Viewpoint by Aaron Turner/reporter
Ever since an aristocratic band of colonists tossed crates of British tea into Boston Harbor, the Boston Tea Party has been the marquee stand against monarchal and tyrannical oppression. Therefore, I often have trouble relating the current Tea Party Movement to that of 1773.
According to the Tea Party’s self-proclaimed website teapartypatriots.org, the movement is dedicated to preserving the constitutionality of the United States, pushing for fiscal responsibility, free-market economics and limited government. Sound familiar? That’s because they are almost word for word the current Republican platform, dating back to before President Ronald Reagan. It should be no surprise then that it took only months for the Tea Party to become the far-right’s most popular bandwagon.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found time between hunting trips and watching Dancing with the Stars to emerge as one of the movement’s leading political figures. She, along with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the formerly sane Glenn Beck, have combined to form the Tea Party’s backbone using it to launch a post-Bush doctrine: irrational fear and paranoia of government, coupled with blind opposition to everything Democrat.
A 2010 Bloomberg News poll showed 40 percent of members to be over age 55 while 79 percent were white and 44 percent born-again Christians. They strongly oppose gay marriage and Roe v. Wade while supporting many ideals of America’s Christian right.
But, of course, the Tea Party cannot truly be anointed a conservative movement without blatant hypocrisy in its messages. Some signs from Tea Party protests have compared President Barack Obama to Hitler. Yet, not so long ago, at least a few of their members labeled protesters of the Iraq and Afghan wars as unpatriotic and sympathetic toward terrorists.
Sadly, the movement has capitalized on the ignorance of the ever-growing conservative America, fabricating an array of absurd accusations aimed at Obama. Add that to the almost zealot-like viewership of Fox News, and you have one malleable demographic of Americans.
Whether or not the Tea Party emerges as a legitimate political force is still to be seen. However, before people think this is simply a middle-class, grassroots, populist movement, dig just a tiny bit deeper.
