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The Tea Party movement is a populist political movement that is opposed to government taxation and spending. It originated in libertarian anti-tax protests but grew dramatically during the presidency of Barack Obama. This movement has been most visible through the Tea Party protests of 2009.

The events are in protest of "big government", President Barack Obama, the federal budget and, more specifically, the stimulus package, which the protesters argue are wasteful government spending and unnecessary government growth. They oppose the increase in the national debt as well. The protesters also objected to possible future tax increases. The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, and the protests have sought to evoke images, slogans, and themes from the American Revolution.

Protesters and conservative commentators promoted Tax Day events on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Reaction to the tea parties included counter-protests expressing support for the Obama administration, and dismissive or mocking media coverage of both the events and its promoters, including the Fox News Channel.

History

The Boston Tea Party remains an iconic event of American history, and has often been referenced in other political protests and campaigns, notably by Republican Congressman Ron Paul during the 2008 presidential campaign. But no independent movement had been organized under the principal aim of the Boston Tea Party of objecting to taxation without representation.

On January 27, 2009 radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh criticized the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commenting, "This 'porkulus' bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades." The term porkulus was coined as a portmanteau of "pork" and "stimulus," in reference to pork barrel spending or earmarks, proving popular with conservative politicians and commentators, who began to unify in opposition against stimulus spending after the 2008 General Election.

On February 10, FreedomWorks activist Mary Rakovich, who is also a leader in the conservative advocacy group "America Coast 2 Coast", led a protest outside President Barack Obama's townhall meeting in Fort Myers, Florida, displaying a sign with an image of a pig and the statement "$650,000,000 for DTV coupons". Interviewed by a local reporter, Rakovich explained that she "thinks the government is wasting way too much money helping people receive high definition TV signals" and that "Obama promotes socialism, although 'he doesn't call it that'". She was invited to appear in front of a national audience on Neil Cavuto's Fox News Channel program, Your World., however both Rakovich and Cavuto failed to note the original $1.5 billion NTIA TV Converter Box Coupon Program had been authorized in 2005. .

On February 16, the day before President Obama signed into law the stimulus bill, a blogger known as Liberty Belle called for and organized a "porkulus" protest in Seattle, Washington. A protest was held in Denver on February 17 and a protest in Mesa, Arizona on February 18 brought 500 protesters.

On February 19, 2009, in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC market commentator Rick Santelli, criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages as "promoting bad behavior" by "subsidizing losers' mortgages", and raised the possibility of a "Chicago Tea Party". This is where the name "Tea Party" for these protests originated. In response to Santelli, websites such as ChicagoTeaParty.com, registered in August 2008 by Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson, were live within twelve hours. About 10 hours after Santelli's remarks, reTeaParty.com was bought to coordinate Tea Parties scheduled for July 4, and as of March 4, was reported to be receiving 11,000 visitors a day. Another event, the "Nationwide Chicago Tea Party", was held on February 27, 2009 with over 40 protests in various places throughout the nation.

Positions and goals

According to USA Today, most protesters have the overall goal of pressuring the United States Congress and state governments to "reject government spending as a way out of the recession" and to "build an anti-spending coalition around regular taxpayers". Aside from spending by the Obama administration, the paper stated that organizers were not pleased by former president George W. Bush's performance on spending, either. Demonstrators opposed federal support for the ailing automobile industry as well. Support for the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 is also an issue raised in the Tea Parties.

The Economist has written that "he biggest cause of anger is Mr Obama’s willingness to bail out everyone with a tin cup... People who have borrowed prudently and lived within their means are livid that they are being asked to bail out neighbours who splurged on McMansions and giant televisions." It also stated that some protesters merely preached to the converted while others had messages that could resonate among the public.

Protest organizer and co-creator of dontGo Eric Odom has argued that "This is a protest that has been in government the last few years...Bush himself was guilty of socialist policies." He also said of the Republican Party that "It’s obvious they’re trying to ride on the brand that we created... It’s somewhat insulting." His group has turned down a request from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to speak at its Chicago protest. After the denial, the Republican National Committee released a statement saying that "They're just having a little fun."

Dan Gerstein, a former Democratic Party political advisor, argued in Forbes that the protests could have tapped into real feelings of disillusionment by American moderates but the protesters had too many incoherent messages being put forth. Bridgett Wagner of The Heritage Foundation, a think tank, has compared the protests to the tax revolts of the 1970s and 1980s, which included the successful Proposition 13 in California that capped property taxes. Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, viewed them as "not dissimilar from what we had in 2003 with the anti-war protests, where a lot of people were uncomfortable with the war, but also uncomfortable with the anti-war position, recognizing there are terrorists out there."

Chip Berlet, Gordon Baum, and others have described some interconnections between the tea party protests and the white supremacy movement with its extremist views of anti-immigration and natevism in the US.

Responses

Political responses

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's political activist group American Solutions supports the protests, saying on its website that they are "our chance to communicate our anger and opposition to the irresponsible policies of politicians in Washington who have failed to solve problems." Gingrich spoke at the New York City protest on April 15.

