patriots as well as American Solutions for Winning the Future. After all, the American Liberty Alliance is simply an outgrowth of the #DontGo movement, a right-wing online advocacy group that worked in conjunction with American Solutions for Winning the Future in 2008 to lobby in favor of off-shore oil drilling. Both #DontGo and American Liberty Alliance were founded by Eric Odom, an online activist and a self-proclaimed founder of the Tea Party movement. One of Odom's fellow Tea Party activists, Amy Kremer, is the founder of the Tea Party Patriots. Ironically, after involving herself in the rival Tea Party Express, Kremer was ousted from the Tea Party Patiorts, which considers the Tea Party Express to be an Astroturf group under the direction of Republican strategists.

The Tea Party Patriots' email listserv is managed by FreedomWorks staffer Tom Gaitens. This summer the listserv distributed a memo (pdf) from a group called Right Principles outlining the best practices for protesters to disrupt Congressional representatives' town hall meetings during the August recess. It included such advice as, "You need to rock the boat early in the Rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell something out and challenge the Rep's statements early," as well as, "The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda."

The Tea Party Patriots listserv also distributed a spreadsheet containing a list of over 100 congressional town halls from late July into September. The list was released by Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a group run by Rick Scott, the ex-CEO of Columbia/HCA, the largest private operator of health care facilities in America. Under Scott's stewardship, Columbia/HCA committed extensive Medicare fraud by overbilling state and federal health plans. When caught, the company pleaded guilty and settled the case for $1.7 billion in fines, the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

American Solutions for Winning the Future is a 527 group that's been on the scene since 2007. Last year ASWF fought to expand offshore drilling with a campaign dubbed "Drill, Baby, Drill." The campaign was supported by members of Congress and Eric Odom, a Sam Adams Alliance staffer who publicized the movement on Twitter via the #DontGo hashtag as well as through a now-defunct website. Last year Gingrich and ASWF lobbied on behalf of the coal industry, advocating for tax breaks for coal companies. Such acts directly benefited Peabody Coal, the world's largest private-sector coal company, which has donated at least $500,000 to ASWF in 2008 and 2009.

Read full coverage detailing the various parts of the Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement:

• Tea Party Patriots
• FreedomWorks
• Tea Party Express
• Americans for Prosperity
• American Liberty Alliance
• Sam Adams Alliance
• American Future Fund
• RecessRally.com
• The Media

Get HuffPost Eyes&Ears on Facebook and Twitter!

Follow Dawn Teo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dawnteo

Follow Alex Brant-Zawadzki on Twitter: www.twitter.com/beezling

Reading Tea Leaves - Part 1: Tea Party "Founder" (Re)Joins GOP

By Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo

(originally published in the Huffington Post)

After years of a love-hate relationship with the Republican Party, the man most often regarded as the founder of the Tea Parties, Eric Odom, announced Tuesday that he is re-joining the Republican Party. This after he posted an open letter to the Republican Party in July in which he said he would be willing to re-join, "if and only if" certain conditions would be met. (His conditions have not been met.) Odom's road to re-joining the Republican Party has been long and full of Tea Party theatrics.

Because Odom acted fast (or had forewarning, you decide) in the hours after Rick Santelli'sCNBC rant, he rose to infamy by building (and controlling) much of the online infrastructure through which the hundreds of Tea Parties were organized across the country throughout 2009. While Odom self-identifies as a "newbie" grassroots leader and has been characterized in the media as rebelling against the Republican establishment, his connections to well-known conservative heavyweights are undeniable and years old.

As a key organizer of the 2007 Conservative Leadership Conference, Odom put together an impressive assemblage of speakers, including former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, then Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee Jo-Ann Davidson, Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, and the infamous lobbyist Rick "Astroturf Kingpin" Berman. Last year, Odom organized Roots HQ 2009 (the equivalent of NetRoots Nation for conservatives). In November of 2007, shortly after Rightoberfest, Odom picked up a job as New Media Coordinator for the Sam Adams Alliance, where he worked until just days before Santelli's rant.

Odom has consistently taken controversial public stances against Republican candidates. In 2007 he was in the center of a debate with a Nevada assemblyman who Odom accused of pork barrel spending when he proposed spending money to help pay for housing for veterans while they are seeking medical treatment. Odom used a now-familiar tactic against Ty Cobb -- he accused him of not being a "real" Republican, just not being conservative enough. Odom was later accused of being behind an anonymous website that made vicious attacks of a truly personal nature (most of which were later proven to be untrue) against that same Nevada assemblyman.

At 6:11 AM on February 19, Rick Santelli told the world via CNBC, "We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party," in what he later claimed was a spontaneous, "half serious" outburst of anger against the bailouts. In what can only be described as an incredible feat of web programming skills, by 11:36 AM, Odom had rolled out OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com, a professionally designed website where Santelli's rant fans could sign up to organize or attend Tea Parties. Just four days later, Odom posted specific details and locations for Tea Parties that would take place just a week later on February 27.

