"Don't let them co-opt you!"

Why is being co-opted such a big bugaboo? I was reading the commentary on this site about an OWS article published here. The article at the root of the debate is both obnoxious and fun; the fun part mostly has to do with a discursive riff on the Whole Foods phenomenon.

One of the comments raises the dread specter of the OWS movement being co-opted:

I fully expect several of the more popular memes propounded by the OWS folks to be co-opted by the Democratic party candidates, and perhaps some Independents.

Why is this reflexively considered a bad thing? When the Tea Partiers started putting up Tea Party candidates (and tearing down the few remaining mainstream Republicans), the baggers didn't fret about being co-opted. They said: "Great! Let's take power!"

Oh, and before you say it: Let's have none of that crap about the Tea Party originally being a "pure" movement which the GOP co-opted. That's a myth. There was no prelapsarian Tea Party; the thing was purely evil in its crib, in the womb, from the moment of conception. The Teabaggers are basically the ultra-libertarian wing of the Republican party. They were not co-opted -- they took charge.

There's a difference.

About the crackdown: The federal government's shutdown of the park occupations was clearly coordinated. Which means that the decision to go ahead with this plan was taken at the oval office level.

The OWSers must sense this, even if we don't have smoking gun proof. So how will they react when Obama asks for their money and their votes?