By @TedFrier If the Occupy Wall Street movement accomplishes nothing else it has torn the mask off reactionary conservatives who pretend to be champions of the little guy and exposed them for the cigar-smoking plutocrats they really are. When the Tea Party hooligans organized, financed and coached by far right corporate interests, disrupted scores of congressional town hall meetings in the summer of 2009 with their angry and abusive protests, Republicans cheered the "spontaneous" uprising of the "the American People" against the "tyranny" of a "Big Government" that would bear its fangs by extending health care coverage to 50 million American who were without it. And when a Tea Party that is whiter, wealthier, more conservative and far more orthodox than the public at large, shook its fist at the bonuses being paid to leaders of the big banks bailed out at taxpayer expense, right wing Republicans were right there beside them with their pitchforks and flaming torches at the ready - furious at the "takeover" of our free market system by all those politicians in Washington. Yet, now that the "the American people" who take to the streets turn out instead to be liberals and Democrats angry with the over-sized domination of the country by corporate and financial greed, the far right is singing a far different tune. No longer does the right wing celebrate the rights of average "common sense" Americans to legitimately voice their discontent or seek redress for their grievances. No longer is the voice of the people the voice of God. Now, according to "The People"-loving conservatives, The People are staging "mob uprisings" that menace America. "This is contrary to American history, we were not founded by mobs," fumed Ann Coulter without the slightest trace of irony or apprehension that the rest of us might have heard of the Sons of Liberty. "Un-American," "anarchists," freedom-hating." These are just some of the words that now pour forth from conservatives to describe popular protests growing across the country against corporate abuses. "You don't believe in liberty, you don't believe in freedom," yelled Sean Hannity to a protester, named Heather, as our frat-boy Republican cheerleader tried to overwhelm his caller in a virtual flood tide of ad hominem invective: Marxist, socialist, utopian, statism, totalitarianism. "This country was built on individual responsibility," Hannity told the caller who struggled in vain to get a word in edgewise. "And you want to create an elite class like they had under Marx to take from one group and give to another," shouted Hannity, again without irony considering that 1% of the population now earns 25% of all income or that since his benighted Ronald Reagan was elected 87% economic growth has only translated into a 37% increase in worker wages. The mystifying ability of a disgraced Republican Party to dominate our politics -- despite its repudiation at the polls and its relegation to rump status as largely a party of the Deep South -- rests on two pillars. The first is institutional as an ideologically-driven Republican Party that proudly announces itself allergic to compromise has rendered Majority Rule moot. This has been done by the systematic abuse of archaic Senate rules, rituals and courtesies that are the relics of ancient times when both major parties subscribed to the idea that results of national elections ought to be honored and that within certain well-defined limits the winning party ought to be entitled to govern. This has given a right wing minority faction virtual veto power over anything the majority might propose to deal with the current crisis. The second pillar of the right wing's otherwise puzzling influence is the impression it's been able to maintain that it speaks for the American people. That's where the Tea Party comes in. In her marvelous New Yorker profile of the billionaire Koch Brothers and their shadowy support for right wing reactionary organizations and efforts - including the Tea Party - Jane Mayer wrote that the anti-government fervor that infused the 2010 elections represented "a political triumph for the Kochs," because in giving money to educate, fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, "they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement." Mayer quotes Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and historian who once worked for a Koch-funded think tank, when he said: "The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it's been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven't been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement." With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, "everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there -- people who can provide real ideological power." The Kochs, he said, are "trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies." Mayer also reported that a Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It's like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud-and they're our candidates!" Between the institutionalization of Minority Rule that Republicans have been able to accomplish in Congress, and the superficial legitimacy the Tea Party awards Republicans as leaders of a mass democratic movement, the far right has been able to manipulate the context and concepts by which Americans think about politics and the manner in which the mainstream media reports it. Thus, whenever Democrats propose anything that threatens the vested interests which the Republican Party is sworn to protect, such as the recent idea by Senate Democrats to impose a 5% surcharge on millionaires in order to raise $447 billion for economic stimulus, Republicans accuse Democrats of an appalling lack of "leadership" at a time of high unemployment and economic "crisis" when Democrats "play politics" with "soak the rich" schemes which "have no chance of passing" because, well, because Republicans say so. Republicans never seem to be criticized for standing in the way of needed measures or reforms. But Democrats are routinely belittled for their "lack of leadership" in putting forward proposals they should know Republicans will reject. It's as if in the minds of Americans and their media, because Republicans have already established that they are ideological extremists, anything that Democrats either propose or do which Republicans dislike must therefore, by definition, be both ideological and extreme, too. For example, Republicans say that raising taxes in a recession is absolutely the worst thing to do. And ordinarily they would be right - which is why, by the way, so many of President Obama's "radical stimulus" proposals have consisted of tax cuts of one form or other. Raising taxes in a recession does take capital out of the circulation that might be used for private investment in jobs. But why worry about the government taking money out of circulation when Corporate America has already beaten the government to it, as I recently learned from my cheer-leading financial adviser. Despite all the bad things we've been hearing about 9% unemployment and a weak housing sector, according to my adviser, now is still a good time to invest because corporate profits have grown 700 times higher than real growth in the US economy since the financial sector collapse. That is due largely to the outlet for profits that exists for corporations in the global market. At the same time, there is great potential for near-term corporate investment thanks to all the "free cash" that companies have been stockpiling -- hoarding - ever since President Obama came to office. In just the last three years, says my adviser, the total amount of corporate cash has grown from $700 billion to $2 trillion. That is the highest it has ever been, and now constitutes nearly 14% of GDP. Which means that when Republicans say that a dollar in new taxes imposed on "job creators" takes away a dollar in private capital that might otherwise be used to create jobs, they are just blowing smoke. When Republicans talk of Wall Street "regaining its confidence," what they really mean is that this mountain of idle capital is being used in a cynical attempt by Corporate America to blackmail America into putting back into power Wall Street's wholly-owned subsidiary - the Republican Party. And once back in, big business can be "confident" Republicans will cut their taxes and look the other way as they once again take the nation to the brink of financial catastrophe with their reckless pursuit of profits. Between the Tea Party and the filibuster, Republicans have been able to plant this pernicious idea in the heads of Americans and America's media that they -- like the aristocrats and oligarchs of old - are still in charge as America's natural governing party no matter what the masses might have to say about the matter. And that's let Republican frame the terms of debate and write the rules of political engagement in ways that have tied progressives and President Obama in knots for the past three years. But maybe that is all coming to an end. The rag tag protesters signing up for duty in the Occupy Wall Street movement may not have a political manifesto or a bill of particulars equal in eloquence to that of Thomas Jefferson's. But to the extent this spontaneous, grassroots uprising of pissed off Americans has pulled back the curtain and let us see the plutocratic wolves who've been hiding in democratic sheep's clothing all this time, they deserve all our thanks.