Trouble brewing as millions join the Tea Party protest

What is the most popular political grouping in America right now? It's not the Democrats, who've long since come down from the Obama inauguration high of just 12 months ago. It's not the Republicans, for all their hopes of big gains in this November's mid-term elections. No, according to one respected poll, it's a ramshackle, hot-blooded, iconoclastic and thoroughly conservative movement called the Tea Party. The inspiration is ancient: that fabled popular uprising against remote and tyrannical government that took place in Boston harbour in December 1773. But the history of the modern Tea Party is even shorter than the reign of King Barack. Its birth is generally dated to 19 February, 2009, when an excitable market commentator for the CNBC business news cable network railed in a live broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange against the government's plan to bail out mortgage owners in over their heads. The scheme, said Rick Santelli, simply "promoted bad behaviour" by "losers." Far better, he went on amid loud cheers from traders, to "reward people who carry the water, instead of drink the water... are you listening, President Obama?" If not, Santelli warned, "we're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party". That was 11 months ago and basically, the tea party people have been at it ever since. They are, of course, detested and mocked by America's right-minded media and intellectual establishment...read more