2008 Campaign or Lection

¶ … Tea Party: Social Movement, Special Interest Group, or Real Political Party

On February 19, 2009 CNBC's Rick Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and ranted against a proposal by the Obama Administration to subsidize the mortgages of homeowners facing foreclosure. (Infoplease.com) During this monologue, Santelli suggested that he wanted to organize a "tea party" which would dump derivative securities into Lake Michigan. After the video went viral on the internet, Tea Party protests began to emerge all across the nation. The following April 15th, Tax Day, hundreds of individual protests sprang up generating attendances in the thousands. In the following months individual Tea Parties organized across the United States culminating in a Tea Party Convention in February 2010. The Tea Party is a diverse group with many diverse organizations without any recognized authority. While the Tea Party is not a political party in the legal sense, it is a social movement acting as an interest group in sending a political message.

The Tea Party is more a sup-group of the Republican Party supplemented with a large percentage of Independent voters. Because so much of the Tea Partier's philosophy is similar to the Republican's, many of that party, like Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachman (R-Minn.) have openly embraced the Tea Party directly supporting their message of smaller government, less taxes, and less interference in private matters. But unlike the Democrats and Republicans, the Tea Party has no national organization and therefore no legal standing as a political party in the traditional sense.

The rise of the Tea Party and it's general membership can give some insight into it's nature. It was a spontaneous grass-roots uprising of a portion of the American citizenry who were opposed to the Progressive agenda of the Obama Administration. President Obama had proposed sweeping legislation aimed at increasing the scope and power of the federal government. Along with this came a massive increase in federal spending and the subsequent increase in the federal debt. In response to these socio-economic changes, many American felt the need to express their displeasure. These people coalesced around the idea of the Tea Party and created a social movement which sought to stop the economic policies of an American Presidential Administration.

Since it's inception, the Tea Party has been actively promoting it's interests in government across this nation. From State legislatures to the U.S. Congress, the power of the Tea Party has been felt in legislation aimed at curbing government spending. The lack of a centralized authority has allowed individual Tea Party groups to focus on local issues. In Wisconsin, the Tea Party was influential in the election of Governor Scott Walker and their insistence on less government spending led to the recent controversy over unions and their collective bargaining rights. This has yet to be fully resolved. (Washington Post)

In Washington D.C., the effect of the Tea Party was to nearly shutdown the federal government. Many supporters of the Tea Party elected to Congress recently threatened a government shutdown over the current 2011 budget. While many sought to placate the Tea Party with talk of $100 million in cuts, the subsequent lowering of this number enraged the grass-roots level membership of the Tea Party, causing many in Congress to threaten to vote against the compromise legislation because it did not cut enough.