Sandra Neish
Jack Manhattan
Harvey Wallbanger
I was raised to consistently believe:
There were only two places where tea came from:
1. My Mama’s Sweet Tea
2. Long Island
Now, this right wing, pseudo-fascist movement want to debase and forever curse the high monitor that is “tea.” These so-called “Tea Baggers” are taking a beautiful moment in United States History, the recognition by the Yankees that they were forever doomed to be inferior to their Southern cousins in the art of making tea (they serve it HOT up there!). They were so ashamed that they dressed up as Indians to sneak aboard a ship in Boston Harbour and threw all the tea overboard. These new “Tea Baggers” are not interested in my Mama’s Sweet Tea (yes, around here it is a proper noun), a sacrilege in itself. They are interested in starting a Taliban style government here dictating morality to the rest of society.
Now, they will say that they are just fiscally conservative. They will say that they are against the Stimulus Package, and CEO bonuses in the wake of the financial crisis. All that sounds good, except that they are backed by the most conservative PACs and think tanks.
And they are not even coherently organized. They want the Articles of Confederation back in force, and they want stronger States Rights but, but at what cost? The problem is that fiscal conservativism has been forcibly tied to the Evangelical morality and social conservatism. I am all for cutting back on some government spending, God knows they could find a few hundred million if they tried. I am against the destruction of the welfare state simply so Junior can get a bigger TV, or Mom and Pop can retire to Boca a little sooner.
There are three main groups:
The Tea Party Patriots are a national organization that claims to have over 1000 local chapters, run with the help of Freedomworks, a conservative non-profit led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
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.
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, as well as the fact that Palin was apparently paid $100,000 USD for her appearance. Palin has said she will donate the fee to unspecified conservative causes.
President Obama responded to the Tea Party Protests with the following:
“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… are going to have to tighten our belts, but we’re going to have to do it in an intelligent way… 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.”
It is clear that this is a reaction to Obama’s promises to enlarge the government for the purposes of keeping the American people covered in healthcare and in social services that are vital to too many for the government to simply remove them. The movement will stay around, and the Evangelicals will continue to push for these public events to ensure that the obstructionist politicians in Washington can continue to pretend that they are doing something “for the people”, while in reality they are handing out Stimulus money like candy in their districts and getting pictures taken at the groundbreakings it made possible.
