The January 20, 2010 Tea Party
national boycott of everything failed. In fact, it failed miserably. It was so
much of a failure that many Tea Party activists didn't even know it was
planned, which is far worse than even Boycott Watch predicted, indicating a
total loss of organization amongst the membership, and comments on the various
Tea Party blogs back that up.
First of all, one-day boycotts
always fail. If someone won't buy gas or groceries on a Wednesday, they will
buy it on Tuesday or Thursday instead. Second is the energy factor. After
people put all their efforts in a failed boycott, they become disillusioned and
usually give up, explaining why every group which has run one-day boycotts have
ended up in the dust piles of history.
Can anyone even name the one-day
gasoline boycott groups? No, you can't for a reason - they all failed and
vanished. Remember the La Raza Mexican illegal immigrant advocate group and
their one-day boycott? They had a strong showing and today they are barely a
footnote in history.
While Boycott Watch predicted the
Haiti earthquake relief would be the news story of the day pushing out the Tea
Party boycott as news, the stunning victory by Scott Brown in his Senatorial
race in Massachusetts was the real big story of the day. Had Coakley won, there
probably would not have been as much to talk about with that race in the news,
but the Haiti relief would have still beat out any news coverage the Tea party
could have mustered, if the Tea Party was organized that is.
Tea Party bloggers were touting
how they were going to play the pivotal role in the election of Scott Brown in
Massachusetts, but the Tea Party proved to be ineffective, especially when in a
Fox News focus group conducted by pollster Frank Luntz the day after the
election, a member of that focus group stated the election was their new Boston
tea party, completely ignoring the Tea Party movement. In fact, Tea Party
activists have been so overly zealous in their campaigning in Massachusetts
that they marginalized themselves politically in that race, and possibly in the
long run as well.
The Tea Party has a problem, and
their lackluster performance in the past month is a symptom, not the cause.
While it started as a movement by the average upset Americans, it has grown to
attract the fringe right, including Bob
Barr , a former Republican congressman from Georgia who has claimed to be a
leader of the overall Tea Party movement which rejects old-school politicians
like Bob Barr, further exasperating Tea party disarray since there never was
any Tea Party leadership election.
Glancing at the various Tea Party
blogs reveals total disarray, and one such typical blog revealed the thoughts
of Tea Party and associated leader. The
ResistNet
blog for example, reposted a newspaper article which quoted Fred Taub, the
President of Boycott Watch. That blog contains comments typical of various
other blogs in response to Fred Taub predicting total failure of the Tea party.
The comments included: "I sure hope not. This is a bad idea that is making us
look bad" and "I agree with the other commentators (Fred Taub) that staying
home would be almost totally ineffective, and will definitely hurt our local
businesses that count on a steady, predictable flow of commerce (again
referring to the comments of Fred Taub)." Meanwhile, other Tea Party activists
were still pushing the one-day boycott with hopes for a turnout, but no rallies
took place anywhere. Simply stated, the Tea Party activists knew their boycott
was a bad idea and some kept promoting it anyhow, bolstering the conclusions of
Fred Taub who stated the Tea Party is in disarray and needs new leadership to
survive.
As Boycott Watch predicted, the
one-day Tea Party boycott was a failure. We also predicted that this event
would be the nail in the coffin for the Tea Party and we stand by that. All
indications point to the demise of the Tea Party. Once again, Boycott Watch is
right when it comes to boycott and consumer predictions. |
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