In less than a year well over a thousand independent groups have sprung up
around the nation to organize and demonstrate against the attempted government
takeover of entire industries, high taxes, crippling debt, and the agenda of
President Barack Obama. While many have ridiculed and guffawed about the
“teabaggers,” these motivated and angry voters have very quickly shown the
ability to raise millions of dollars, target specific political races, grab
headlines and media exposure, stage large rallies, and mobilize volunteers.
The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) movement has been defined as populist,
conservative, and libertarian in tone. It is a movement diverse in leadership
and organization but united in its defense of liberty and the constitution. Its
members are technologically savvy and able to mobilize in a moments notice. It
is anti-elitist, anti-big government, and anti-big business. It is a revulsion
and revolt against perceived corruption and politics as usual. And it the most
recent public face of the Liberty Movement that resides on the right side of the
ideological spectrum.
It is the winning combination of the common sense principles of less
government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, state’s rights, and strong
national security that is uniting the Tea Party into an effective force to be
reckoned with. The mad as hell Teaparticans are the modern-day serfs smashing
down the castle gate in an attempt to overthrow their feudal overlords. It is a
popular uprising against the political establishment.
The members of the Tea Party first
came to national
attention when they crashed townhall meetings and held spontaneous rallies and
protests around the nation. Couched in terms like “the second Revolution” and
“the uprising,” while touting the imagery of the American Revolution, the Tea
Party movement is really just a vast amalgamation of factions and independent
groups acting outside the old party establishments and organized everywhere from
facebook to the fellowship hall in the basement of the church on the corner. But
they are mad as hell, and history shows that righteous indignation and the
howling mob can definitely threaten entrenched interests and the ruling elite.
Whether that energy and drive can be wielded effectively and wisely still
remains to be seen.
Those who jeered and poked fun at the 9-12 and Tea party groups just a few
months ago now greatly worry about these shock troops of an aroused and angry
conservative movement that has dedicated itself to practicing “guerilla
conservatism” and challenge the progressive ideology that seeks to regulate,
tax, and control nearly every aspect of your daily life. The fainting,
worshipful Obamanite crowds of a year ago have been replaced in the street by
those who have had enough of a government, and governing party, that is out of
control.
With their sea of signs and Revolutionary War flags this particular face of
the larger Liberty Movement descended onto Washington D.C. in the hundreds of
thousands this past summer (the Million Mob March). It was the announcement to a
corrupt establishment that a movement, not a party, was here to contest the
agenda, power, and business as usual of the entrenched rich and corrupt that
infest both Wall Street and Capitol Hill. It is a movement equally disgusted
with corporate bail outs and the socialization of medicine. And in many ways it
is not just the Right against the Left, but the little guy against the big guy,
the average American against the elite, and the lover of liberty against those
who seek to replace it with authoritarian regulation.
The real influence of the Tea Party movement, despite all the media coverage,
is yet to be seen. There is a major and nation wide effort to prepare to mount a
conservative takeover of the Republican primary and caucus process. Few show up
to these important but often neglected grassroots meetings and the fired up and
angry rank and file are not just here to oppose the Democratic Party but to make
serious inroads into the Republican Party. A third political party is not seen
as a viable option at this particular point in time but the takeover of one of
the existing ones is seen as possible.
The country club elite and RINO (Republicans In Name Only) who have held sway
in the GOP and controlled much of the party apparatus and candidate selection
process has no idea how to harness, control, or otherwise exert much pressure on
this grassroots uprising against politics as usual. The conservative resurgence
is happening despite the GOP, not because of it. Hopefully a rising tide will
lift all boats. It was not the conservative movement that lost in November but
perceived Bush Republicanism with its poor prosecution of two wars and own
policies of big government and big spending. And the Republican presidential
nominee was no conservative but in fact the embodiment of traditional party
politics and seen as the poster boy of those who sacrifice principle for the
sake of expediency and political power.
