The Tea Party: A Ground Swell

The origin of the ultra-conservative tea party movement is surprising because it was unscripted: On Feb. 19, 2010, Rick Santelli, a journalist specializing in Chicago Stock Exchange price developments for CNBC, expressed his anger with those who profiteer from federal policies.

These people, he asserted, were buying houses using state-subsidized mortgages; they were abusing the system without incurring any penalty at the expense of honest citizens who pay their taxes on time and pay off their mortgages. It was time to act as strongly as possible against U.S. President Barack Obama and his policy of easy property access. So why not organize, in Chicago, a protest like that of the tea party in the month of July?

The word was out: Rick Santelli proposed creating, in the 21st century, a riot similar to that organized by American revolutionaries in 1773 to protest against taxes imposed by the British monarchy on the export of tea to North American colonies. The riot, ironically called the Tea Party, consisted of dumping tea bags seized by insurgents from U.S. and British ships in to the port of Boston.

Patriotic Rebellion

The calling for a tea party in 2010 symbolized a patriotic rebellion against the excesses of the federal state, against “Big Government,” the modern reincarnation of an abusive and wasteful monarchy.

This bizarre throwback to U.S. history, a re-appropriation of a distant past dropped at random by an overexcited journalist, was cleverly seized by conservative activists, closely related to the Republican Party, who decided to use the tea party label to indicate their anger with the Washington establishment. Highly decentralized, lacking political heavyweights and composed of amateurs who wanted to do politics differently, the movement appeared fleeting and doomed to failure because of its inconsistencies.

Yet in six months the organization had gained legitimacy, based on a surprising electoral success in six states during the senatorial primary elections in August. The credibility of the movement was reinforced by the rallying of conservative personalities like Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, and Jim DeMint, a Republican senator in South Carolina, who saw themselves reflected in a current that had at first appeared foreign.

“Get ’em out now!” and “Repeal the Pork” are the key slogans of a revolt which falls perhaps more directly within the historical tradition of “Anti-federalism” — a tradition upheld by opponents of the Federal Constitution, drafted in Philadelphia in 1787. The anti-federalists’ fear was that a central government that was too strong would undermine citizens’ individual liberties, threatened with ruin by new federal taxes created to keep parasites in power, imbued with greatness and consumed with aristocratic pretensions.

“This power,” wrote Brutus, the pseudonym of one of the leaders of the anti-federalist movement, “will introduce itself into every corner of the city, and country…to all these different classes of people, and in all these circumstances, in which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them, will be GIVE! GIVE!” (December 27, 1787)

The tea party activists, like their anti-federalist forefathers and Ronald Reagan supporters in the 1980s, or those of Ross Perot (an independent candidate in the 1992 presidential election), want less government, fewer taxes and a return to balanced budgets. They denounce the costly bailout of banks, the $787 billion (556.7 billion Euros) economic stimulus, spending induced by the health care program reform and planned tax increases for the wealthy, whose incomes exceed $250,000 per year. This insurgent political platform is clearly popularity-seeking and contradictory because it simultaneously advocates lower taxes, the abolition of inheritance tax and reducing the budget deficit, while maintaining a high level of spending for military and key social benefits.

The most extreme among the movement advocate privatizing welfare, abolishing progressive taxes, abandoning the stimulus package passed by Congress, closing the Departments of Education and Energy and, in short, putting every man for himself into general use, without the slightest regard for society’s most vulnerable: children, the unemployed, the sick, the elderly and new immigrants. Reagan once denounced “welfare queens,” who took advantage of state subsidies in the black ghettos while driving, he claimed, a Cadillac.

Tea party activists think of themselves as surrounded by these “welfare queens” everywhere and all the time. They live in fear of an omnipresent “Big Government” that will soon ruin America. But they do not offer a way out of the current crisis but quite the opposite: an abrupt halt of state spending this fall is the best way to prolong the recession.

Tea party candidates are amateurs who refuse typical political jargon, at their own risk. A few significant examples: Christine O’Donnell, of Delaware, who won in Republican senatorial primaries against a much more experienced politician, Mike Castle, who was supported by more moderate elephants (the animal emblem of the Republican Party).

Delusional Opinions

Christine O’Donnell, like Sarah Palin, speaks spontaneously about anything and everything, without evidence of any critical retrospect. Hence these statements taken from the press: masturbation should be banned because it is a form of adultery; proof that Darwin was wrong: you do not see any monkeys turning into human beings; condoms are unnecessary: they do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases; scientists have created mice with brains that work like a human’s, etc.

By saying too much or denying comments she has made in the past, Ms. O’Donnell has become the laughingstock of the media, reducing her chances of success in the November elections. Sharron Angle, the victorious Tea Party candidate in the Senate primary in Nevada, hopes to prevail against Harry Reid, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate.

Like Ms. O’Donnell, Angle is a political neophyte. A fierce critic of the Republican establishment, and “just as much a spendthrift as the Democrats,”* she wants to abolish most public assistance schemes. She also opposes mandatory medical coverage for autistic children and pregnant women under the pretext that these conditions are not diseases. Finally, she is convinced that Obama is a dangerous “socialist” whose sole purpose is to establish a European-style welfare state.

Of course, tea party heroes do not all harbor such delusional opinions. Very conservative candidates for governor such as Joe Miller in Alaska, Paul Rand in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, and Rob Portman in Ohio all have a good chance of winning. In fact, the groundswell movement of the Tea Party is so strong that Republicans can hope to win the majority of seats in the House of Representatives, according to recent polls in October. Such a victory would lead to a complete legislative paralysis.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.