"I have been to a tea party rally and I can assure you that everybody there was a patriotic. I only heard a couple of racist jokes. I also only heard a couple of people make death threats....the rest were fairly civilized. It is a movement about anger and there will be blood spilled if voices aren't heard. I think the Tea Party should get some seats in the House this year. Rush said Liberty was on the way out if the Dems and Libs get there way....I say the Tea Party is bringing it home. Sean said FREEDOM will ring from coast to coast and free speech is alive and well with the teabaggers. This country was founded by people that didn't want to pay taxes and that is what I am for....a tax free America with no government services or handouts. Beck said that the Framing Founders that Fathered the constitution would soil their pants if they saw this America. We are becoming Canada or worse yet France...soon we will only be the Swiss. We are screwed at that point. Get a bible and gun."
So there you have it. Their simple idea of balancing the budget may seem barmy, but it is common sense to many. Rather than ignoring the deficit, the answer is to cut the $ trillion military and security budget. No social programme needs to be cut. Unfortunately most US federal spending is welfare for the corporate sector, none more so than the 'defence' budget. Which brave patriot will stand up and say cut down this monstrous beast feeding on America? But if this comment represents the average tea party view, then it requires a strenuous fightback against it. No modern state can exist without taxes - this is no different than the promise of Osama bin Laden to take people back to the 7th century when only alms were paid to maintain the poor. It is a fantasy but a highly appealing one to Americans brought up believing in the rugged frontiersmen of old. I've heard it many times spoken by intelligent Americans.
The rich have had it all their way for a long time in America (as in most other so-called democracies). Now a fanatical reactionary group is on the rise. Compromise and appeasement will not work with this group. They will always take more, to achieve their agenda of a return to the early 19th century. The only question is what force or class in America can resist this, because it is nothing less than an intensification of class war against the poor and working/middle class. History shows this is typical of when a bourgeois society enters a severe crisis (think Germany in the 1920s). It is possible to imagine that the Bush era was merely a rehearsal for something much more radical to come.
In the 1930s the left and the working class were mobilised and FDR was elected as a populist democrat prepared to take on the rich oligarchy. In 2008 Obama was elected with the support of the financial oligarchy. Social democracy has been in retreat in the US since the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the election of Nixon in 1968. Democrats have never been the a party of the masses. Whereas FDR went on the offensive against the forces of reaction, Obama has been on the defensive from day one - he got elected saying he wanted to make peace with the Republicans and has never changed tact. The whole deficit 'drama' is something of a charade.
As one Chicago-ite puts it:
The "tea party" is rather small considering its effect on American politics. Even their largest rallies early on only drew a few thousand protesters, and most since have drawn mere dozens. However, the media has made sure to give complete coverage to every one of those rallies, making it look (on TV at least) as if they're a constant and overlarge presence. Meanwhile, left-leaning demonstrations and rallies numbering tens and hundreds of times as many go mainly unreported.
Furthermore, local security officials have also treated them with kid gloves, allowing them to openly carry firearms in the vicinity of the President, for example. Contrast this with the treatment of left wing protesters leading up to the 2008 Republican national convention, when organizers had their homes raided before the event, or the 2004 Republican convention, when protesters were rounded up en masse and detained without charges (on an NYC wharf) then later released with no due process whatsoever. Imagine how these tea party protesters would squawk if subjected to the treatment that left-leaning protesters deal with as a matter of course!
As to the money, the funding of the Koch brothers and many others is quite transparent. Pointing to Soros as a counterbalance is insufficient, since there are hundreds of deep-pocket donors on the right for every one of him.
They aren't a grassroots movement in any sense; their success is entirely driven by an establishment which has all but handed it to them.
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