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Together, right-wing money and “grassroots” Tea Partiers, supported GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who promised to destroy the Affordable Care Act, even though it was based on a health insurance plan Romney had instituted as governor of Massachusetts.
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They goaded and organized Tea Partiers to protest it at town meetings across America. Conservative, libertarian and business groups seized this opportunity, providing the supposedly grassroots groups with massive financial backing.īankrolling, schooling and organizing the motley protesters provided wealthy, right-wing ideologues like the Koch brothers with a mechanism to convert their personal agenda into what appeared to be a movement.Įarly on these right-wing subsidizers, from Heritage Action for America and FreedomWorks to Club for Growth and the Koch brothers’ Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, opposed the Affordable Care Act. Soon after President Obama was first elected, a ragtag bunch of protesters, egged on by rabid right-wing talk show hosts, took to public squares with Gadsten Flags and signs protesting the Wall Street bailout, government in general and any attempt to cut Medicare or Social Security. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who proposed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that House Republicans forget about defunding the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicare instead. And the guy who shoved first was Tea Party darling Rep. Last week, though, the GOP threw Tea Partiers under the bus. Tea Partiers, in return, took up the Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, seeking to deny health care for 50 million uninsured Americans while insisting no one touch their health insurance – Medicare.
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While privately laughing at a group that would demand the government keep its hands off of a government program, Republicans propped up Tea Partiers, with corporate-backed groups like Americans for the Prosperous giving them untold millions in funding. Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes, The Daily Show on Facebook
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