Right-wing analysts have compared #Occupy Wall Street and hundreds of other #Occupy demonstrations building across the nation with the Tea Party Republican "movement." There has been an attempt to seize the narrative and frame OWS as the Left's Tea Party, or worse, in clearly hypocritically delusional analysis, as a growing mob.
Many in the OWS movement scoff at this attempt to align or compare OWS with a party, be it with Tea Party Republicans, the Democratic Party, another 3rd party - or further, with any particular interest group.
What are the motivations for the comparison?
For one, protection of plutocratic rule. It behooves Congressional Republicans and the Republican party to have a strong, if dysfunctional Wall Street, and donors flush with cash, able to fill the coffers of the party and it's massive infrastructure of interest groups.
On a larger level, however, the current Republican attempt to frame OWS as the Left's Tea Party is being undertaken to win elections in 2012, and maintain accumulated power - and their own jobs.
The way Republicans win elections (aside from cheating, voter fraud and intimidation, or outright theft) is by attracting the votes of those registered as independent. According to Gallup, during the 2010 election cycle, 31% of those surveyed identified as Democrat, 29% identified as Republican, while 38% identified as independent.
That 38% is where the electoral battles in 2012 will be fought.
If OWS is able to garner the support and sympathy of the 38% of independent voters across the nation, and that support and sympathy translates into Democratic votes, the Republicans lose.
Big time.
OWS is reaching deep into Republican strong holds. Oklahoma. Utah. And many other communities across our nation and around the world.
So, we are now seeing the evidence of how the right wing is pushing back. We've seen agent provocateurs attempting to smear a movement predicated on peaceful resistance. We have the usual suspects dismissing OWS as a mob of dirty fucking hippies™.
And of course, we have the outright lies we've come to expect from Republicans:
For people in the Occupy movement, the reasons for demanding change in our society are myriad.
Clearly the movement is not tied to a political party, interest group, or specific issue. However, massive economic inequality, rendered on our society and our world by Wall Street and the plutocratic rule it props up, is first and foremost among grievances.
I want to be clear here. OWS is not a Democratic Party movement. Some Democrats are complicit in the gaming of an economic system that has left millions unemployed, with stagnating wages, and foreclosed upon homes.
However, decades of policies skewed to disproportionately enrich a tiny sliver of our society while tens of millions struggle to get by, come election day, Tuesday, November 6, 2012, will be laid at the feet of the Republican Party.
Action against the current political and economic status quo by the 99% - a status quo so vigorously defended by Republicans for so many years - spells electoral disaster for Republicans. They know this and are trying to fight back.