Walter Dellinger Attorney, O'Melveny & Myers and former acting solicitor general :
Did the tea party movement come “out of nowhere”? A very thoughtful writer for the National Journal, Jonathan Rauch, thinks so. In an important article, “How Tea Party Organizes Without Leaders,” he posits that “The tea party began as a network, not an organization.” He argues that by “embracing radical decentralization,” they intend to “rewrite the rule book for political organizing.”
But is “out of nowhere” the whole story? This is an honest question; I don’t assume I know the answer. I do know that not once in his extensive article does Rauch mention Murdoch’s NewsCorp or Fox News or Glenn Beck or Dick Armey or FreedomWorks.
We would have better information if some news organization would take the advice an editor once gave Woodard and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” (When money flows through news organizations, does that mean that other news organizations will reflexively shy away from serious inquiry?)
What is the actual mix between genuinely self-motivated citizens (which is unquestionably a real part of the tea party movement) and financial support from domestic lobbyists and foreign investors in NewsCorp and the like? Did FreedomWorks provide corporate funding and direction? If so, how significant was that? Did the national Fox television network use its vast resources actively to promote tea party rallies all over the country? Or does the movement simply benefit from friendly coverage not qualitatively or quantitatively different from what MSNBC provides to, say, MoveOn.org?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I’d like to.