According to the Libertarian Party of Illinois (LP-IL) Chair Dave Brady, his group created a Tea Party group on Facebook in late 2008, and Odom was a member. According to Brady, when Odom (who was an active member of LP-IL) launched his Tea Party efforts, he effectively hijacked their Facebook page and their tea party idea: "This all is kind of frustrating because LP Illinois gets no credit for this project. Eric Odom, a member of LP Illinois, and our original group, created his own website and Facebook group and aligned directly with Santelli."

At the time, Odom gave Santelli all of the credit, describing the CNBC rant as authentic and spontaneous. Months later, in May, Odom would take the credit, saying in a blog posting, "I'm the guy who developed both the site and concept for the February 27th Chicago Tea Party."

Most website creators are excited when a new website goes live, especially if it is related to a cause that they are passionate about, but Odom didn't post his new website to his Twitter feeduntil 10:35 PM. He was coy with his followers, imploring them to "wait for Santelli" three times, saying his people were in discussions with Santelli, before posting, "#Dontgo Movement is putting together a Chicago Tea Party Planning Committee http://officialchicagoteaparty.com #optwtp."

Odom did make sure to promote the new Tea Party Facebook page, "Make sure you join this Facebook group. It has the RIGHT orgs running it." Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity(an organization funded, at least in part, by the infamous Koch family of Koch Industries) is listed as the Creator.

Nine days after registering OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com, Odom registered TaxDayTeaParty.com, designed to help protesters register to organize or attend Tea Parties across the country, complete with a substantial list of partner organizations and a state-by-state list of protests being planned for April 15. In March, he created the American Liberty Alliance, which would later become one of the driving forces of the August Congressional recess rallies.

In fact, when Odom created RecessRally.com to (once again) coordinate nationwide rallies on a single day (August 22), Odom reused his TaxDayTeaParty.com formula. Unlike earlier Tea Parties, however, August recess rallies focused on health care reform. They were also much louder, meaner, and promoted by Fox News.

Odom currently manages more than 200 web domains either directly or through his consulting agencies (which include Flat Creek Management and Fresh Vision Media) and his organization (American Liberty Alliance--which, oddly, seems like a nonprofit but is not registered as a nonprofit). He was one of the Tea Party leaders who traveled to NY-23 to stump for the Tea Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, against the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava. Once again, she just wasn't Republican enough.

According to Odom, when John McCain became its presidential nominee, Odom left the Republican Party for the Libertarian Party and supported Bob Barr's presidential bid saying, "I might have taken a different approach if I wasn't voting in Illinois where it didn't really matter." Once Sarah Palin came onto the scene, though, Odom became (and remains) a stalwart Palin supporter. He even registered the website ThanksToPalin.com

In July Odom said he would re-join the Republican Party if and only if the Republican Party leadership (paraphrasing):

1. Gives Odom their blessing.
2. Expels from any future party support or praise any Republican Congressperson who votes for health care reform.
3. Stops being camera whores.
4. Stops asking for money.
5. Promotes (Odom's) Tea Party websites on the GOP website.
6. Stops paying professionals, and hires real activists.
7. Stops holding "idea camps"; stops asking for ideas; and stops co-opting activists' ideas.
8. Starts really attacking Democrats.

Nevertheless, Odom wrote in his blog Tuesday, "I know many of my fellow Tea Party activists are going to hate me for this, but it's time to face reality. The Republican Party must be our vessel in 2010," adding later, "As a libertarian who voted for Bob Barr in 2008, I find it very difficult to state this in a public manner, but I will now be joining the Republican Party."

Just a couple of weeks ago, Odom declared war on the GOP, saying in a blog post about the GOP establishment, "Wake up. The machine is waging war against you."

Odom is also unhappy with the current conservative news outlets. In late September heannounced what he calls a movement-minded news portal and his answer to the Huffington Post.

Earlier this week, Odom announced the formation of a new PAC, telling TPM that Tea Partiers have "lacked the initiative to get involved in the campaign side of politics." Odom vowed, in his PAC-announcement email, that his Liberty First PAC has an initial goal of raising $1 million and will do three things: (1) "refuse to help any incumbents," (2) help "Patriot Candidates" defeat "power hungry politicians," and (3) "build a national educational media campaign to help the general electorate understand what our government is attempting to do to us."

Though Odom has no intention of supporting the current crop of Republicans (and proudly asserts that he will work to defeat many of them), he is making his 2010 stand from within the Republican Party, "Love or hate the Republican Party, it's our only vessel in the short term. We either unify through it and make a stand strong enough to stop this madness in government, or we fracture over third party efforts and meet uncertain political demise."

This article is the first in our series, Reading Tea Leaves. Read them all:

• Part 1: Tempest in a Teabag: Tea Party Founder (Re)Joins the GOP
• Part 2: Making Tea for 2010: Tea Partiers Fight for Their Right to Robocall
• Part 3: Tea Parties Organizing, Training for 2010 Under the Radar
• Part 4: The Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement