During his interview with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (11/3/13), NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory offered up this fanciful account of the Tea Party movement’s origins during a discussion about internal GOP fights:
Look, the reason there is a Tea Party right now goes back to President Bush. I actually think it goes back to the beginning of a more robust security state after 9/11; the government expands to deal with security. There’s also Medicare Part D. There’s a lot of government spending, and then there’s ultimately the bailouts, which conservatives start to rebel against. And then President Obama continues that.
This is the kind of rhetoric Tea Party figures like to trot out when critics note that a movement that claims to be concerned about government spending was sure quiet (or nonexistent) during the Bush years. But Gregory arguably manages to take it one step further by linking the right-wing movement to a critique of the national security state and Medicare Part D.
Which Tea Party movement is this?
As a refresher: The movement really geared up in the wake of comments by CNBC host Rick Santelli (2/19/09), who was outraged by government plans to offer help to distressed homeowners (i.e., not the Wall Street bailouts). His call for “tea party” protests against policies to help these “losers”–issued just a month after Obama’s inauguration–resulted in the first wave of such protests. Glenn Beck, then a host at Fox News Channel, took up the cause too. Some of the most visible examples of Tea Party activism were the “town hall” protests against what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act. The Tea Party “brand” was adopted by many well-known, well-connected figures in the Republican Party, like Dick Armey.
What did they all want? It wasn’t always clear; as Steve Rendall and I wrote (Extra!, 5/10), the movement is full of political contradictions that media often failed to explore, but
there’s one consistency they ignore in painting Tea Partiers as wholesome adherents to small government, constitutional principles and so on: the movement’s singular and often racialized loathing of Barack Obama.
Corporate pundits have spent years coming up with more flattering descriptions of the Tea Party than what they most clearly seem to represent. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said they “began as a protest against Republicans for being soft on deficits.” His colleague David Brooks wrote that the “Tea Parties are right about the unholy alliance between business and government that is polluting the country.” Someone should alert the Koch Brothers!
Newsweek‘s Jon Meacham once wrote that the Tea Party could be good for everyone, since it was about “the recovery of the spirit of the American Founding.” Time‘s Michael Crowley suggested the movement was animated by disgust with Wall Street; they believe that “Washington and Wall Street are in bed together, colluding for power and profit at the expense of the little guy.” He also argued that Tea Partiers are about calling out “an elite Washington–New York establishment that lies to the public to cover for policies that enrich the wealthy and strengthen the powerful.”
This is a remarkably charitable view of an obviously right-wing movement that began just as soon as a black Democrat took office. That’s not to say that all Tea Party activists are motivated by a racialized loathing of Barack Obama; but to suggest that the Tea Party exists to express dissatisfaction with both major parties and the national security state, and that Obama’s presidency just so happened to coincide with the rise of this movement, stretches even the most active imagination.
Think about what the corpress says about those who actually do decry “the unholy alliance between business and government that is polluting the country”
Or that “Washington and Wall Street are in bed together, colluding for power and profit at the expense of the little guy”
Or “an elite Washington–New York establishment that lies to the public to cover for policies that enrich the wealthy and strengthen the powerful.”
That is, when they deign to say anything about them at all.
It sounds kind of like western religion if you ask me. It’s anything one wants it to be.
IF I thought for a moment that the political pundits mentioned were even the least bit sincere in their opinions about the Tea Party, I would suggest that they were using the TP as a Rorschach test, projecting onto it whatever their ‘id’ beliefs are. But alas, it’s far more cynical than that – – – they are simply ‘going along to get along’, repeating whichever bromides and cliches which offer the least possibility of upsetting anyone who could affect their paycheck and perks.
David Gregory is absolutely correct. The tea party was started in 2007 in response to Bush administration policies. When Rick went on his rant he was talking about us as he was a friend of the movement. So Gregory is 100% correct. Please check our About page for details videos etc http://www.nhteapartycoalition.org
It is exactly correct to suggest that the Tea Party exists to express dissatisfaction with both major parties and the national security state, and that Obama’s presidency just so happens to coincide with the rise of this movement.
The groups you see on TV — TPP, TPE, TPN, FW, TOWNHALL, and others are GOP PACS and not legit. Tea parties do not collect money for GOP consultants and don’t involve in campaigns or elections. What you see on TV are fakes promoted by the establishment GOP and we originals want no part of either party. Our job is to expose both.
The Tea Party is not a grassroots movement. See the DVD “The Billionaires’ Tea Party–How Corporate America is Faking a Grassroots Revolution” at http://www.mediaed.org. The film shows the Koch Brothers speaking a Tea Party training sessions.
Sorry Barbara Mullin, but the Koch Bros fund AFP, and that’s not a tea party. They were no where around when we held the first one in 2007. We still to this day get no funding. They give workshops to ‘conservatives’ so yes, some people who attend may consider themselves ‘tea party’. Even the the Koch Bros were surprised to hear that people erroneously think they had anything to do with our formation. It was the Ron Paul revolution an nothing else, young libertarians, who tossed the tea in the harbors on that day and Rick was talking about us ever since as was Peter Schiff.
As several posting here suggest, the Tea Party is an amorphous group with no clear positions or purpose. Steve Coll, writing in last week’s New Yorker, suggests that may destroy the Republican Party. It’s well worth reading:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/11/04/131104taco_talk_coll
Great article and I completely agree.
And yet I still have trouble figuring out how the “TEA” party continues to allude that it is for the American People when in fact, everything they have been against has been for the common man, while everything they had ‘stood for’ has been for the enrichment of the corporate entities, including lower taxes on the Corporations that are stealing the jobs and economy from the common man.
I have yet to see any ‘tea party’ member or PAC stand up and say ‘we would like to see better wages and benefits for workers’, it is always “we want to lower taxes on corporations”. Which is exactly the very opposite of the “Boston Tea Party” Group who tossed the tea in the bay, because the English Government lowered the taxes on tea from their corporations, and were putting the common man out of business; just as the “Supposed” republicans are doing in this day and age.
It is another case of “Black/White”.
Every time I see David Gregory’s face the spirit of Jane Austen possesses me to say “insufferable”! Like most pretty faces on TV, he has no sense of self. He is a consummate sell-out…
The information I have indictates that the tea party was meeting before the people knew about it. The video is at netflex and is called ” The billionaires Tea Party”. Any effort I ever have had to talk to a tea party person has always quickly gone to we do not wish to talk politics and it is the same thing when I end up talking to someone selling god. Once again they are sure they have found the one truth.