What have you heard about the Tea Parties?

Most of us have had some experience with the Tea Party movement over the past year. Maybe you attended or organized a rally, watched one on t.v., or saw the media coverage given to these protests. You may have formed an opinion of this group of people through experience, or through the lens of others' opinions, good or bad. Recent attention to this movement has again revived, with the election of Scott Brown and growing media attention. In January, SAM had the opportunity to conduct extensive market research with leaders of the Tea Parties, both through questionnaires and through in-depth one-on-one interviews. What we found challenges much of the information currently on the market. Now see what the activists themselves had to say about the Tea Parties: their motivations, their fears, and who they support for president in 2012...Sam Adams Alliance

The report is here.

For GOP, Embrace of Tea Party Carries Some Risk

In particular, Republicans' courtship of the Tea Party movement threatens to pull the party away from its moorings on two crucial and emotional issues: the war on terror and immigration. On the terror front, many Tea Partiers question the very notion of a war on terror, and see some law-enforcement policies adopted in its pursuit as unacceptable intrusions on American liberties. On immigration, the close-the-borders rhetoric common within the Tea Party movement runs counter to what many in the GOP hope will be a renewed outreach to Hispanics...read more

Mr. Seib makes no mention of the Constitution when discussing law-enforcement policies. Wonder why?

As a long time observer of federal law-enforcement agencies, I can tell you they are adept at having legislative language to increase their power inserted in bills at the last minute, with no hearings and no debate. They also keep legislation "on the shelf", ready for when the timing is right.

For instance, after the OKC bombing, Clinton took legislative proposals "off the shelf" and for the most part got them enacted. Not satisfied, they went back later with Clinton II, which was rejected by the Republican Congress as being either unconstitutional or anti-liberty. Back on the shelf it went and there it rested until 911. Off the shelf it went becoming significant provisions in the PATRIOT Act.

Watch closely, and you will see it makes no difference who is President or who controls Congress, a crisis of some sort hits and legislation comes flying "off the shelf."

And then along comes the TEA Party demanding strict adherence to the Constitution.

Make no mistake, that is what they are worried about. Those shelves could become bare.

Conservative shift boosts College Republicans

A national shift toward conservative political values has ASU College Republicans riding the trend as the club’s membership increases. With Congressional elections coming later this year, many signs point to a more conservative shift in the nation’s thinking: the election of Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va., the victory of Republican Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and the rise of the Tea Party movement. History senior Andrew Clark, chairman of the Arizona Federation of College Republicans, the organization that oversees the state’s College Republican chapters, said membership has seen a boost this school year. “It has gone up tremendously,” he said. The same grassroots tactics that helped elect Obama in 2008 are being utilized by the College Republicans today, Clark said...read more

Are there College Tea Parties?

John Ashcroft's Coefficient of Unity

John Ashcroft believes that all wings of the party -- social as well as economic and national security -- have to rally around the spending issue, first and foremost. He believes this for both policy and political reasons. Clearly, the debt cannot continue to grow, indefinitely, without wrecking the country. But, politically, for the Republican Party as a center-right party, John believes that "the coefficient of unity is the highest on spending." In other words, the spending situation, now in extremis, draws in all elements of the Republican base as well as the restless independent voters who see the current trend as an existential threat to all that makes this country unique and exceptional...read more

Media’s Phony Tea Party Leader Is a Phony Soldier Too

Gateway Pundit gives you all the background you need to know on Dale Robertson and how the MSM uses him to smear the Tea Party as racists.

Albq. Tea Party: Sign Sabotage

Received the following email from a couple:

Mr. Dubois,
I found your blog through Google. Are you active in the ABQ Tea Party? I am trying to find the person(s) who are hosting the TEA Party in front of the IRS on April 15th. Do you know anything about it? I've seen signs all over ABQ but can't figure out who is putting them up.

