When Rick Santelli called for a new TEA party from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in February 2009 TEA party groups around the nation began to spring up. Mostly made up of people tired of the big government bailouts and those calling for fiscal restraint, the TEA party became home to many fiscal conservatives.
Over time (as I have said many times on this blog) the Ron Paul movement began to infiltrate the organizations and take over the TEA party. Not all original members stayed. Some who were looking for a vehicle by which to let Washington hear from angry taxpayers soon saw an effort to convert the TEA party into a libertarian organization. And of course to many conservatives, libertarians were really just "liberals-light".
Over time the TEA party concept morphed into a Ron Paul support organization.
But this was not the intention of many of the founding members. Now, with Ron Paul no longer suited up for the political battlefield, the TEA party has devolved into a support group for Ron Paul acolytes.
A number of articles and books give credit to Ron Paul for being the father of the TEA party. But how many people who joined TEA party groups which proudly announced that they had no central leader and followed no central doctrine, thought they were signing up for the Ron Paul movement when they became involved?
And if there really was supposed to be no central leader and no central doctrine which defined the TEA party movement, then if Ron Paul really planned this all along, were people being tricked?
You might note from some of my postings that I was in favor of the TEA party early on. But I saw what was happening and soured on it pretty quickly.
Don't forget that Ross Perot's hatred of George W. Bush had a lot to do with giving us Bill Clinton. Perot, like Paul, is a Texan and if you study their personality traits they have much in common.
And one thing that the Ron Paul movement shares with the Ross Perot bunch is that they like being the fly in the GOP ointment. Ron Paul is on record making it very clear that he wants to fundamentally transform the republican party. And why, you might ask?
Why not just form a third party of your own? The answer is simple really. The republican party is already in existence, it has structure, membership and money. If Ron Paul took over the republican party a large percentage of the membership would remain members, some not even fully aware of the sea change which took place. His movement would have effectively conquered the party and he would have the legitimacy of it's name and place in history for himself as the spoils of that battle.
And that is what has happened with the TEA party. His movement seized upon the organization, the exuberance and the name of a group getting tons of media attention. And now they seem to control it.
No longer is the TEA party a loosely organized group of concerned citizens, it is the adopted child of Ron Paul who proudly proclaims to be its father.
Did YOU know that this was what you were joining when you became a TEA party member? Look around, some did.
Republican Party take over?
What are you talking about?
If the party doesn't like the Ron Paul crowd, then kick them out.
All leadership positions within the party are selected or elected by their own members or the party leadership.
and as a side note, The first modern day Tea Party event that kicked all this off was in Dec. 2007 and it was an event to raise money for Ron Paul's 2008 campaign.
You are chronologically and party procedure ignorant on this one.
Posted by: Mr. Scott Ryan | February 04, 2013 at 02:54 PM
You are clearly confused. There is no tea party membership. No one signed up for it. That is even more absurd than saying there is a leader! There are indeed leaders, even if they are not official leaders. Everyone from Joe the Plumber to Sarah Palin to Grover Norquist to Dick Armey to Glenn Beck to Ron Paul.
And if you think the tea party was co-opted by the Ron Paul movement, you truly have your blinders on. If anything it was co-opted by the same loser conservatives that can't even defeat the worst president in history. Ron Paul was at least as instrumental (and certainly earlier) than any single other unofficial tea party leader in the start of the movement. He held a Tea Party rally in 2007 in Boston on the anniversary of the first tea party. He used the leftover funds from his 2008 campaign to start Campaign for Liberty, easily the first tea party organization and one of the leading groups in the 2009 protests. Freedom Works (always adherents to Austrian economics as well as libertarianism), an organization founded in 2004 but rooted in the 1980s was also one of the first groups to organize tea party rallies. As was Americans for Tax Reform (another group originally in Paul's camp on the issue of taxes), founded in the 1980s.
That is not to say there weren't other, perhaps entirely independent groups involved, fairly early on. But to assert there is anything below board going on here is reaching and groping for one final dig against Ron Paul. And to assert that one group or person using his influence has any effect on a so-called membership is the height of stupidity.
Posted by: Henry Moore | February 01, 2013 at 12:24 PM
Tea that has been sittin around a while is cold and bitter.
Posted by: K Elaine | January 31, 2013 at 01:32 PM