It will be interesting to see if the momentum fueled by the Tea Party has
already peaked or if we are seeing the birth of a long-standing, broad-based,
and truly influential phenomenon in the American political process or just a
short-lived outburst of frustration with Barack Obama.
The 9-12 Project and Tea Party groups are still in their political infancy
but have shown they do have some staying power, the ability to raise millions of
dollars to target specific races, and now the attention of both political
parties. Not bad for just some ordinary citizens using the internet to organize
some rallies and “crash” some townhall meetings on health care. Good for them.
I’m glad someone, anyone, is standing up and saying the kind of things that need
to be said. One can continue to wallow in ignorance and blind faith in the
agenda of the government or one can boldly stand in opposition and declare such
things unacceptable for a free people.
There have been complaints that the members of the Tea Party movement are
mostly white. Does it matter? Is perceived “diversity” now the only benchmark by
which we measure legitimacy of a cause? The movement is an uprising of the
ignored middle class. They are the ones who have the most to lose under Obama.
All races are welcome in the Liberty movement. You just have to be willing to
detach yourself from the teat of government handouts and dependency to be a
member.
If anything, the Tea Party rebellion is more about class, not race. In the
Great Recession it was the middle class that took a huge hit with severe job
losses and foreclosures in the millions. The middle class is the heart and soul
of the nation and when it feels ignored and betrayed it will strike out at those
who it sees as having abandoned it. It is they who are feeling the greatest
effects of both the recession and government policies. The rich will always be
rich, and the poor will be poor, (but not too much poorer due to the wide social
safety net we have constructed), but it is the middle class who have watched big
government bail out big business with their money even as they lost their jobs,
their savings, their retirement, and their homes. At the same time they see a
massive grab for power by a government who sees them as little more than someone
to be taxed and controlled. And occupying the oval office is the most leftist
and radical president to every hold the office. It is upon such fertile ground
that the message of the Tea Party and 9-12 groups has fallen with amazing
results. Their anger at Washington, big business, and big government has
provided a third force in politics, at least for the time being, that scares the
Left and challenges the political class and politics as usual.
Stunned by the virtual overnight mobilization and organization of an angry,
high-tech, middle class, right-wing uprising against Obama’s rapid march towards
European socialism, the Left has crashed from its hopey-changey high to find
itself faced with some serious problems. Progressivism is an ideology of
continual movement and motion. It is protest speeches and gatherings, lesbian
brown bag lunches, and marches about “the struggle” for (insert favorite pet
cause here – no blood for oil, civil rights, gay rights, animal rights, gender
equality, nuclear disarmament, saving the polar bears etc). With the pinnacle
finally reached by what they saw as the election of one of their own they seemed
to have finally collapsed from exhaustion as they declared a paradigm shift, the
exile of anyone to the right of Hillary to wander in the political wilderness
for a generation, and the much heralded thousand-year reign of He who would slow
the rising of the oceans.
They seemed to have passed the mantle of energy,
rebellion against the status quo, and anti-establishment anger to the peasants
who had been toiling in the fields and serving as the backbone of the state even
while the agitators agitated and the community organizers organized. The Tea
Party types have emerged from their “exile” in the political wilderness with a
righteous indignation that has frightened the ruling classes and shaken the
corrupt cabal that controls the capitol. Armed with tweets and facebook,
pitchfork and torch, they are the most visible image of the uprising of the
Right against those who would force us down the road to serfdom.
Latecomers, politicians, and opportunists attempt to glob onto any movement
but that doesn’t diminish the validity of their anger, the righteousness of
their outrage, or the power of their principles. The Tea Party movement is now a
vast amalgamation of political novices and virgin activists working side by side
with professional opinion setters and grizzled conservative veterans of the
culture wars. The question really is whether or not it is all “too little, too
late” or a popular outrage and uprising that is “just in nick of time.” That
answer is not yet known and remains to be seen.