Texas governor Rick Perry attended a Tea Party rally in Austin, Texas. He has also discussed the protests on YouTube. Perry fielded a question at the rally about Texas secession, answering: "There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

The Tea Parties also drew the praise of other elected officials. Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) said the protests showed that "this land is still owned by the people." Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) called the Tea Party movement "helpful" and "genuine."

Talk show host Leslie Marshall has remarked, in reference to the original Boston Tea Party, that "You have to look at our history. The reason these people revolted is they didn't want to pay taxes that were not presented by elected officials... Last time I checked, Obama's not taxing you to death — he is spending to stimulate the economy and he is an elected official." Political commentator Bob Cesca commented that "your neighbor's mortgage is your problem. Just watch your property values plummet as soon as there's just one foreclosure on your block." Historian Bruce Bartlett, a former U.S. Treasury Department official in the Bush administration, argued in Forbes magazine that higher taxes may not be as bad as they seem, writing that "Higher taxes may pay for services that people value and thus are not as burdensome as they might appear at first glance."

Organized labor responses

The leaders of labor union centers such as the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Federation have labelled the Tea Party protests as corporately-funded astroturfing operations and have advocated for nonviolent counter-protests against Tea Party protest events, particularly during the string of townhall events at which many of the protests took place; some of the union-backed counter-protests resulted in violent altercations between union members and Tea Party activists, with conflicting accounts concerning the initiators of such incidences. Because of the widely-diverging and opposing views on the role of government participation in the United States economy which are held by organized labor advocates and the conservative or libertarian-leaning Tea Party advocates, the mutual views of such groups tend to be reciprocally bitter and tinged with conspiracy theories.

Media responses

According to US News and World Report, the nature of the coverage of the protests has become part of the story. The protests have been derided by commentators such as Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, David Shuster, talk show host Leslie Marshall, economist Paul Krugman, Andrew Sullivan, public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, and Thomas Frank. Conversely, the protests attracted support from and been promoted by commentators such as Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and Glenn Reynolds, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, rock guitarist and political activist Ted Nugent, country musician John Rich, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and syndicated radio host Neal Boortz.

At an April 15 protest, CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen questioned several protesters and then suggested that that event was "anti-government", "anti-CNN", and "promoted by the right-wing conservative Fox News". After the crowd shouted obscenities, she concluded, "and since I can't really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I'll toss it back to you, Kyra." Roesgen was criticized by the Media Research Center's news blog, Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham, and a KXMB-TV op-ed. Roesgen was praised by Daily Kos editor Jed Lewison, who asked "When will CNN fight back?" and George Washington University professor of media, Frank Sesno, who defended Roesgen for not letting statements go unchallenged. In response to the incident, a Fox News spokesperson remarked that, "Judging by their lack of ratings, everyone seems to be anti-CNN", while a CNN spokesperson said, "She was doing her job, and called it like she saw it."

Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog organization, argued that television networks CNN and MSNBC provided biased coverage of the tea parties. The MRC pointed to "juvenile jokes" about protesters made by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. It also argued that the networks paid little attention to the protests overall, which the MRC's vice president called "journalism by censorship". Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly dismissed accusations of promotion by saying the network promoted coverage of the event which he felt was newsworthy while other networks ignored it. James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times also said MSNBC's hits on the tea parties may have paled compared to Fox's relentless support, but Olbermann, Maddow and Matthews were hardly subtle in rooting for the gatherings to bomb. The Augusta Chronicle editorial staff described CNN and MSNBC's coverage as "disgusting", "profane", "reprehensible", and "sickening." Howard Kurtz has said that, "These hosts said little or nothing about the huge deficits run up by President Bush, but Barack Obama's budget and tax plans have driven them to tea. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC may have dropped the ball by all but ignoring the protests."

Media Matters for America, a self-described progressive media watchdog organization, argued that the Fox News Channel actively promoted the tea parties and encouraged viewers to get involved with them instead of neutrally covering them. The group pointed to several examples, including an episode of Glenn Beck's show in which an on-air graphic referred to some of the protests as "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties". Media Matters president, Eric Burns, wrote an open letter to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asking him to "publicly address recent actions by Fox News personalities that unambiguously cross the line separating news and legitimate commentary from political activism and demagoguery." Media Matters pointed out that Fox News "aired at least 107 commercial promotions for their coverage of the tea party protests" in the ten days leading up to the April 15 protests.

On April 12, Howard Kurtz said on CNN's Reliable Sources, "Fox News gets on board in a big way with this week's tea party protests" and "The folks at Fox News ... are firmly in favor of tea parties." On April 15, he said, "I don't think I've ever seen a news network throw its weight behind a protest like we are seeing in the past few weeks with FOX and these tea parties." Political commentator Rachel Maddow said, "The unofficial Republican Party media outlet, Fox News Channel, has explicitly endorsed these events." Political commentator Keith Olbermann said, "Despite claiming neutrality on those policies and the teabag movement itself, FOX has whipped up excitement for the parties, recruiting viewers to come out, guaranteeing huge outdoor gatherings, spilling into the streets, choking off traffic with all their teabagging." On April 14, ABC World News described the protests as "heered on by Fox News and talk radio".

Satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert both joked about the tea parties on their respective April 15 comedy show airings. Both of them poked fun at what they saw as ironies and hypocritical logic from the protests; for example, they mocked protesters for buying a million bags of tea to protest wasteful spending. Both comedy segments mocked the Fox News promotion of the events.

Rick Santelli has said, "I think that this Tea Party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in American notion to get involved with what’s going on with our government. I haven’t organized. I’m going to have to work to pay my taxes, so I’m not going to be able to get away today. But, I have to tell you — I’m pretty proud of this." Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said that the events were "mostly an honest spontaneous effort...to express their outrage at government hubris".

On April 19, Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod, asked about the Tea Party protests on CBS News, said "I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy." and "The thing that bewilders me is this President just cut taxes for ninety five percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere, because he certainly understands the burden that people face." On August 22, numerous Tea Party protests were organized around the nation to express opposition to current legislative proposals that would expand the role of the federal government in health care.

Public opinion polls

A December 7, 2009 poll made by Rasmussen found, in a three-way generic ballot test featuring a hypothetical "Tea Party" candidate, Democrats attracted 36% of the vote, the Tea Party candidate picked up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Among independent voters, the Tea Party bested both Democrat and Republican candidates, with 33% of all independent voters preferring the Tea Party candidate. In a December 16, 2009 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the Tea Party movement fared better than both the Republican and Democratic parties, with 41% of respondents saying they had a "favorable" or "somewhat favorable" view of it.

President Obama response

On April 29, 2009, Obama commented on the Tea Party protests publicly during a townhall meeting in Arnold, Missouri, saying: "So, you know, when you see — those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security. Claire McCaskill and I are working diligently to do basically a thorough audit of federal spending. But let's not play games and pretend that the reason is because of the Recovery Act, because that's just a fraction of the overall problem that we've got. We are going to have to tighten our belts, but we're going to have to do it in an intelligent way. And we've got to make sure that the people who are helped are working American families, and we're not suddenly saying that the way to do this is to eliminate programs that help ordinary people and give more tax cuts to the wealthy. We tried that formula for eight years, and it did not work, and I don't intend to go back to it."

Astroturfing allegations

Allegations of "astroturfing" appeared in a Playboy article by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine in February 2009. The article was removed after libel claims, but no legal action materialized. The authors repeated and elaborated their allegations—that the tea party protests were a "carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign . . . for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced," including the Koch family, Dick Armey and FreedomWorks—elsewhere. On October 3, 2009, David H. Koch said the tea party protests fulfilled "the vision" of the board of directors of the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity when it was founded in 2004.

On April 9, 2009, the blog Think Progress claimed that most of the 2009 protests were conservative lobbyist-created "astroturf" projects and not spontaneous grassroots protests. Instead, Think Progress contended, the protests were nationally coordinated and organized by Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. The story was picked up in a New York Times op-ed column by economist Paul Krugman, writing that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey." On April 15, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi agreed, saying "it's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class." On the same day, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow commented, saying that "corporate-funded PR shops and lobbying groups have done a lot of the organizing and promotion for these events. That's controversial because it's astroturfing. It's disguising a formal top-down organized paid for things as if it's some spontaneous grassroots event." A December 28, 2009 article in Talking Points Memo detailed that Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB), the political action committee (PAC) behind the Tea Party Express, directed almost two thirds of all its funding to the Republican-affiliated political consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place. According to FEC filings, from July through November 2009, OCDB spent around $1.33 million, and of that sum, $857,122 went to a Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm named Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it. The article went on to detail that Tea Party Patriots, a rival faction of conservative activists denounced Tea Party Express as a creature of Republican political professionals that lacks grassroots authenticity, with one TPP member, who had examined the FEC filings asking: "What would the true grassroots people think if they knew their money is being spent in this manner?"

Participants vehemently deny the astroturfing charge. According to Atlantic Monthly, the three main groups that provide guidance and organization for the protests FreedomWorks, dontGO, and Americans for Prosperity state that the demonstrations are an organic movement. Professor and lawyer Glenn Reynolds, best known as author of the Instapundit political blog, argued in The New York Post that: "These aren't the usual semiprofessional protesters who attend antiwar and pro-union marches. These are people with real jobs; most have never attended a protest march before. They represent a kind of energy that our politics hasn't seen lately, and an influx of new activists." Tim Phillips, head of Americans for Prosperity, has remarked that the Republican Party is "too disorganized and unsure of itself to pull this off."

See also

• Boston Tea Party (political party)

References

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• 2009 in American politics
• American political movements
• Conservatism in the United States
• Libertarianism in the United States
• Late 2000s global financial crisis
• Protests in the United States