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Originally Posted by mikey_the_redneck
The movement was re-launched by Ron Paul back in 2008. Paul is a libertarian. He has now all but separated himself from the movement
That's partly true.
The tea party was originally against the wars, the spending and bail-outs, the attacks on the bill of rights (Patriot Act) etc..
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While Ron Paul is a Libertarian he basically had nothing to do with the Tea Party movement other than supporting their principles. The movement basically started in early 2008, coincidentally when Obama came into power. The Libertarians were against the wars, bail-outs, and Patriot Act but the Tea Party wasn't around during the Bush years when the wars started, the Wall Street bailout took place and the Patriot Act was launched. The Tea Party, at first was just a scattered collection of small groups around the country that supported fiscal conservatism, small-government, and legislation that was constitutionally based. That is, until the Tea Party Express and other Republican run Astro-turf groups took over the movement.
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The group is not centered around racism. That comes from people who watch too much Rachel Maddow on msnbc.
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I agree. In and of itself the party is not racist in nature. However, because they essentially believe that government shouldn't legislate things such as civil rights, they become a de facto voice for the power (ergo: white) establishment. To use the common vernacular: they are the man who is keeping the brother down.
Tangent Alert: I find Rachel Maddow gets a bad rep for being a liberal commie and the like. I find her to be fairly reasonable, very intelligent, well spoken and even somewhat moderate. However, in the current political atmosphere in the US a moderate liberal is considered extreme ironically because the Tea Party and right leaning Repubs have pushed the entire government even further to the right.
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The problem with the tea party is that most of their followers are stuck in the republican vs. democrat mindset. They are republican by nature, but they don't understand that both republicans and democrats are two sides of the same corporate coin.
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That's very true. What I find ironic is that the President with the best economic record in recent history (better than Reagan) is a Democrat: Bill Clinton. The Tea Partiers immediately caucused with the Republicans and even prior to that ended up in the Republican primaries even though there is little to no evidence that the Republicans share any of their core views.
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Now you got the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck hijacking the movement for their own personal gain. Palin does not really care about the tea party. She is a war mongering establishment republican, so the real message of the tea party is now dead.
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Unfortunately, almost every elected official associated with the Tea Party is nothing more than a Republican wearing a tea bag hat. That list include Bachman, Scott Brown and almost every other Tea Partier elected in 2010. The only exception that comes to mind is possibly Rand Paul.
This is an interesting litmus test, however. What we are seeing now is ideology meeting governence. How will the Tea Party principles hold up in an establishment that requires some level of pragmatic compromise? The recent near government shut-down is a good example. My guess is that by 2014 most, if not all, of the Tea Partiers will either be voted out or will become mainstream hard-right Republicans and the nation will once again shift it's focus to "family values"
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