Yes Ryan Sager, There Is Political Astroturf

When is political organizing not a genuine expression of citizen opinion? Not grassroots, but astroturf?

It's about where the funding is coming from, and why.

Author Ryan Sager didn't see it that way on today's opinion page in The New York Times.

His take: If people show up and believe what they're saying, then it's real citizen opinion and activism. "One reason the [health care] town hall protesters are called Astroturf," he writes, "is that they have ties to groups with corporate financing like FreedomWorks, run by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader."  But getting people out is "basic politics," no matter who paid for it.  In fact,  "the Obama administration has been doing its own stage managing," writes Sager,

"At a town hall in Virginia last month, the president took questions from members of organizations with close ties to the administration, including the Service Employees International Union and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. The Web site of another liberal group, Health Care for America Now, instructs counter-protesters to "bring enough people to drown" out the Tea Partiers."

If you try to fault these corporate-funded campaigns on their methods, which are classic community organizing tactics no matter who uses them, then you are indeed taking a weak position.

The inconvenient truth that Sager is dodging here is that large corporations have the monetary and manpower resources to drown out political speech by public interest groups and citizen groups, which are typically much less abundantly funded. But corporate political speech is given equal protection with individual political speech.

If this sounds wrong to you, keep in mind that it cuts both ways on the political spectrum. If it's a cause you agree with, but a corporate-funded entity is paying to generate support for it while hiding its participation, it's astroturf.

Let's compare:

• The US Climate Action Partnership is transparently an alliance between corporations and advocacy groups; the list of members is right at the top of the home page.
• To grasp that the powerful oil industry PR group American Petroleum Institute is behind Energy Citizens, you'd have to recognize the modest acronym "API" on the group's list of participants, Then, you'd have to intuit that an organization that includes many of the world's biggest oil companies as members is likely to be calling more shots than, say, online retailer Gourmet Seed International.

Sagers also makes a category error to equate corporate-funded organizing with political parties and unions turning out people to influence policy. People organize into parties and unions specifically to represent their best interests in the political and economic arenas, where they might otherwise be ignored, and to get more influence over the matters that directly affect their lives.

People found corporations, and corporations pour money into lobbying and PR, to deliver a steady profit to their owners.

Firms like the conservative PR agency FreedomWorks endure for a reason; they're extremely canny operators that know how to tap into two rich veins: one of corporate money, and one of fear of change.

They also know exactly where to hit the traditional news media's reporting blind spot, which (speaking broadly) is that it hates to baldly confront liars with their lies.

I'd wager that they also grasp that the inherent nature of progressives ito suffer sometimes extreme differences of opinion within a single political coalition. This can create a time lag in reacting effectively to reactionary anti-reform campaigns -- whether genuine grassroots or astroturf.

Meanwhile, it's easier to harness the energies of the average reactionary right-winger, who loves to be ordered around, into expressing a disciplined set of messages.

The astroturf effort against health care reform is becoming more and more indistinguishable from real grassroots activism -- or to put it differently, it seems to be converging with non-corporate political efforts.

Time should tell soon if the "Energy Citizen" astroturf effort gains similar ground -- although judging from a report from today's corporate-sponsored rally in Houston, by Sarah McDonald of Texas Public Citizen, they're blowing it.

Kicked out of the rally proper by a security guard because she didn't work for an energy company, McDonald talked with people outside the event:

[S]peaking to other individuals who had been denied access was even more enlightening than listening to Big Oil preach their sermon.

This was such a fake, Astroturf event that they didn't know how to handle legitimate grassroots support. A couple of women who had been to some of the teabagger events and townhalls came down, armed with American flags and excited to protest "crap and tax" -- but even THEY weren't allowed in. Several others who had heard about the rally through Freedom Works, on right wing radio, or in the paper were also locked out.