From the grounds of the Coffee Party rises …

Would that be One Nation Under God?  Er, not exactly.  After the Coffee Party ran out of caffeine, despite the attempts by mainstream media outlets to breathe life into it, progressives have decided to try again.  This time, the Washington Post reports on the latest effort by unions and other hardball political players to create a top-down “grassroots” organization to compete with the Tea Party, this time called One Nation:

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the “tea party” movement must be honored.

In an effort to replicate the tea party’s success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement’s political energy and influence. They promise to “counter the tea party narrative” and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of foundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed “One Nation,” will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grass roots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama’s former campaign slogan, organizers are demanding “all the change” they voted for — a poke at the White House.

So who’s behind this?  It reads like a Who’s Who of special interests within the Democratic Party:

The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed Obama, including the National Council of La Raza, the Service Employees International Union, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party’s plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.)

Separate?  Uh, sure it is.  The SEIU and the AFL-CIO never coordinate with Democrats, and neither do La Raza or the NAACP … right?  This overly credulous statement should embarrass the WaPo editorial staff.  If the Tea Party had been formed on the basis of massive funding from the NRA, the Chamber of Commerce, and Focus on the Family, would anyone in the media have written that the effort would have been “separate” from the GOP?

This isn’t imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.  It’s an admission by the Democratic Party and its chief special-interest supporters that the grassroots have failed to materialize on their behalf.  In its place, liberal groups will shovel tens of millions of dollars into faking it.  It’s an Astroturf campaign, designed to give the media something else to talk about other than the Tea Party, which has political momentum and enthusiasm and has conservatives organizing at the grassroots level for the first time since Reagan.

• Bobby Jindal: Paternalistic, big-government liberalism is the biggest loser here
• Chris Christie: “I’ll be here to welcome” Obama when he comes to tour the NJ coast again next week
• MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

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