I gave them the contact info for the ATP and they soon sent me the following response:

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:02:41 -0700
From: tina......
Subject: Fw: “Tea Party” Signs Not Affiliated With ATP

We need your help in spreading the word about an attempt to sabotage our April 15th Rally. Please read and share the press release below. After the plane crashed into the IRS building in Texas, the MSM was trying to connect it with the Tea Party Movement. At the same time, the signs mentioned below started popping up in the Northeast Heights, near where our Rally was held last April. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that Organizing For America has recently opened an office in Albuquerque. Please note there is no contact information on the flyer. ATP sponsored events will always have our logo and contact information. I removed nearly 30 of these today.

Tina Carson

Albuquerque Tea Party, Inc.
P.O. Box 25431
Albuquerque, NM 87125-5431
albuquerqueteaparty.com

February 28. 2010News Release

“Tea Party” Signs Not Affiliated With ATP

For Immediate Release:

Several signs promoting a “Tea Party” rally at Montgomery and San Mateo on April 15 have begun popping up around Albuquerque. A photo of the signs is attached to this release. The Albuquerque Tea Party (ATP) is not responsible for, nor affiliated with, anyone posting these signs around town.
ATP is, of course, planning to hold its second annual April 15th Tax Day Rally, but the exact time and location has yet to be determined. Any advertising, news releases or announcements will always feature the official ATP logo.
All official announcements about the April 15 Rally or any other ATP events will always be featured at the ATP website at albuquerqueteaparty.com.

Unfortunately, something we should all be cognizant of: organizations trying to distort, misrepresent or otherwise disrupt the tea party movement.

Unlikely Activist Who Got to the Tea Party Early

Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type. But leaders of the Tea Party movement credit her with being the first. A year ago, frustrated that every time she called her senators to urge them to vote against the $787 billion stimulus bill their mailboxes were full, and tired of wearing out the ear of her Obama-voting fiancé, Ms. Carender decided to hold a protest against what she called the “porkulus.” “I basically thought to myself: ‘I have two courses. I can give up, go home, crawl into bed and be really depressed and let it happen,’ ” she said this month while driving home from a protest at the State Capitol in Olympia. “Or I can do something different, and I can find a new avenue to have my voice get out.” This weekend, as Tea Party members observe the anniversary of the first mass protests nationwide, Ms. Carender’s path to activism offers a lens into how the movement has grown, taking many people who were not politically active — it is not uncommon to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted — and turning them into a force that is rattling both parties as they look toward the midterm elections in the fall. Ms. Carender’s first rally drew only 120 people. A week later, she had 300, and six weeks later, 1,200 people gathered for a Tax Day Tea Party. Last month, she was among about 60 Tea Party leaders flown to Washington to be trained in election activism by FreedomWorks, the conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader...read more

Coffee Party activists say their civic brew's a tastier choice than Tea Party's

Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party -- the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending -- Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update. let's start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss 'em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let's get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion. Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called "Join the Coffee Party Movement." Within weeks, her inbox and page wall were swamped by thousands of comments from strangers in diverse locales, such as the oil fields of west Texas and the suburbs of Chicago...read more

Tea Party Patriots Poll: Up to 57 Million Conservative Activists in U.S.

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is at the helm of a new conservative group called Liberty Central. Its first project is a poll, conducted with Tea Party Patriots, analyzing just how many current and potential conservative activists there are in the United States, and figuring out what they believe. The most interesting thing about the poll might be the alliance between Thomas, a long-time Washington, D.C. fixer and alum of Dick Armey’s congressional office, and the grassroots Tea Party Patriots. The findings are overwhelmingly positive for Tea Partiers — 85 percent of all people polled, for example, worry that “America might be losing the core of what made America great.”...read more

Hit Fullscreen to read the release.

