The revolution meme started with Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in 2008, as libertarian Republicans had faith that Ron Paul would, in spite of his low level of support, somehow win all the primaries and take over the Republican Party, and then the nation as a whole. It was a Ron Paul Revolution, declared the campaign’s bumper stickers, though the campaign ended exactly where it started, with Ron Paul sitting in the same old seat in Congress.
Still, the revolution meme survives, picked up by the corporate-sponsored Tea Party “movement”, which adopts the rather libertarian idea that it’s unconstitutional for the government to do much of anything useful. The Tea Party idea came from the Boston Tea Party, the organizers of which believed that destroying corporate property was a valid form of protest. The Tea Party groups of 2009 have a different idea: That citizens should protest to protect corporate profits.
With a watered down mission like that, perhaps it was inevitable that the revolution meme would become institutional, like the Communist revolution was in the Soviet Union. The revolution meme has become a new Republican cliche, kind of like saying “let’s think outside the box” at a corporate meeting.
The institutional nature of the Tea Party revolution is on full display in the congressional campaign of attorney Ed Martin, a Republican challenging U.S. Representative Russ Carnahan in Missouri’s 3rd congressional district. The Martin for Congress campaign currently has the following graphic front and enter on its web site:
Is a lawyer from Missouri really going to start a revolution at a New Year’s Eve party with dinner, drinks and dancing to live music from Chiaband? No, these days, the word “revolution” in the Republican Party just means “write a politician a nice big check”.
