Thursday, February 27, 2014

POWERLINE: Happy Birthday to the Tea Party

"There will be a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Tea Party today in Washington DC. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley gives a run down here. The Tea Party is the best thing to happen to American politics since the tax revolt of the 1970s. Paradoxically, its broader focus has made it both less easy to lead and organize effectively, and easier for liberal media to attack, such that polls show many voters in the middle have an unfavorable impression of the Tea Party even while they agree with many Tea Party points of view on individual issues. It was ever so in politics."

"In any case, on this fifth anniversary (and here’s to the next five years, where the Tea Party will be even more important), it’s worth savoring the famous Rick Santelli rant that got it all going (about four minutes long):

4 comments:

Unknown said...

The tea party is now an idea rather than anything tangible.

We demand a government that works for the people rather than against the people. Tax payers should have rights. Government should play a smaller role in our lives.

Happy birthday. May those basic ideas never die.

Michael Haz said...

You can bet that the big Tea Party anniversary rally will be peppered with provacateurs who will claim to be Tea Partiers, and who will, on cue, scream racist and sexist insults that can be used by a complicit media to proclaim the Tea Party a group of racists and sexists.

That is not an easily diagrammed sentence.

edutcher said...

Many Happy Returns.

Give 'em Hell.

bagoh20 said...

I've loved this movement from the start. American, respectful, responsible, adult, freedom loving, and open. The more it influences public policy the better a nation this will be. Like all groups and ideologies, it has some who overreach or get off point sometimes, but compared to all other pulls of gravity out there, it has the least of this, and it has the most sustainable and least offensive goals with the smallest faction of corruption. I don't have a membership card, bumper sticker, or tattoo, but I consider myself a Tea Partier, and I have since April of 2009. Happy Birthday!