Bitter Tea for Obama

As if the election of the first black president was not sufficient, today the American political scene is suffering another shock. The formation of the tea party has generated a new political revolution in the most powerful country in the world. And every time something like this happens, it spreads fear, misinformation and hasty judgment.

The tea party has been described as a populist-constitutionalist movement, and it takes its name from the group in Boston who initiated a revolution against the British Empire in 1773 as a rejection of its monopoly of the tea trade. Since then, this iconic incident has been seen as the utmost symbol of the fight against abusive taxes, a cause so supported in the United States that there exists a “tax day” which is marked by protests throughout the country. The contemporary political movement began during the Republican Convention in 2008 when Texas Representative Ron Paul used the idea as a central theme in his campaign to emphasize his criticism of the fiscal management in the Bush era.

In a country shaken by economic crisis, huge foreign debt and a Democratic administration that has astronomically elevated levels of government spending and government economic intervention, this small grassroots movement has received an unexpected boost. Generally associated with the Republican Party, and especially with the frugal economic politics of Ronald Reagan, the candidates supported by the tea party are achieving resounding victories in the face of current legislation. These triumphs are generating headaches for the Obama government as well as the traditional Republican structure. One of its candidates managed to win the Senate seat that was occupied by Ted Kennedy for decades, the symbol of American “progressivism.”

This has caused two phenomena: on one hand, the Democratic machine has launched a furious campaign against the movement, accusing it of racism, xenophobia and economic intransigence. On the other hand, the hardliners of the Republican Party, headed by ex-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, are trying to co-opt it for themselves. This has unleashed deep divisions within a scattered and unstructured movement whose raison d’être is to oppose traditional political ideas. This division has gotten to such a point that today people say there are two parallel movements, one with more conservative and religious roots headed by Palin, and another with more libertarian ideas, led by Paul.

In spite of the divisions, the movement has based its proposals on a series of 10 ideas, which revolve around controlling government spending, reducing and simplifying the fiscal burden, minimizing the country’s intervention in foreign affairs and rejecting Obama’s health care reform. Among the interviews that have been done to attempt to identify the nuclear ideas of this group, it stands out that 73 percent of members are “extremely bothered by government meddling in their private lives,” and a similar proportion pointed to the rise of their country’s foreign debt as their principal concern. Nevertheless, there is disagreement when asked about social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

But in order to understand the roots of this movement there is nothing better than to examine the thoughts of its creator, Ron Paul. In spite of being Republican, he was a tough opponent of Bush’s politics, in foreign policy (“No nation-building; don’t police the world.”) and the war in Iraq (he was the only Republican to vote against it), and in the economy, stating that, “If a Republican leaves a country with a deficit like this, what can be expected of a Democrat?”* In one of his recent speeches, Paul said, “What should the role of government be? It’s very simple: to protect our liberties so that people can take charge of their own lives; to eliminate all those taxes, regulations, and unnecessary wars. Its purpose is to allow people to free their creative energies and achieve excellence and virtue.”* These are words that seem to make a lot of sense not only for a world power troubled by economic problems, but also a small country looking for its place in the world.

*Editor’s Note: These quotes, while accurately translated, could not be verified.