a Facebook page and website that became a central clearing hub for Tea Party activists. When people like Maria Brady threw up their arms and went to the Internet, they found the Americans for Prosperity site. It listed ways that they could get involved. It provided a platform to connect with fellow activists.
The site promoted Maria and Michael’s upcoming Fourth of July protest, and it included Michael Brady’s name and telephone number for anyone interested in attending. The page also included a long list of other activists planning to hold protests on Independence Day. The AFP site also included a nationwide database listing the times and locations of town hall meetings that Congress members planned to host, encouraging the activists to attend. Bob Inglis’s town halls were on the list. The website included a form to fill out that automatically sent letters to member of the US Senate informing them to “vote no on cap and trade.”
AFP chapters in New Jersey and elsewhere offered free chartered bus rides to protestors to attend a rally in Washington, DC, that summer. Once in Washington, protestors were given free box lunches and glossy protest signs. The protestors were joined by Tim Phillips, AFP’s president, who gave rousing rally speeches.
This close coordination masked key points of disagreement between Tea Party activists and the political vision of Charles Koch. One of the very few rigorous studies of the Tea Party found that the political beliefs of the group were far from libertarian. Tea Party activists strongly supported popular entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, for example. They weren’t animated by a hatred of big government but by the belief that entitlement benefits were being unfairly diverted to people who didn’t work hard and didn’t deserve them. Their grievance was the exploitation of the middle class, not the existence of robust New Deal–era safety net programs. The racial tinge to the grievance was unmistakable, but also complicated. Many Tea Party chapters took great pains to avoid any racist language at their protests and welcomed minority members. But it was unmistakable that the unworthy beneficiaries of entitlements, in their eyes, were Hispanic immigrants and African-American residents of the inner city.
Maria Brady, for one, had no idea who Charles Koch was in 2008. She didn’t study Hayek or von Mises or read papers from the Cato Institute. Instead, she began her political education on the Internet. The stories she found there were outrageous. She read that Nancy Pelosi had ordered two jumbo jet planes for her own use, and that Congress had approved of the purchase, using taxpayer money. Brady and her husband were paying for Nancy Pelosi’s private jet, and nobody was talking about it!II
Brady did find one trusted source for news and education that was recommended to her by many friends and fellow patriots. She began to watch the television show of a commentator named Glenn Beck. “I kind of got an education. My start of my education was Glenn Beck, I guess. Because that’s the only person that was talking about the issues that I agreed with.”
Glenn Beck was the most prominent voice in the American Tea Party movement, and understanding Beck’s political philosophy was critical to understanding the Tea Party and the relationship of the Tea Party to Charles Koch’s political efforts.
Glenn Beck’s television show on Fox News drew close to three million viewers in 2009, beating the combined ratings of all his competitors’ shows. Beck spent many years honing his skills as a political entertainer on talk radio, where provocation was the currency of the realm. Debate was better than discussion. Suspense was better than satisfaction. Outrage was better than understanding. Glenn Beck elevated this genre to the level of high art. The narratives he spun on his show were terrifying and purported to reveal the broad contours of chilling global conspiracies. He affected the persona of a high school teacher, wearing a cheap, ill-fitting coat and tie. He stood in front of a chalkboard. During one show, the chalkboard displayed three logos: The United Nations symbol, the Islamic crescent, and the iconic Communist hammer and sickle. Beck explained that these three logos represented the three global movements that were currently hard at work to enslave and control his viewers.
“The world is on fire,” Beck said in a remarkably casual and civil tone. “And there are three groups of people that want a new world order.”
One of Beck’s favorite targets was the Obama administration’s efforts to promote alternative fuels, which Beck