Rachel Maddow exposes Tim Phillips’ astroturf

Posted on | October 16, 2009 | 5 Comments

Tim Phillips of Americans For Prosperity and other right wingers like him would love for everyone to believe that they’re a grassroots organization. They’re not. They’re an astroturf organization, which means they are the powerful ones who laid down the “grass” for their political cause to grow. Of course, we all know you can’t grow grass from astroturf and the only way a real grassroots campaign starts is when the Average American gets off his or her ass and plants the first seed to create the strong root system across this country!

Phillips explains to Rachel Maddow that his organization has lots of members, so therefore, it’s a grassroots organization. Well, Rachel will have none of that king of right wing lying on her show! She eviscerated him last night and it was beautiful to watch. There may be lots of members in Phillips’ groups, but his groups were started by the powerful right wing religious oil industry people in this country and they’re the ones who pandered for memberships to these groups….not the other way around! See? Not grassroots at all! Political Astroturfing at it’s finest. Rachel explains…

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Comments

5 Responses to “Rachel Maddow exposes Tim Phillips’ astroturf”

kayinmaine
October 16th, 2009 @ 7:22 am

Bravo Rachel!
Jim In Michigan
October 16th, 2009 @ 7:55 am

I saw that last night and my takeaway was that he held his own pretty good against her with the exception of the astroturf issue. Rachel does play the guilt by association game with the best of them. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but her outrage sometimes is over the top. I think his Soros point was a good one, that just because someone rich is financing something doesn’t inheritantly make it bad. Instead of being hung up on who funds them and whether they are grass roots or not, Rachel should have taken him on – on the issues, hammer his points, counter what they are trying to sell, instead of trying to attack their credibility, there supporters aren’t going to listen to Rachel anyway, but if she were to take him on about the issues, she might have a chance to change some minds. I love Rachel, though, but don’t always get the motivation for her outrage.
kayinmaine
October 16th, 2009 @ 8:14 am

True Jim, but most of the left wing grassroots under George Bush were started by average Americans. When they took off, it was guys like Soros who gave money in support. What Phillips, Koch, Armey, and others are doing is they’re creating the campaign with their money & power and then going out in search for members. Soros did not create Moveon.org, Center for American Progress and other lefty groups. The people did. He just got excited and gave money to these groups. See the difference? I do.

It looks really bad that the oil industry is behind these anti-global-warming campaigns. Had Joe Schmoe been the one to have started the outrage, that would have been one thing….but that’s not what has happened. The right wing lobbying groups are behind these astroturf campaigns.
Jim in Michigan
October 16th, 2009 @ 12:41 pm

I don’t disagree with anything you say, I guess my real point is that it is a waste of energy spending like 20 minutes trying to get him to admit that he’s not grass roots, when that time could be spent tearing apart their lies and distortions. I don’t think exposing them is going to have an effect on the idiots who believe what they are saying. They don’t seem to care that they are pawns in their game and the MSM, as usual, doesn’t seem to care either.
kayinmaine
October 16th, 2009 @ 5:56 pm

Yes, Rachel’s time could have been better spent last night talking about something else, but I was one who spent an hour of my life watching an empty balloon float in the sky, so honestly….I loved HER diversion! LOL

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