The media, Democrats and lefty bloggers 18 months ago were repeating in unison the absurd charge that the Tea Party movement was astroturf, meaning not a genuine grassroots uprising. This is a common charge whenever conservatives rise up in anger over big-government excesses.
Those same people who see astroturf everywhere on the right, however, are blind to it on the left. Here’s a good example:
The noisy campaign pushing net neutrality was a manufactured constituency — a few leading groups orchestrating many followers into concerted action to give the illusion of a mass movement.
And who was behind it? The usual suspects on the left, all with connections to Obama:
On June 21, 2007: John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, released a report co-written by Free Press that complained about conservative radio talk shows outnumbering progressive radio talk shows.
Free Press got all the attention for demanding the FCC make them equal, but the report helped one of CAP’s co-authors, senior fellow Mark Lloyd, into a job as Obama’s FCC Diversity Czar.
In November, 2007: Genachowski released the report of Obama’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Policy Working Group, which he had been leading for months. It showed him using the Internet as an Obama constituency manufacturer and mobilizer.
Only big-government nanny staters would want to take something that is about the most successful thing in American life, a thing that works the way it is supposed to work, and which gives untold freedom of access to information for free to millions, and botch it up with bureaucrats. But that’s the way they roll.
