The Tea Party movement is a predominantly White American, conservative and libertarian protest movement in the United States that emerged in early 2009 partially in response to the federal government's stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The movement originated in anti-tax protests and arose in response to the increase in the national debt as a result of the stimulus package,^[1][2].It grew dramatically after revelations about the bonuses paid to AIG executives in March 2009^[3][4] and has been most visible through the Tea Party protests of 2009. Protesters have also utilized the social networking outlets Twitter, MySpace, Facebook as well as blogs in promoting Tax Day events.^[5] The movement continued to gain momentum in mid-2009 because of strong promotion by the opinion and news arms of Fox News.

The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, whose principal aim was to protest taxation without representation.^[6] Tea Party protests have sought to evoke similar images, slogans, and themes.^[7][8][9]

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, but chose not to openly protest during those years.^[10] Demonstrators opposed federal support for the ailing automobile industry as well.^[11] Support for the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 is also an issue raised in the Tea Parties.^{[citation needed]}

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."^[12][13] His group has turned down a request from Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to speak at its Chicago protest.^[13] After the denial, the Republican National Committee released a statement saying that "They're just having a little fun."^[14]

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.^[15] Bridgett Wagner of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative 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.^[10] 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."^[16]

History

Background

The theme of the Boston Tea Party, an iconic event of American history, has long been used by anti-tax protesters with libertarian and conservative viewpoints.^{[17][18][19][20]} It was part of Tax Day protests held throughout the 1990s and earlier.^{[21][22][23][24][25][26]} The libertarian theme of the "tea party" protest was recently seized upon by Republican Congressman Ron Paul and his supporters as a fundraising event during the 2008 presidential campaign to emphasize Paul's fiscal conservatism.^{[27][28][29][30]}

The protests

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."^[31] The term porkulus was coined as a portmanteau of "pork" and "stimulus"^[32]in reference to pork barrel^[33] spending and earmarks^[34]. This proved 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^[35][36][37], who is also a leader in the conservative advocacy group "America Coast 2 Coast"^[38], 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"^[38]. 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'"^[38]. She was invited to appear in front of a national audience on Neil Cavuto's Fox News Channel program Your World^[39]. Rakovich was not quoted as having mentioned that the original $1.5 billion NTIA TV Converter Box Coupon Program had been authorized in 2005 ^[38][40].

It has been suggested the first organized "Tea Party" event ^[41] was by Seattle blogger Keli Carender, known as Liberty Belle. Carender called for organizing a "Porkulus Protest" on February 10, 2009^[42]. The protest was held in Seattle on February 16, the day before President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law^[43]. Another protest was held in Denver on February 17th^[44] and a further protest, held in Mesa, Arizona, on February 18th, brought 500 protesters^[45].

On February 19, 2009, in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC Business News Network editor 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".^[46][47] This is where the name "Tea Party" for these protests originated, according to The New Yorker writer, Ben McGrath.^[48] In response to Santelli, websites such as ChicagoTeaParty.com, registered in August 2008 by Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson, were live within twelve hours.^[8] 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.^[8] Another event, the "Nationwide Chicago Tea Party", was held on February 27, 2009 with over 40 protests in various places throughout the nation.^[49]

Composition of the movement

According to political correspondent Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, the tea party movement "... is pure people-driven politics facilitated by the Internet. This is an ideological mix of libertarianism and conservatism with the common denominator being lower spending and smaller government."^[50] "Government is too big. Spending is out of control. Individual freedom is at risk. And President Barack Obama's policies are making it all worse. But that's where the consensus ends among the diverse groups of frustrated Americans who count themselves part of this fledgling coalition."^[50]

The tea party movement also includes several more formal entities, with slightly different approaches to their advocacy:

• The Tea Party Patriots are a national organization that claims to have over 1000 local chapters, run with the help of Freedomworks, a conservative nonprofit led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey.^{[51][52][53][54]}

• The Tea Party Express is a national bus tour run by Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a conservative Political Action Committee created by Sacramento-based GOP consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates.^{[55][56][53][57]}

• Tea Party Nation held a National Convention February 4-6, 2010. The event featured Sarah Palin as keynote speaker, but was criticized for charging $549 per ticket,^{[58][59][60][61]} as well as the fact that Palin was apparently paid $100,000 USD for her appearance.^[62] Palin has said she will donate the fee to unspecified conservative causes.^[63]

Responses

Politics

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.^[64]

Texas governor Rick Perry attended a Tea Party rally in Austin, Texas. He has also discussed the protests on YouTube.^[65] 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."^[66]

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."^[67]

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."^[68] 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."^[69]

Many political candidates who are outside of "establishment" politics are gaining traction in their campaigns due to support from the Tea Party movement. US Senator Scott Brown's support from the Tea Party movement made him a contender in what turned out to be an upset election.^[70] Many politicians in the 2010 election cycle are riding on grassroots support from the Tea Party movement, including Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial contender Sam Rohrer, Texas gubernatorial contender Debra Medina and US Senate candidate Rand Paul.^{[71][72] [73]}

Organized labor

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^[74]; 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.