021810 LC TPP Press Release Poll

NM Attorney General's Senior Counsel Doubles as President of Law Firm Pushing CO2 Emissions Cap

Stuart Bluestone wears two hats. He is Senior Counsel to Attorney General Gary King. He is also president of the board of directors of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, the law firm representing petitioners pressing the Environmental Improvement Board to impose an unprecedented statewide cap on emissions of carbon dioxide and gases they claim are causing global warming. Bluestone has served as a director of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center (NMELC) since 2007. During that time, he has also served as Senior Counsel to Attorney General Gary King. In January 2010 he was named as president of the board of the NMELC. NMELC is a law firm that represents private individuals and organizations in a wide range of environmental matters across the state. It sues private and public entities, participates in appeals, intervenes in lawsuits and administrative proceedings, and seeks to influence and persuade administrative agencies in adjudications and rule-making. It is the legal counsel representing the petitioners who are pressing the EIB to impose a cap on gases they claim are causing global warming. The cap they seek would cut carbon dioxide and other emissions by 25% below 1990 levels, the most drastic such emissions cap in the country. Electric power utilities, representatives of manufacturing, mining and agricultural industries, chambers of commerce and others fear this cap will have a devastating impact on New Mexico’s economy and tax base...read more

Another Member of Environmental Improvement Board with Conflict of Interest

Gay Dillingham is yet another member of the Environmental Improvement Board suffering from a serious conflict of interest in hearing the petition to cap CO2 emissions in New Mexico. Dillingham is a director of an organization that is part of an alliance to promote the very same sort of emissions caps she is being asked to consider as a member of the EIB. Moreover, New Energy Economy, the group which has brought the petition before the EIB, belongs to the same global warming activism alliance as the group which Dillingham helps direct. Dillingham has was appointed to the EIB in 2003 and served as its chair until recently, when Gregory Green, a lobbyist and consultant for environmental groups, assumed the role. We have previously reported on Green’s conflicts of interest in hearing the New Energy Economy petition, including the fact that he has been hired as a lobbyist by an organization, the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy, that includes at least two organizations that have joined the petition pending before the EIB. [Two other members of the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy have entered appearances in the case. But as of this posting, we lack confirmation that they have become parties to the proceeding by signing onto the New Energy Economy petititon]. Dillingham is a founder of and serves on the New Mexico Board of Directors of an organization called New Voice of Business. New Voice of Business is a formal ally of 1Sky, a nationwide group advocating emissions caps and other measures it claims are needed to counter man-made global warming...read more

Issa Report finds ACORN Fraud, SEIU Connections

Republicans on the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee have released a new report leveling fresh allegations and evidence of corruption against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Entitled "Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies," the report presents information gleaned from committee investigations into hundreds of bank accounts, shell organizations incorporated under myriad sections of the internal revenue code, even an ACORN-directed accounting firm, Citizens Consulting Inc., charged with obscuring the trail and use of funding streams pouring into ACORN from taxpayers and charitable contributions alike...read more

Harry Reid may need Tea Party help to revive candidacy

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is rooting for the Tea Party, at least as far as his own Nevada reelection bid goes. A new poll from Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies shows that if a Tea Party candidate runs in Nevada's Senate election, the Republican nominee could lose up to 22 percent of their support, giving Reid's flailing campaign a shot at victory. The new polls are the first good news for Reid's team in a while. A Rasmussen poll earlier this month showed Reid's top showing against any of four GOP challengers at 41 percent. The numbers showed Reid getting creamed in hypothetical races against the Republican front-runners, former state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden and real estate developer and former basketball star Danny Tarkanian. But, with reports that New York banker John Ashjian plans to run as a Tea Party candidate, Reid might have a chance. The Public Opinion Strategies poll shows that in a hypothetical race among Lowden, Reid and Ashjian, Lowden carried only 42 percent, leaving Reid with 37 percent and Ashjian collecting 9 percent of the vote. If Tarkanian was the GOP candidate, Reid trailed by only one point. Ashjian's candidacy remains shrouded in mystery because he has kept quiet about his campaign and the newly created Tea Party of Nevada. Barry Levinson, a local lawyer and registered Democrat is the party secretary. An employee at Levinson's law firm said he would not comment on the race...read more

