What is the Tea Party, exactly?

As in, what is their main motivation? Are they a populous movement to increase citizen involvement in politics, a conservative reaction to healthcare legislation, or just what happens when a Democrat gets into the White House?

I find it hard to believe it's JUST healthcare; considering the number of Tea Partyers who benefit from Medicare they must put something in the medicine that makes them resistant to irony. I'd be inclined to believe it's about the people becoming more involved, but I've heard vanishingly few Tea Party stories wherein it's just "I wanted to make a difference in my country by taking office instead of just voicing my opinion".

Thoughts?

It actually came months before the health care bill was announced. It started as a protest on tax day 2009 about heavy taxation on middle class and upper-middle-class families as compared to other economic classes. (In fact, the early protests called out tax cuts on the rich. Lots of anti-Wall Street signs.) Its was attended by a mixture of libertarians and economically-conservative Republicans with a few economic-moderates. It was supported by much of the Republican party base but you could tell the difference between the two - one never talked about social issues.

It wasn't spectacularly large.

Then came the health care bill. Around August or October, there was another protest in Washington that year and was attended by many of the same people. At this point, social-conservatives joined in the protest.

Much of the old people who went to these protests holding signs that said "Don't Touch My Medicare" were likely protesting the proposed cuts to Medicare funding so that more money could be freed for the rest of the population. Keep in mind that the Tea Party at this time was a grab-bag of economically conservative elements and people afraid of Medicare being cut.

The Tea Party is now the more reactionary wing of the Republican Party base. John Boehner seems to not particularly like them.

edited 1st Mar '11 8:44:43 AM by Completion

They're an astroturf group created by Fox News, so they could get footage of people carrying signs and say, "Look, they're marching in the streets against Obama!" They aren't real conservatives, any more than the Republican establishment is.

The origins of the Tea Party weren't exactly astroturfing. The original tax day protests were heavily promoted by Fox News, but a lot of local organizations organized and promoted the protests.

In addition to that, the health care protest, while also heavily promoted Fox News and political interest, wasn't entirely astroturfed. There were a lot of people who were genuinely concerned about that bill. The amount of people who attended was obviously inflated by the fact that Fox heavily promoted it, but the anger and the reasons for the protest were genuine.

Glenn Beck's protest the very next year around the same time was completely astroturfed.

Basically, the Tea Party was a couple of organizations that had genuine concerns. Then they received some press coverage by Fox. Larger organizations latched on and funded it. Once the big organizations came around, it was an astroturf organization. Just because Fox covered it doesn't necessarily mean that it was astroturfed.

The Tea Party in 2009 wasn't astroturfed - those were real people who were actually pissed off. The Party in 2010 was astroturfed when the Republic Party, corporations that could benefit from their beliefs, and Fox News all decided that they could use them to help their election/bottom-line/viewership.

Were health insurance companies astroturfing the Tea Party? I can't remember, but I do remember that the Tea Party was wanting to remove the pre-healthcare bill mandate that medium and large companies must provide health coverage, which is how the vast majority of health insurance is provided in the US.

I was fine with them until they went crazy; back to being in the middle.

Well the most original elements of them were actually quite reasonable and were lambasting the general problems of America:

• corruption and waste which if eliminated opens the possibility of lowering taxes
• dealing with deficit to reduce interest payments which again opens the possibility of lowering taxes

The social elements hijacked the movement and now what you have is this reactionary social group combined with an extreme form of anti-taxation in the vein of 'starve the beast' or whatever it is they say.

So, a good idea ruined when it came into contact with real politics. Unfortunate.

This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping.
Stay on topic, please.

My impression is the Tea Party's #1 issue is anti - big government; they origionally wanted to stop funding government bailouts using deficit spending, but after the health care bill came out, that became the new symbol of big government.

In early 2010 Republicans feared the Tea Party would split the Republican party and make liberal Democrats a permanent plurality, and the Tea Party rank - and - file feared the Republicans would try to take them over and subvert their principles. So local tea party leadership tried to take over the local republican party instead. To their credit, they chose to use the Republican primary midterm election to do it. However, in doing so, they gave the pro - business elite, conservative celebrities, etc., their opportunity to co - opt the movement.

