Until the Tea Party movement showed its teeth in the Massachusetts senatorial election, it was best known to its wildly enthusiastic adherents. The “MSM,” their derisive term for the mainstream media, had all but ignored it, except for Fox News, as an upstart that was going nowhere.
That was a mistake. The major newspapers, news magazines and broadcast news quickly began playing catch-up. One of the first, David Brooks of The New York Times, foresaw that it could conceivably “outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics.”
The movement’s start was certainly crude. Most authorities date it from Feb. 19, 2009, when Rick Santelli, co-host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” delivered a five-minute rant against President Barack Obama’s expensive programs, asked if listeners wanted to subsidize losers’ mortgages and urging them turn out and shout their outrage at a Chicago Tea Party in July. It was a true-life re-enactment of a famous passage in the 1976 movie “Network,” in which a news anchorman stirred up a political mob scene by shouting, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
The voters are angry, indeed, at taxes, Congress, President Obama and most other politicians of both parties. Calls for protest have caught on.
Nationally, we can expect a big crowd in back of the White House on April 15 for the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party in Washington, D.C. Tea Party Express ran a similar gathering at the U.S. Capitol in September featuring Nazi symbolism and a poster of President Obama as an African witch doctor.
In Maine, Tea Party organizers are united in calling for big turnouts for April 15 protest meetings in Augusta, Portland and Bangor, from 1 to 3 p.m. in front of the federal courthouse, as well as the demonstration in Washington.
But the Maine organization of Tea Party Patriots is skeptical about a Tea Party Convention planned for Feb. 4-6 in Nashville, Tenn., with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as keynote speaker. The Maine Tea Party coordinator, Andrew Ian Dodge, reflects the view of the national organization and will have nothing to do with the Nashville convention. Mr. Dodge is put off by Ms. Palin’s reported $100,000 fee and by the $550 ticket price for the event: “To me it smacks of bandwagon jumping and is just a way of milking the movement for cash.” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is “reviewing” her decision to introduce Ms. Palin.
Movements such as this have often erupted in economic hard times. In the 1930s, in the depth of the Great Depression, Dr. Francis E. Townsend enrolled millions in his plan for a $200-a-month old-age pension plan.
The Tea Party movement, despite its rough start and current splintering, could play an important part in national and local politics, targeting liberals and moderates in both major parties. Rage is powerful and unpredictable.