My, what is this? Posted at 11:40 am this morning, with the innocuous and ungainly title: The National Tax Day Amalgamated Federation of Confederated Unions of Concerned Tea Party Patriot Expresses of America and the United States Ltd., LLC, and Inc. RedState.com and CNN personality Erick Ericksontells his followers:
But I have a simple message for them all — it is time to stop calling yourselves tea party activists and start calling yourselves concerned Americans.
I can't imagine what might lead CNN's newest pundit to declare that after a year's hard work at branding, it's time to abandon the Tea Party™ branding, but it sounds like lunacy to me.
He begins:
We stand at the one year anniversary of tea parties in America. Just over a year ago, in February, Rick Santelli, fired up on CNBC, predicted a national movement of protest against what was happening in Washington — something akin to the Boston Tea Party. Those protests blossomed fully on April 15, 2009, and have been going ever since.
Calling themselves tea party activists, patriots, and the like, people rallied to protest bailouts for banks, car companies, and American citizens who made dumb decisions gladly with their homes.
Since that time, the tea party movement has become both organized and fractured, caricatured and praised, supported and hated, effective and ineffective — all of the above — a force to contend with except when it isn’t.
OK, so you found a marketing hook to attach to your "movement," you're like the Boston Tea Party Patriots. Why after just a year would you abandon that branding?
After you have been to your tax day tea party protest on Thursday, and please don’t view me as discouraging you from one last big hurrah, I hope you’ll leave the tea party protests behind and engage in the process. There is a difference between the two words me must understand and use to direct our focus.
These concerns the tea party protestors raise are American and we do ourselves a disservice if we segment ourselves into anything less than heirs of our American Revolution.
I understand, you work so hard to distinguish yourselves from the GOP brand, because you care about the country not the party. And the press is fascinated, breathlessly reporting everything the "Teaparty" is doing. Why would you tell people:
But I have a simple message for them all — it is time to stop calling yourselves tea party activists and start calling yourselves concerned Americans.
Branding it everything, you're just getting started, Erick, don't be a quitter! You're just getting started!
Coca-Cola was a quitter too! They had hardly introduced New Coke™, and they threw in the towel. Don't make the same mistake! Stay with the Tea Party™ brand. I really think it's working for you.
I think you guys just need to double-down! Go forward with the Tea Party™ brand. It's working for you!
You've got something here, it's a brand with legs, don't give up on it.
Marketing professionals labor for years to create a brand this distinctive. You'd be a fool to throw it away!
When you're under fire, the time is now to double-down on the teabagging! Teabaggers once, teabaggers forever!