NY Times Tying Tea Party To "Terrorist" Label

In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”). I don’t doubt that Tea Partiers are on balance on the right, and if their movement ever crystallizes into a political party that will be its location. But until the requisite winnowing happens, a person with Stack’s fuzzy ideology wouldn’t feel terribly alone at a big Tea Party. I emphasize that I’m talking about his ideology, not his penchant for flying planes into buildings. Still, some of the ingredients of that penchant — a conspiratorial bent, a deep and personal sense of oppression, an attendant resentful rage — can be found in the movement, if mainly on its fringes. There are some excitable Tea Partiers out there. You could, on the one hand, follow this logic to the conclusion that Joseph Stack was the first Tea Party terrorist...read more

TEA Party: A Fourth Leg For Conservatives' Big Table

On Feb. 17, most of the leaders of the traditional conservative movement gathered in Arlington, Va., to plan strategy, and issued a statement of conservative principles. However, the conservative movement is rapidly changing and significantly expanding because of the addition of millions of Tea Partyers. The Tea Party movement shares certain key interests of the conservative movement, yet it is a phenomenon independent from the conservative movement. That's a good thing. The conservative movement started life in the 1950s as a two-legged stool of limited government/fiscal restraint and national defense. Then, in the second half of the 1970s, a third leg was added to the stool: traditional-values conservatives. Now the Tea Party people add a fourth leg, and the movement sits at a large-sized table. The Tea Party movement brings millions of new people to the political arena who have not previously been involved. They bring more energy, enthusiasm and excitement to politics than we've seen in the last 100 years...read more

Obama Destroys Pledge to Allow Americans To Keep Their HC Plans

The Senate bill has a measure to protect so-called “grandfathered plans,” which would allow policy holders to maintain coverage in plans that may not abide by all of the requirements imposed on new individual plans offered on the government-run exchanges. But Obama’s new proposal changes all of that. Here’s how the White House explains the new provisions:

The Senate bill includes a “grandfather” policy that allows people who like their current coverage, to keep it. The President’s Proposal adds certain important consumer protections to these “grandfathered” plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans to cover adult dependents up to age 26, prohibits rescissions, mandates that plans have a stronger appeals process, and requires State insurance authorities to conduct annual rate review, backed up by the oversight of the HHS Secretary. When the exchanges begin in 2014, the President’s Proposal adds new protections that prohibit all annual and lifetime limits, ban pre-existing condition exclusions, and prohibit discrimination in favor of highly compensated individuals. Beginning in 2018, the President’s Proposal requires “grandfathered” plans to cover proven preventive services with no cost sharing.

All of the new requirements proposed by Obama would increase premiums, and by definition, alter the composition of those insurance plans...read more

ACORN 'dissolved as a national structure'; ACORN denies report

The embattled liberal group ACORN is in the process of dissolving its national structure, with state and local-chapters splitting off from the underfunded, controversial national group, an official close to the group confirmed. "ACORN has dissolved as a national structure of state organizations," said a senior official close to the group, who declined to be identified by name because of the fierce conservative attacks on the group that began when a conservative filmmaker caught some staffers of its tax advisory arms on tape appearing to offer advice on incorporating a prostitution business. "Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency," said the official, citing ACORN's "diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks." The new organizations, he said "will be constituted under new banners and new bylaws and new governance," he said, consistent with the recommendations of an outside panel...read more

ACORN: We're Still Here “It is not true that ACORN is closed for business all across the country. It still exists. Bertha Lewis is still the CEO," Kevin Whelan told me. "It is true that we are shutting down operations in New York and there is this new New York Community organization,” he added, referring to New York Communities for Change, the group that has emerged in ACORN's place. NYCC follows ACORN's California chapter, which in January reformed as the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). “We know that organizers and leaders in different states are having to have discussions and making some choices," Whelan said. "I don’t think there will be announcements like this from every place ACORN is now, but I would expect that there could be some more like this in the coming days or weeks.” So, while ACORN is denying that they're dissolving as a national organization, it doesn't seem entirely out of the realm of possibility, given the issues they're facing. Even if the national staff is sticking together, it's not clear how else to describe what happens if ultimately enough state chapters choose to break off...read more

Canadian Premier Chooses US For Heart Surgery

An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors. "This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla. "I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics." Williams said his decision to go to the U.S. did not reflect any lack of faith in his own province's health care system. "I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said. "We do whatever we can to provide the best possible health care that we can in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian health care system has a great reputation, but this is a very specialized piece of surgery...". Williams also said he paid for the treatment, but added he would seek any refunds he would be eligible for in Canada...read more

The CBO Can't Score the Latest Version of Obamacare

The Congressional Budget Office:

This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it—a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved. Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the Housee and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.

