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We're trying to restore this country back to a constitutional republic, which it was
founded on.
Removing straight socialism and things that leads to and I don't want that for my children.
I have children I would like to be able to put through college and tell them they still
have a chance to be anything they want to be in this country.
Really want our politicians to understand that they work for us, the citizenry.
I think they're getting too big. They're spending way too much money.
We've become happy with our prosperity, and our lives have become so busy. We've let it
slip through our fingers.
The Tea Party movement basically started with a protest led by a woman named Keli Carender
who sometimes blogs as Liberty Belle. She's a mom blogger in Seattle who organized a protest
against the Stimulus Bill in mid-February in Seattle. Word of that spread quite rapidly
through blogs and Twitter and Facebook and such.
That same weekend, two others were organized for the next day. One in Denver, and one in
Mesa, Arizona. Then the following Monday, Rick Santelli on CNBC gave his famous on-air
rant, where he called for having a Chicago Tea Party in July, and nobody wanted to wait
until July, but the name Tea Party stuck, and a wave of protests was organized just
a couple of weeks later with an even bigger follow on on April 15th, and from that, the
Tea Party movement was really born.
Though nearly everyone agrees on how the Tea Party began, confusion remains as to who Tea
Party members are.
These are ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and every generation has done that
from the founding of this country. You look at World War II. The Civil Rights era.
They are the people who get up at 8 o'clock and go to work and come home. They don't want
to be here. They want to be at home with their. children and with their families, but they're
here because they see that if they don't come out here, then their families aren't going
to have the same lives that they've had.
It is primarily composed, I think, of people who run small businesses, or work for small
businesses, who don't feel like they are sheltered by some big organization that's going ton
egotiate for them with the big shots in Washington and that they're being screwed as a result.
I think one of the dangers is that the Tea Party is a movement. It's not a political
party like the Republicans or the Democrats. The Republicans and Democrats - they have
to come up with solutions. They have to identify problems. Tea Party doesn't exactly have to
do that. It's a movement that talks about how government has abandoned them.
Both federal and state government, and they're angry and they make other people angry. [Inaudible
crowd cheering]
I think we should think of our founding fathers as still living on. The ideas were great.
The experiment was a unique experiment of individual liberty and freedom. We do not
want to lose that.
I 'm not sure exactly what that means. I do have a feeling that parts of the constitution
have been reinterpreted by courts over the last hundred years and are and are seen differently
now than they were, say, when the constitution was first written. But what part are they
talking about? Are these social programs?
Are these moral programs? Hard to say.
I think frustration's been building in the country for actually generations, and I think
that the Tea Party is the latest, I won't call it a culmination of that frustration,
but I think it's the latest manifestation. If you go back to the seventies, think about
the resonance of things like Paddy Chayefsky's Network, where everybody is sticking their
head out the window, yelling "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." You
know, the Tea Party is that in a sense, only with more concrete objective than just sticking
your head out the window and yelling.
In response to government bailouts, more than 1700 people rallied in Knoxville, Tennessee
on April fifteenth 2009, as part of a national Tea Party. For many, it was the first time
they had participated in political activism.
The Tea Party movement in Tennessee get's a lot of sympathy but, it's actually not especially
well organized compared to other states. And that's been Tennessee's history in general
with movements. Tennessee is a state full of individualists. They're not joiners. It's
really quite hard to get Tennesseans actively organized.
In 1999 to 2002 we had about three years or so of Tax Wars, where the state capital was
swarming with people carrying signs and screaming and yelling and, right wing radio hosts walking
around. They were all upset about the possibility of a State income tax, which reminds me something
of the Tea Party.
These people were as mad as they could be, and they came down here and, they won.
Let me give you that number again, it's 1-877 -762-8762. It gets you right in to the Capitol
switchboard, and it's toll free.
In order for this movement to stay alive, we have to step into phase 2, is what I call
it. Instead of going out protesting and waving your signs, angry about this or that, and
we had to become more professional about it.
They need a little bit more seasoning. A lot of those folks are new to politics. They don't
know their way around the political system, and they need to retain their outsider energy,
while picking up some of that insider savvy, and that's a very difficult thing to do.
