Tea Party movement

This article is about the political movement. For the protest events themselves, see Tea Party protests. For the U.S. Congressional caucus, see Tea Party Caucus. For other uses, see Tea Party (disambiguation).

Tea Party protesters on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall at the Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12, 2009
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The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009. The movement formed in opposition to the policies of Democratic President Barack Obama[1][2] and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election[3][4] in which Republicans gained 63 House seats[5] and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.[6]

Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending.[7][8] The movement supported small-government principles[9][10] and opposed the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), President Obama's signature health care legislation.[11][12][13] The Tea Party movement has been described as both a popular constitutional movement[14] and as an "astroturf movement" purporting to be spontaneous and grassroots, but created by hidden elite interests.[15][16] The movement was composed of a mixture of libertarian,[17] right-wing populist,[18] and conservative activism.[19] It sponsored multiple protests and supported various political candidates since 2009.[20][21][22] According to the American Enterprise Institute, various polls in 2013 estimated that slightly over 10% of Americans identified as part of the movement.[23] The movement took its name from the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, a watershed event in the American Revolution, with some movement adherents using Revolutionary era costumes.[24]

The Tea Party movement was popularly launched following a February 19, 2009, call by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a "tea party".[25][26] On February 20, 2009, The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition also helped launch the Tea Party movement via a conference call attended by around 50 conservative activists.[27][28] Supporters of the movement subsequently had a major impact on the internal politics of the Republican Party. While the Tea Party was not a political party in the strict sense, research published in 2016 suggests that members of the Tea Party Caucus voted like a right-wing third party in Congress.[29] A major force behind the movement was Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative political advocacy group founded by businessman and political activist David Koch.[30]

By 2016, Politico wrote that the Tea Party movement had died; however, it also said that this was in part because some of its ideas had been absorbed by the mainstream Republican Party.[31] CNBC reported in 2019 that the conservative wing of the Republican Party "has basically shed the tea party moniker".[32]

  1. ^ "Tea Party Protesters March on Washington". ABC News. September 12, 2009.
  2. ^ "GOP breaks may stem from party resistance to all things Obama". PBS NewsHour. March 5, 2016.
  3. ^ Blake, Aaron (February 1, 2016). "The GOP's 'tea party' Class of 2010 is heading for the exits -- fast/". Washington Post.
  4. ^ Akin, Stephanie (September 26, 2018). "Tea Party Pioneer Says Democrats Can't Match That Wave". Roll Call.
  5. ^ Peoples, Steve (December 8, 2010). "Final House Race Decided; GOP Net Gain: 63 Seats". Roll Call.
  6. ^ Harris, Paul; MacAskill, Ewen (November 3, 2010). "US midterm election results herald new political era as Republicans take House". The Guardian.
  7. ^ Gallup: Tea Party's top concerns are debt, size of government The Hill, July 5, 2010
  8. ^ Somashekhar, Sandhya (September 12, 2010). Tea Party DC March: "Tea party activists march on Capitol Hill". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 5, 2011.
  9. ^ Good, Chris (October 6, 2010). "On Social Issues, Tea Partiers Are Not Libertarians". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
  10. ^ Jonsson, Patrik (November 15, 2010). "Tea party groups push GOP to quit culture wars, focus on deficit". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved September 25, 2018.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Roy, Avik. April 7, 2012. The Tea Party's Plan for Replacing Obamacare. Forbes. Retrieved: March 6, 2015.
  13. ^ Cohen, Tom (February 27, 2014). "5 years later, here's how the tea party changed politics". CNN.
  14. ^ Somin, Ilya (May 26, 2011). "The Tea Party Movement and Popular Constitutionalism". Northwestern University Law Review. Rochester, NY. SSRN 1853645.
  15. ^ Monbiot, George (October 25, 2010). "The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.
  16. ^ Nesbit, Jeff (April 5, 2016). "The Secret Origins of the Tea Party". Time.
  17. ^ Cite error: The named reference libertarian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference populist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Conservatism was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference deseret was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference economist was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference sfexaminer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference realspin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ "Boston Tea Party Is Protest Template". UPI. April 20, 2008.
  25. ^ Etheridge, Eric (February 20, 2009). "Rick Santelli: Tea Party Time". New York Times: Opinionator.
  26. ^ Pallasch, Abdon M. (September 19, 2010). "'Best 5 minutes of my life'; His '09 CNBC rant against mortgage bailouts for 'losers' ignited the Tea Party movement". Chicago Sun-Times. p. A4.
  27. ^ "Tea Party: Palin's Pet, Or Is There More To It Underneath". April 15, 2014. Archived from the original on April 15, 2014.
  28. ^ "Founding Mothers and Fathers of the Tea Party Movement," by Michael Patrick Leahy Archived January 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, retrieved November 10, 2016.
  29. ^ Ragusa, Jordan; Gaspar, Anthony (2016). "Where's the Tea Party? An Examination of the Tea Party's Voting Behavior in the House of Representatives". Political Research Quarterly. 69 (2): 361–372. doi:10.1177/1065912916640901. S2CID 156591086.
  30. ^ "Americans for Prosperity". FactCheck.org. June 16, 2014. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
  31. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  32. ^ Belvedere, Matthew J. (March 15, 2019). "'It's their turn' – former GOP House Speaker John Boehner says Democrats are having their own tea party-like moment". CNBC.