Read more

Tea party snowmen protest lawmakers in Lansing, MI

The scene in front of the Capitol Bldg., protesting tax increases as per theblogprof.

ObamaCare at Ramming Speed

A mere three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint thatDemocrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don't want anyway. Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent. "The President's Proposal," as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone. The bill's one new inspiration is a powerful federal board that would regulate premiums in the individual insurance market. In all 50 states, insurers are already required to justify premium increases to insurance commissioners, who generally have the power to give a regulatory go-ahead, or not. But their primary concern is actuarial soundness and capital standards, making sure that companies have enough cash to pay claims. The White House wants to create another layer of review that will be able to reject any rate increase that is "unreasonable or unjustified." Any insurer deemed guilty of such an infraction by this new bureaucracy "must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable." In other words, de facto price controls...read more

RailRunner Costs Eating NM Alive

The recent infusions of cash to keep the RailRunner running continue a history of project costs and operating losses exceeding expectations. The RailRunner’s red ink means money is being denied other surface transportation needs. While the RailRunner continues to get money to cover its shortfall, major transportation needs are going unmet. The intial cost projections for the RailRunner were so far off target the question arises whether the Legislature and the public were intentionally misled. The RailRunner was supposed to cost the state of New Mexico only $122 million. That’s what legislators and staffers claim they were led to believe, according to a December 9, 2005 report by the Albuquerque Journal. But by December 2005, the New Mexico Department of Transportation put the cost of the RailRunner to the state at $318 million. The cost of the RailRunner to the state of New Mexico has now grown to over $475 million. That’s the sum cited by the Legislative Finance Committee in its January 2009 report to the Legislature. Of the $600 million in highway projects assigned to the I-25 corridor, the RailRunner’s costs consumed more than 79% of designated funds. The RailRunner’s cost has weighed heavily on the state’s ability to fund future highway construction and maintenance. Adding the costs of the RailRunner to the state’s debt service has further reduced the funds available for needed highway projects. As the LFC summarized the situation in 2009, “As federal appropriations continue to shrink, this may result in increased state funding for debt payments, leaving less funding available to meet the state’s highway construction and reconstruction needs.”...read more

Fox News scrambles to discredit CPAC after Ron Paul wins presidential poll

Remember the big conservative conference Fox News has been hyping over the past 10 days? The Conservative Political Action Conference's presidential straw poll, a key marker of the mood among conservative voters, apparently didn't mean anything to the network. Or, at least that's how Fox News characterized the poll, after it was reported that Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) had won it by a wide margin. CPAC participants voted for Paul as their favored candidate by some 31 percent, giving him the largest margin of victory in recent years. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has won the vote over the last three years, was the runner up with 22 percent. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was third with seven percent. "It is way early, it is unscientific," said a Fox News host, even as the split-screen showed Glenn Beck on stage at the conference. ake Gibson, micro-blogging for Fox News's Live Shots, wrote that Paul's win was "surprising" and caused very audible booing throughout the crowd...read more

Mike Huckabee rips CPAC - Video

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee blasted the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday as outdated, nearly corrupt and unrepresentative of the conservative movement. Huckabee, a 2008 Republican presidential contender and potential 2012 candidate who had spoken at the conference for years, said the reason he blew it off this year was that the meeting has become dominated by libertarian activists. “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years, one of the reasons I didn’t go this year,” Huckabee said in an interview with Fox News, where he is a paid analyst and has his own show. He was responding to a question about whether he was upset by his single-digit showing in the conference’s straw poll, which was won by libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Huckabee said the rise of the tea party movement had “taken all of the oxygen out of the room,” rendering the venerable conference far less relevant than it had been in previous years...read more

Book Review: A New American Tea Party

A New American Tea Party by John M. O’Hara, John Wiley & Sons, 307 pages.








