I heard about the Coffee Party in much the same way as everyone else has and now that the group has begun its media campaign, I felt it was time to take closer look. The group’s founder, Annabel Park, appeared on Fox Sunday morning and was explaining the group’s origins and aims. According to Park, their aim is to improve dialogue with Washington so that they are not deadlocked in partisan battles instead of focusing on work necessary for the good of the country.
That sounds great on the surface, but a few things she said bothered me. I get this gut feeling when something is wrong and the first impression that I got from Annabel about her Coffee Party was that their core belief is that Washington was the driving force behind providing for the public good. Anyone that understands the Constitution knows that nothing is further from the truth; that our modern Federal government has usually been quite damaging to the public good. Oh sure, they have thrown crumbs to the poor, usually in an attempt to buy votes, but overall, ninety percent of the power the Federal government now holds has been stolen from the States in violation of the Tenth Amendment and they have fought a devious battle to retain that power by any means necessary.
My gut twitched as I heard more about the Coffee Party and while Ms. Park claimed that she is not trying to undermine the Tea Party movement, she did say they have a different view of politics and the Coffee Party was formed to offer another approach to those who feel a need to become active at the grass roots level. There was no mention of fiscal responsibility or the need to reduce government spending. The overwhelming majority of Americans are angry about deficit spending and fearful of our mountainous debt but curiously, Ms. Park failed to touch on the debt and deficit at all which only deepened my suspicions of her group and her motives. In fact, Annabel Park’s comments seemed far too favorable to an administration that was deeply entangled in an agenda to “fundamentally transform” America in total opposition to the public’s wishes.
I decided to take a closer look at Annabel Park and what do you know! Both Annabel Park and Coffee Party co-founder Eric Byler worked on Virginia Democrat Jim Webb’s 2006 Senate campaign and Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Annabel Park studied philosophy at Boston University on a Melville Scholarship and political theory at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar. Not exactly the background you would expect to find in a “grass roots” organization. Eric Byler was born in Los Angeles California and studied as a film major at the Liberal bastion of Wesleyan University in Connecticut. If you recall, Wesleyan University is the alma mater of our Progressive Secretary of State and former First Lady, Hillary Clinton while her husband, former President Bill Clinton studied at Oxford University just like Annabel.
According to the news story, the Coffee Party began as a simple idea on Facebook and that idea spontaneously erupted into a firestorm of interest in Ms. Park’s idea. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Coffee Party has according to CNN, purportedly swollen to over 110,000 Facebook fans. A quick count of their membership through their own web page (http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/) shows far fewer members; about 3800 in all but that isn’t all the Coffee Party website shows us.
For a grass roots organization that supposedly sprang into existence from nothing in February of 2010, they have made incredible leaps in just one month’s time; a little too incredible if you ask me. They have pages of press coverage from CNN, CBS, ABC, NPR, NBC and from a host of other traditional and web based news outlets; the same media and press organizations that ignored the Tea Party until they launched a protest of more than 200,000 people at the nation’s Capital; signaling that they could no longer be dismissed as meaningless. The one that really caught my eye is the glowing endorsement they received from the Queen of Liberal rag sheets, the Huffington Post. That alone should be an indictment of the Coffee Party’s true origin and mission; especially for anyone that has had their senses assaulted by Arianna Huffington over the past few years.
This new “grass roots” movement has not only managed to organize a National “Coffee Summit” in just one month but has also miraculously generated a website with a curiously professional look and feel to it; something the local Tea Party chapters are still struggling with even though their momentum and membership far outweighs that of the Coffee Party. Their main page shows their mission statement which is: “The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.”
Really? To support leaders who work for positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them? Why does that sound so damned familiar? Truthfully, that sounds an awful lot like the orchestrated assault launched against the Tea Party by the President and the Congressional Progressives during the healthcare debates. After all, according to them, it was the President and his friends that were working towards positive solutions while those angry Tea Party activists were just trying to obstruct the President’s progress. As much as Annabel claims she is not starting a battle with the Tea Party that mission statement sounds like the first shot in the war. In fact, I got a real laugh when I went to the bottom of their web page and looked for the standard “terms of service” disclaimer. The Coffee Party even calls that their “Rules of Engagement” which says even more about their intent than their mission statement does.
The Coffee Party “rules of engagement” state: “We reserve the right to moderate this blog according to our values, which include respecting and embracing diverse opinions and diverse backgrounds. There are plenty of blogs and websites where partisanship, unfounded conspiracy theories, and intentional insults poison the environment. We'd like for our blog to be an alternative to that approach. We ask that participants not to hide behind anonymity, and be as polite and as responsible as they would be if they were speaking in a public forum and their mother might see them on the news. Those who come to this blog to deface it with ugliness and rancor will have their profiles put into moderation as a warning, and then deleted for a second offense.”
I ask you, what grass roots movement begins life with a direct attack on the First Amendment by promising to silence those that disagree with them? The preemptive attack against the accusations of conspiracy they have invited upon themselves told me that the conspiratorial link between the Coffee Party and Obama is more than just a theory. This is in fact, a shadow movement created and funded by a pro-Obama / Progressive think tank. They ask that the participants that post to their blog site not hide behind anonymity but if you look at the list of active Coffee Party groups across the country, the managers of each one of those groups in listed as “anonymous”. Now that is funny isn’t it? I guess that leaves it up to us to figure out if they are that fearful of reprisal or if the names of those “managers” would provide too much of a link to people that are already active within other groups like Obama’s own “Color of Change”.
In addition to promoting counter protests to planned Tea Party activities, the web site includes suspicious links to something called “The Organizer’s Toolkit”. The toolkit contains volumes of information on the structure and organization needed to develop the Coffee Party. The tools are far too detailed for a grass roots movement that is only one month old and cover community involvement, leadership development, media control, etc, etc, etc. The interesting part about the toolbox is that it is run by Democracy in Action (democracyinaction.org) which is directly linked to none other than the George Soros funded MoveOn.org. MoveOn is also inextricably linked to the Progressive movement, to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and through those organizations, to Barack Obama as well.
We knew that eventually there would be an attack on the Tea Party in advance of the November elections. The initial attempts to discredit the Tea Party failed miserably as did the recent push to link the Tea Party to allegations of violence after the signing of the healthcare bill. Tea Party groups have resisted any attempts made to absorb the movement into any organized political Party and because they have maintained their autonomy, recent moves to infiltrate the groups are quickly frustrated. The only option left to the Obamanistas was to form their own nationally controlled, Soros funded, Socialist influenced “grass roots” movement. Talk about “Astroturf! I’m actually surprised they called it the Coffee Party without adding the subtext that they are decaffeinated and sugar free in keeping with their Lord and Master’s Healthcare Plans.
Tea Parties are local groups of concerned citizens that are trying to preserve the American way of life. The main Tea Party website (http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/)
reflects the populist nature of the movement and it simply reports on events of national significance and can direct interested people on how to find a local Tea Party in their area. I highly recommend that everyone get involved if for no other reason than to counter this obvious attempt by Obama and his gang of thugs to silence the voice of true American patriots with their tainted idea of what a Tea Party is supposed to be.
Paul
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