Phony Big Labor Front Group Exposes Lefty Fears about Tea Party’s Strength

Update: The intrepid Mike Antonucci has more insights on this story, including the involvement of the National Education Association and the fact that the story first was broken by blogger Lee Doren. Credit to where credit is due.

You may have already heard about this, but just in case not — an original investigation from Fox News:

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer….

“This movement is a fad,” proclaims TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which was established by the American Public Policy Center (APPC), a D.C.-based campaign shop that few people have ever heard of.

“This movement is a fad” — will ironies never cease? I wonder if Speaker Nancy Pelosi will condemn APPC and their anti-Tea Party website as “high-end astroturf,” so many months after giving the grassroots Tea Party movement the same (albeit undeserved) treatment. Closer to home, Lefty political hit man Michael Huttner has taken the same “astroturf” page from Pelosi’s book.

But now it becomes clear. The attempts to belittle the Tea Party movement as lunatic fringe have been so much window dressing rooted in fear of the grassroots movement’s emerging clout to make a difference for liberty, limited government, fiscal responsibility and Constitutional first principles — which in the short term means removing Democrats from power in Washington, DC, and Denver.

Why else are high-end Democratic operatives raking in large amounts of Big Labor dough to cloak themselves and attack the Tea Party movement as a passing “fad”? Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin gets it right on APPC’s motivations and how conservatives and Tea Party-types should respond:

It seems that the Tea Party movement, once defamed and derided, now poses a threat to the liberal establishment, so much so that they are collecting millions to undermine it. Conservatives shouldn’t object to political speech — which this is. But there is certainly grounds to object to the chicanery, the lack of transparency, and the pretense that the opponents of the Tea Parties are themselves grassroots activists. They aren’t — this is Big Labor and assorted liberal-interest groups once again doing the bidding of the Democratic party. And if not for Fox, no one would be any the wiser.

The good news is that Colorado’s various Tea Party and affiliated groups are wise to the subterfuge and effectively organized to make a difference in 2010.