In his preface O’Hara lays out the three things he hopes to accomplish with this book:

One, that it will set the historic record straight on what is a critically important grassroots movement…

Second, that it will serve to define and articulate the principles of that movement…

Finally, that it will help to fortify, inspire and guide counter-revolutionaries in the policy battles ahead…

I’m pleased to report that in this well-written, thoroughly researched volume O’Hara accomplishes all three and then some.

I‘ll approach this book by asking how the author answers three questions: Who are these Tea Party folks? What events caused this phenomenon? Where do we go from here?

Let’s see what O’Hara has to say.

He describes and defines Tea Party folks in different places throughout the book. Here are some examples:

They represent the collective wisdom of the people – not populism, not the rule that might makes right – but the collective desire to be true to founding principles – a union of individualism, if you will. (p.35)

While fighting excessive taxation is certainly a noble crusade, this was not the only tenant of the tea parties. Rather, they sought to protest the expansion of government as a whole and reinforce the larger idea that government works for the people, not for itself, not for specific interest groups, not for specific organizations. (p.80)

Tea party participants, like most Americans, reject the idea that individuals are more likely to prosper in a highly controlled nanny state. They instead embrace a state where the government acts a referee, stepping in only when absolutely necessary. (p.207)

They reject the idea that big government – at the hands of liberals or conservatives – should be used to solve problems. They see it as unrealistic and they resent the encroachment on their ability to exercise their intellect and free will. (p.208)

These individuals, on the whole, subscribe to a live and let live philosophy. They believe in free markets and small government. (p.208)

They are hardworking taxpayers who were driven by nothing more than the principles at stake: the protection of a representative democracy that supports the individual right to the pursuit of happiness against egregious, if not unlawful, government intervention. (p.208)

Protestors such as those at the tea parties merely ask to be left alone – whether it is their tax dollars, the cars they drive, the food they eat, their guns, how they educate their children, or their relationship with their doctors. (p. 208).

All are excellent descriptions of the Tea Party folks I know and also explain my involvement with the group. I also emphasize this because of all the distortions by the media and political pundits.

Let’s move on to what caused the Tea Party eruption.

O’Hara walks through the litany, starting with the Community Reinvestment Act. You’ll then be reintroduced to the 1994 “Revolution That Wasn’t”, the “Quasi-Conservative” presidency of George W. Bush, taxes, Federal Reserve policy, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, universal health care and the whole list of “Bailouts, Handouts and Corporate Welfare.” He even provides a nine-page timeline, listing the date and a summary of each event.

I found this part of the book tough to read. We all knew these things had happened, but I have never seen it all laid out in one place like this. An unpleasant but necessary reminder for those of us who watched these events unfold, but an eye opener for any newbies and documentation for future historians.

Looking to the future, the author instructs us on winning arguments, honing the message, conducting rallies, publicity, pressuring politicians and utilizing coalitions and social networks. He also recommends looking beyond rallies and offers useful suggestions on taking consistent and principled action. O’Hara further suggests the Tea Parties look to their own state, writing “to enact and sustain real change, pressure needs to be kept at state and local government.” Each state has a conservative or free market think tank, and the author suggests they are an excellent resource for state level activities (In NM, it would be the Rio Grande Foundation).

There is much more to this book than I am reporting here. I thoroughly enjoyed, for instance, how he rips the political class and the media for their reaction to the Tea Party movement, devoting two full chapters to the skewering. You should also enjoy his description of the early days of the movement and his personal involvement in the first D.C. rallies. Also of interest is his presentation of a Tea Party Manifesto.

O’Hara also writes with a wonderful sense of humor which he sprinkles throughout the book. For instance, he refers to McCain’s suspending his campaign as pulling “a political Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?” and he says bailouts “are like lays potato chips – you can’t just have one.”

Hope there is enough here to stir your interest because this old cowboy thinks this one is worth your time and money.