If the war between Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart is any indication the tea party may have just run its course.
With the rise of Newt Gingrich, the antithesis of the tea party prototype, Glenn Beck has come out publicly not only against Newt but also to imply that conservative Republicans may only be supporting Newt because he’s white and President Obama is black.
It has become increasingly clear that the end of the Herman Cain campaign has brought about the surge of Newt Gingrich with most of Cain’s supporters flocking to Team Newt. Glenn Beck is outraged that the tea party types are filing in behind Team Newt and he recently speculated whether they are doing so because of race.
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:
[youtubevid http://youtube.com/watch?v=NOkaLfJyqyw]
Beck asserts that in a two way race between progressive Barack Obama and progressive Newt Gingrich, picking Gingrich is a form of racial animosity.
Beck said:
“And I issued a challenge to Tea Party members. … [Gingrich] is a progressive. … If you have a big government progressive, or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this, Tea Party: is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.”
It’s interesting that the collective freakout on the right over the rise of the “new Newt,” has lead conservative allies to turn on each other and the Tea Party to support the most beltway establishment candidate in the Republican field.
The assertion that the Tea Party’s hatred of President Obama is motivated by race is nothing new, just last week President Obama was referred to as a “skunk,” because he’s “half black and half white” and according to conservative types “everything he does stinks.”
What’s new is conservative “leaders” like Beck acknowledging that race or racism is a factor. Beck famously accused President Obama of racism against whites so his claim now does seem a bit odd and out of the blue.
That’s likely why Andrew Breitbart has called Beck out for being “a self appointed historian of the conservative movement” who played the race card. Breitbart, who is himself a race-baiter, is now calling out Beck for being a race-baiter. The irony is pretty rich. Breitbart calls Beck a coward and a liar and accuses him of stealing material from other conservative media types.
Looking big picture though it appears that we may be in the last throes of what was once known as the tea party. At least the version of the tea party that had such high goals of transforming America is sputtering out.
It should be said that if Newt Gingrich is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the tea party has failed. Their entire fabric is based on being outside of the beltway and outside of the establishment. Newt Gingrich is the walking talking establishment. Newt is the former Speaker of the House and has spent time recently as a K street lobbyist peddling influence for millions for Freddie Mac, an entity which the tea party loathes.
With Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Our Homes spreading like wildfire across the nation, perhaps the big transformational moment of the tea party movement is over. Income inequality is a bipartisan issue which perhaps eliminates the need for an anti-government fire-breathing set of conservatives railing against Washington at rally after rally.
While they have certainly influenced the conservative platform and shifted it even further to the right, the tea party seems to have failed in their main mission of influencing the presidential challenger to the president they’ve loathed since the day he was elected.
In a fight between Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, the real winner might end up being President Obama. Both Beck and Breitbart are missing the mark with their analysis of the rise of Newt. Beck seems to be trying to distance himself from the tea party, perhaps because its moment is coming to an end, while Breitbart is holding on until the heart of the tea party has its final beat.
Either way it is entirely possible that the tea party movement as we knew it is already over, and both of these influential conservative media personalities are fighting in vain to save something that’s already gone.