Media

According to US News and World Report, the nature of the coverage of the protests has become part of the story.^[75] Where many have pointed out the role of Fox News and its hosts in supporting and assisting the tea party protests, going even so far as to suggest that the movement was essentially created by Fox, others complain that the other news outlets simply ignored the movement at first.^{[citation needed]} The protests have been derided by several self-identified liberal commentators such as Rachel Maddow,^[76] Keith Olbermann, The Young Turks radio personality ^[76] Cenk Uygur, ^[76] David Shuster,^[76] talk show host Leslie Marshall,^[68] economist Paul Krugman,^[77] Andrew Sullivan,^[78] public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, ^[10] political satirist Jon Stewart,^[79] and Thomas Frank.^[80] Conversely, the protests attracted support from and been promoted by conservative commentators such as Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck,^[81] and Glenn Reynolds,^[82] former House Majority Leader Dick Armey,^[83] rock guitarist and political activist Ted Nugent,^[84] country musician John Rich,^[85] former Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee, and conservative radio host Neal Boortz.^[86]

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".^[87] 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."^[88] 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.^[89]

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."^[90][91] Roesgen was criticized by the Media Research Center's news blog, Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham,^[92] and a KXMB-TV op-ed.^[93] Roesgen was praised by Daily Kos editor Jed Lewison, who asked "When will CNN fight back?"^[94] and George Washington University professor of media, Frank Sesno, who defended Roesgen for not letting statements go unchallenged.^[95] A CNN spokesperson said, "She was doing her job, and called it like she saw it."^[96]

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.^[97] 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.^[98] Howard Kurtz has said that, "These [FOX] 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."^[99]

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."^[99] 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."^[100] Political commentator Rachel Maddow said, "The unofficial Republican Party media outlet, Fox News Channel, has explicitly endorsed these events."^[101] 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."^[102] On April 14, ABC World News described the protests as "[c]heered on by Fox News and talk radio".^[75]

CNBC news editor Rick Santelli 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."^[88] Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said that the events were "mostly an honest spontaneous effort...to express their outrage at government hubris".^[103]

On April 19, 2009, 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."^[104]

In January 2010, New York Times columnist David Brooks, after reciting a number of recent opinion polls and other sources, suggested that the coming decade of 2010-2019 has the potential to become "The Tea Party Teens" in U.S. political history.^[105]

Following the election of Scott Brown in the 19 January 2010 Massachusetts Senate Race, the British magazine The Economist said "America’s most vibrant political force at the moment is the anti-tax tea-party movement."^[106]

A poll by CBS News/New York Times taken Feb 5-10, 2010, found that only 2% of Tea Party supporters were aware that President Obama had cut taxes.^[107] It also found overwhelming (80%) negativity towards Barack Obamas job performance.^[108]

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.^[109] 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.^[110]

A late-January 2010 poll made by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation found that "one-third of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party movement," while "26 percent of the public has an unfavorable view." 40 percent either "have not heard of the movement or don't know enough to form an opinion."^[111] An early-February 2010 Fox News poll of 900 registered voters showed that 35 percent of voters view the Tea Party movement favorably, 22 percent view it unfavorably, and 42 percent don't know or have never heard of the movement. ^[112]

President Obama

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."^[113] On February 2, 2010 Obama made a similar comment at a town hall meeting stating: "When times are tough, you tighten your belts, You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage,". "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save". ^[114] This quote took much scrutiny from the tea party movement, mostly because it was stated just one day after Obama proposed a record setting 2011 budget proposal of 3.8 trillion dollars. ^[115]

Humor

The label "teabagging" has been applied to Tea Party protests in general ^[116] and to the specific protest gesture of mailing a tea bag to the White House.^[117][118] The appellation emerged after protesters displayed placards using the words "tea bag" as a verb.^[119][120] The label has prompted puns by both commentators and protesters^[121] based on pre-existing use of the word to denote oral–scrotal contact as a sex act or prank. This labeling has been deplored by Tea Party activists as dismissive, insulting, and elitist.^[116]

Promoting a theme that some of the "Tea Bag Movement" members were ignorant rednecks, Cartoonist Mark Fiore produced a satirical piece for NPR purporting to teach viewers how to speak "Tea Bag", ironically depicting Tea Party members as incapable of political discourse beyond name-calling. He claims to have received death threats because of the piece. ^[122]

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 elsewhere—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.^[123][124] 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.^[125]

On April 9, 2009, the liberal blog Think Progress claimed that most of the 2009 protests were conservative lobbyist-created "astroturf" projects and not spontaneous grassroots protests. They argued that the protests were nationally coordinated and organized by conservative lobbyist organizations Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.^[126] The story was picked up in a New York Times op-ed column by liberal 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."^[77] 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."^[127] On the same day, liberal MSNBC pundit 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."^[128] 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?" ^[129] The Los Angeles Times later confirmed the money paid to Russo, Marsh, and Associates went mostly to vendors and advertising, with about $100,000 going to the political consultants for fees and salary.^[130]

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.^[13] Law professor and conservative commentator 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."^[131] Conservative political strategist Tim Phillips, now head of Americans for Prosperity, has remarked that the Republican Party is "too disorganized and unsure of itself to pull this off."^[7]

Marvel Comics controversy

Marvel Comics caused a controversy when a sign, based on a photo^[132] taken by journalist David Weigel, was added proclaiming "Tea Bag the Libs before they tea bag you!" in an issue of Captain America^[133][134]. The comic drew criticism from Tea Party leaders, and Marvel Comics editor Joe Quesada later apologized for specifically identifying characters as associated with the Tea Party movement. Quesada said the edition will be corrected in further printings and the trade paperback.^[135][136]

See also

• 9-12 Project
• Patriot movement

References

External links

Media related to 2009 Tea Party protests at Wikimedia Commons

• "12 Tea Party leaders to watch", National Journal, February 4, 2010
• Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right, David Barstow, The New York Times, February 15, 2010 with image slideshow'