Mike Huckabee pretends like the tea baggers are not an astroturf movement already and that any semblance of them being a grass roots movement has not been dismissed a long time ago. This had to be one of the strangest panels I've ever seen on Fox with Geraldo bringing in Jesse Ventura, Mike Huckabee and Rod Blagojevich to weigh in on the latest event with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin doing their best to scare the crap out of the American electorate in Tulsa.
After showing some footage of Beck and Palin at their Taking Our Country Back tour, Geraldo has Huckabee and Ventura weigh in. Huckabee of course tries to pretend this group is still a grass roots movement and also fails to acknowledge that the two people he's being questioned about are his fellow employees at ClusterFox and the role they've played in promoting the movement.
Ventura dares to point out that the tea baggers are not anything that could be considered a grass roots movement and Rivera makes sure he doesn't get to say much more about it before ending the segment.
Rivera: Governor Huckabee, last time you were on this show you made a little bit of news when you said of CPAC, the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party that you were rejecting them at least as an organization and in some ways because you thought that they were bought off by the various lobby groups ect.
Huckabee: Well there was an article...
Rivera: I don't want to put words in your mouth...
Huckabee: Yeah.
Rivera: But are you embracing the tea party activists. Do I read that from you?
Huckabee: Yeah the tea party really I think represents something completely different. It is not a trade show and you know it was interesting that there was more reaction to the article about my comments on your show than actually what I said. What I pointed out was and it was interesting that Politico, the web site was the one that blew it up, it was Politico and Mike Allen from Politico who had written an article talking about how the ACU, the over all sponsor of CPAC had squeezed Federal Express for two million dollars to fund this initiative that they were going to do and they rejected it went to UPS to take the opposite position, saying we'll write editorials, we'll...
Rivera: You point that they're the establishmentarianism people and the tea party are the real passionate folks?
Huckabee: The tea party people is still a stallion. It's still a stallion. It hasn't been completely saddled and nobody is riding it. There are people who want to ride it, but it's still out there on the wild.
Rivera: But they (?_).
Ventura: Well first of all, I don't think the tea party is such a grass roots organization. I think they're being financed and being... there's more than just grass roots going on now.
Huckabee: I think there's some people who are after them and want to take them over, but I don't think anybody has been able to capture them and I think the moment that that happens they're done.
