COLUMBIA, S.C.—President Obama warned you about these people.
The folks I spent five days with here on a bus tour along the roads of Florida and South Carolina, Obama has said in recent speeches, may have “harmless-sounding” names, but how do you know they aren’t being bankrolled by a foreign-controlled corporation, a big oil company, a big bank or an insurance company trying to maximize profits?
“They don’t want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they’re thinking about the next election,” Obama said about the Supreme Court last month, blasting a recent high court decision about campaign finance that he argues opened up the floodgates of corporate interests into elections.
In Miami, I joined up with the “Spending Revolt” bus tour — organized by Americans for Prosperity, but also sponsored by several other groups — to observe these people who’ve been demonized by Democrats this year for organizing and riling up activists in the age of the Tea Parties and paying for TV ads against Democrats during this year’s midterm elections.
Americans for Prosperity, like similar groups on the left, doesn’t have to disclose its donors. But the group’s president, Tim Phillips, told me as we rode down the interstate after a rally last week in Titusville, Fla. that Obama’s insinuations —especially his questioning of whether they are aligned with a “foreign-controlled corporation” — are “ludicrous.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Phillips said with a laugh. “What’s he saying? That we somehow are controlled by a foreign group?”
A central case made against the conservative grassroots this year is the Astroturf argument — that the Tea Party movement is not a grassroots uprising, but a well-funded effort of conservative millionaires and billionaires pulling the strings in the background.
But those critics may be surprised at the simple, grassroots concept of AFP’s “Spending Revolt” bus tour, which has been crisscrossing the country since July, hold rallies and townhalls to draw attention to the $13 trillion national debt. The 74-foot bus, operated by a veteran handy-man who has driven many of the recent presidential campaigns around, will continue on the road until November, showing up to events where locals are rallying against what they decry as runaway government spending.
In comparison to other conservative bus expeditions this election cycle that have received considerable media attention — like the Tea Party Express and the RNC’s Fire Pelosi tour, for example — the rhetoric on the “Spending Revolt” tour is relatively mild, and the crowds — I usually counted 30 or so people at each event — are hardly rambunctious.
The tour is a collaborative effort of colorful characters: there are the local activists and leaders, like those who showed up at the senior-friendly The Villages in Florida last week on golf carts in the rain to hear Jim Martin, a Ted Turner look-a-like and personal friend of former President George W. Bush who runs the 60 Plus Association, a conservative alternative to AARP. “I’ve seen a lot of Congresses come and go,” Martin told a crowd assembled in a parking lot in Tampa. “This is the worst I’ve seen in 50 years.”
While Martin — whose 60 Plus is rapidly reaching $20 million in expenditures on advertising this year — and Phillips’ AFP are hitting Democrats hard this year with TV ads (they cannot endorse), the bus tour does not focus on candidates and instead solely discusses the issue of government spending.
The crowd size at the often-times low-key events are bolstered by the attendance of star speakers, like Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, for example, who said during an interview on the bus that he’s “prayerfully considering” running for president in 2012 as a Republican.
But don’t be confused — the events are hardly local GOP get-togethers. Speakers often brought up that Republicans deserve some blame for the deficit too. “I’m going to talk as a conservative because that’s more important than party,” South Carolina state Sen. Tom Davis told a crowd here Saturday afternoon at a Spending Revolt townhall on the state Capitol grounds.
“Imagine if we had done this under Bush,” David Williams, a vice president at the Center Against Government Waste, another sponsor of the tour, told me. “We may not be in the position we are in today.” Williams, at rallies in Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Tampa, would bring up examples of wasteful government spending like a $100,000 federal grant to the Tigers Woods Foundation, for example.
Other speakers pointed out that the federal government spends $112,000 every second. So a ten minute shower at home translates into about $67 million spent on the country’s credit card.
Phillips, who begins his speeches in front of crowds with quips like “hello fellow freedom fighters,” was addressing a mostly older crowd sitting on picnic benches at a lakeside rally in Titusville, Fla. last week when he brought up Obama’s repeated suggestion that AFP could be funded by foreign corporations.
Pointing to the subdued — but passionate — crowd simply there to talk about spending, he said, “Mr. President, come on the road with us and you can meet these foreign industries.”