Salon.com > Dick Armey

FreedomWorks debacle: Tea Party fractures laid bare

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:37:00 +0000

As "Saturday Night Live’s" Stefon would say, this Washington tale has everything: accusations hurled and counter-hurled, handguns, multimillion-dollar payoffs — just what we needed to briefly distract us as the parties played chicken up on Capitol Hill’s fiscal cliff.

The story first came to public attention in early December, when David Corn and Andy Kroll at Mother Jones magazine reported that “former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the Tea Party.

“Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP’s Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in a memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on Nov. 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation … Armey demanded that he be paid until his contract ended on Dec. 31; that FreedomWorks remove his name, image or signature ‘from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter’; and that FreedomWorks deliver the copy of his official congressional portrait to his home in Texas.”

Dick Armey apologizes to me

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:09:00 +0000

Oh, Facebook. Even founder Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi learned the hard way that we don't always know who has access to our photos and profiles. I was as befuddled as Zuckerberg on Christmas when late Thursday afternoon, someone purporting to be Dick Armey sent me a private message that seemed to be an odd apology for saying he was "so damn glad" he couldn't be married to me, on "Hardball" almost four years ago. (We're not even Facebook "friends!")

Here's how it began:

What I said to you on Chris Matthews' show was the meanest and very likely the dumbest thing I ever said on TV. I was wrong to have said it and I deserve all the bunk I get for it.

But then he complained about the previous day's "Hardball" segment, in which I attacked his attempted takeover of FreedomWorks, backed by an aide with a gun.

Certainly you know that spin about guns at FW was BS. I'm sorry you reduced yourself to expanding on it. Hit me with your best shot not your cheap shot. Dick Armey

Salon’s Joan Walsh describes right wing honcho Dick Armey in plain English

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 03:16:00 +0000

Salon editor at large Joan Walsh cuts through the nonsense to discuss the right's internecine (but profitable) feuds in unusually frank terms, even for cable. The sparks start to fly around the 3:20 mark:

Conservatives’ full-on meltdown

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:27:00 +0000

The ugly, funny-if-it-wasn't-scary truth about our right wing overlords keeps emerging as 2012 comes to a close. Last week we learned that House Speaker John Boehner is a pathetic hostage to the Tea Party crazies in his caucus, while the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre shared his delusions at a post-Newtown press conference where he memorably intoned: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" – ignoring the fact that gun "enthusiast" Nancy Lanza was murdered by her own guns, which then slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educator-heroes, plus her disturbed and ultimately suicidal son Adam.

Then over the weekend we discovered that the late Andrew Breitbart's empire of hate is imploding, and the ridiculous Dana Loesch is trying to use the lifeboat of labor law to flee the ship of bullies she once helmed.

Dick Armey’s split from FreedomWorks followed attempted “coup”

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:04:00 +0000

Before Dick Armey took an $8 million payout to leave the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, he reportedly attempted a "coup" to oust his enemies and assert his control over the group.

From The Washington Post:

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Grand old grifters rebuked

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:26:00 +0000

The GOP's November shellacking is rattling the foundations of its powerful media-wingnut welfare-industrial complex. Some big names are either parting ways with former allies, or find themselves under suspicion, with their privileges to roam the right-wing fearscape spewing propaganda suddenly limited.

My old friend Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman who made a fortune astro-turfing the Tea Party, has left the organization he helped found, FreedomWorks. David Corn at Mother Jones broke the news, and Armey depicted the parting of ways as "matters of principle." Then AP revealed that Armey will receive $8 million in consulting fees even though – or because – he left the group, and Politico explained that Armey's alleged last straw came when partner Matt Kibbe signed a book contract that paid him personally for a book largely inspired by (and partly researched by) FreedomWorks and its staff. Sounds like a matter of principle, until you look more closely.