And I think the Tea Party movement, and I'm sympathetic, thinks nobody's listening to
us, nobody's helping us, but beyond that they have a real difficult time knowing where to
go.
My husband and I were often sitting watching television and getting angry about what we
were hearing. And actually what spurred me to get started was a letter that a viewer
of Glen Beck had been written, And he had talked about needing to get up off the couch
and do something. and I realised, that was us too.
With things like blogs, and particularly Twitter and Facebook, the Tea Party is really self
organised. Having events, getting active, that is what really engages people 'cause,
you know, people listen to the radio. They get mad about what's going on. They watch
the news and they get mad about it, and there's no outlet really.
For them to make some kind of change.
Instead of participating in a Tea Party group, Dr. Aaron Margulies leads the Knoxville Chapter
of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Margulies and his group believe that change will happen
within the existing Republican party.
I'm always emailing or calling whatever level of politician from Senator all the way down
to our County Commissioners and saying, "Hey, this is going on and I don't support this
bill or I do support that bill". They are on my email list and when they do something
good, I let everyone in my group know that this Representative did something very well.
I did not join the Tea Party caucus in the congress, and I said at the time that while
I feel there are many good people in the Tea Party, and many of their views are consistent
with mine, particularly my biggest concern is the national debt and the deficits and
things like that, but, I'm a member of and very loyal to the Republican Party because
I'm grateful to the Republican Party for having giving me their nomination for Congress several
times over the years, and I believe that the Republican party is our best hope for the
future of this country.
I'm proud to be an American. I will not apologize for being an American. I will not apologize
for the American way of life, for our capitalism, for private party, for the things that create
the jobs and the prosperity that has made us the greatest nation in the history of mankind.
Very few people are openly criticizing them, because they have a message that in part is
right, is correct and that is that the government is not solving, the problems.
Nashville correspondent Tom Humphrey says the Tea Party has not had much impact in Tennessee
State Legislature There are eleven independents running for governor this year, and I don't
think any of them have seized this Tea Party vote, as such, to unify those votes. Instead
they seem to have branched toward the Republican Party.
Even though the man who won the Republican Primary, Bill Haslem, had much less Tea Party
support than Ron Ramsey our Lieutenant Governor, who had a lot.
We did endorse Ron Ramsey and no, he did not win the Governatorial Primary, but, we feel
like we kind of shake the debate. Every one of them was talking about the things that
we were pushing out to the public. They were talking about adopting the Arizona law. They're
talking about you know healthcare, we were actively going out and telling the public
about this stuff, and so that's what they were talking about, so Some people might see
that as a loss for us, but we really see it as a victory because that is a step in the
right direction.
Nobody can get everybody, although i will tell you President Reagan used to say that
you found somebody in politics that you agree with 80% of the time, that's that as good
as it can get, and I've added to that that even husbands and wives and best friends disagree
sometimes so you just can't get everybody.
When you look around and see the people around you, you know you are not alone in worrying
about the direction of the country. You know that you are not alone in worrying that we're
moving towards a direction that none of our forefathers could have possibly imagined,
and you know there are like-minded people that are going to help you make those politicians
hear you and make those politicians listen.
That is the value of the Tea Party. It's all of you together.
The Republicans are afraid of the Tea Partiers. They are afraid of them, and so instead of
being bold, they're afraid thatThey 're going to lose that Tea Party support, and those
people will stay home.
There is a possibility that they show up in force these elections, elect people they think
we're their friends. And then expect everything to change overnight, and when it doesn't they
get disappointed and they all go home. If they do that, they're not going to make lasting
change so they have to be a little bit more realistic about politics.
One of the things that the Tea Party Movement has done is that it's brought, probably millions
of people into politics who were politically tuned out in the past, and a lot of those
people are going to stay involved and that's going to make a difference.
If they could unify, and direct themselves, and have issue orientated presentations rather
than simply being mad at something, yeah, they would have a lot more impact. I don't
know if they'll get there or not, maybe.