You had this wierd situation where the Republican political elite (e.g., John Boehner) were fighting their own pundits (e.g., Glen Beck) who saw the tea party as having what conservatives were looking for. By November, the party had closed ranks out of a sense of common interest if nothing else. However the split is still there.

I saw an interesting analysis on this: "In Europe, people don't vote for a particular member. They vote for or against a prime minister, or to send a message. In the House, the Republicans won because the Tea Party succeeded in getting enough people to vote to send a message to the president. In the Senate, Democrats succeeded in keeping the election about the individual candidates, and thus the Tea Party caused the Republicans to loose the Senate."

In other words, the Tea Party is grass - roots, but they fail badly when it comes to leadership.

Yeah, the Tea Party doesn't have much pull politically, at least not yet. They're out there to attract the cameras and swell the crowds, but really their candidates are just token republicans who are piggy-backing on the brand name.

What's really sad is that everyone's votes are just as disenfranchised as ever. Having a Tea party doesn't eliminate the fact that democracy ends on election day. Or how the Republicans all creepily vote as a single hive mind, like a bizarro communist party.

edited 4th Mar '11 9:36:51 AM by johnnyfog

As of now, there just really loud republicans that are more Right then middle, unfortunatally. theres also a "coffee" party running around that basically what the tea party started out as, try looking them up.

Just a question. How does the religious fundamentalists fit into this?

I don't remember the exact link, but a study showed that the #1 predictor of Tea Party membership was believing that religion should play a bigger role in government.

The Tea Party is a myraid of Conservatives. Libertrians, fundies, anti-war voters, weed legalization activists, and so on.

weed legalization? wut?

Fundies AND anti-war voters together?

Once I saw a Tea-Partier carrying some sign that read "Keep government out of my Social Security". I think they're nuts ever since they got corrupted by the "Christian Right" and all the anti-immigration extremists. Not to mention birthers.

edited 9th Sep '11 9:17:24 PM by LilPaladinSuzy

A miserable little pile of reactionaries

Seriously though, as has been brought up by now, they were a party that started as a backlash with decent and completely valid reasons, and eventually got appropriated by idiots who turned them into a shambling caricature of Right Wing Xtreme.

edited 9th Sep '11 9:25:31 PM by Pykrete

I'm not joking. The Tea Paty is a diverse movement with a lot of different philosphies in it.

My dad says that all the crazy protesters in the Tea Party are actually paid off by the bankers to make the Tea Party look bad.

The Tea Party was a group of well-intentioned but possibly ill-informed activists that attempted to exercise their right to assembly and protest, but were subsequently not taken seriously for their... ridiculous... choice of symbolism and naming.

And then they were invaded by people of a wholly-different cloth, and are now merely an astroturfed arm of corporate interests that just might be more than the executives bargained for.

It's sad, really. Idealism corrupted for the ends of cynics...

@Erock

I don't think you are joking, it just seems weird.

The Tea Party started out with a good idea and good goals. They were people tired of Congress' bullshit.

Then the crazies mixed into the party and pretty much tanked the party's legitimacy in my eyes.

No, actually the Tea Party start out with a bad goal and bad intention. If people don't remember, the primary trigger of it was a proposed plan to help underwater homeowners as a way to get through the financial meltdown. Even if you think it was a bad idea, the entire anger behind it was that it was helping "undeserving losers" who didn't deserve help.

What is it however? To be honest, it's an expression of entitlement and desired privilege, that they feel as they should be the politically and socially dominant group forever and ever and the election of Obama was pissing on that. It's the same ethos, tone, and attitude as people had (not as many people however) during the Clinton years.

It's more prevalent now because of well..Fox News, for one, but mostly due to American Christianity moving in a direction that fostered increasing amounts of social privilege and entitlement.

edited 10th Sep '11 3:36:37 AM by Karmakin

I rememebr when the Tea party was sane, then some crazy fuckers ruined it for all of us.