Morning Bell: The Tea Party Movement
Conn Carroll /
Today in more than 500 locations in all 50 states, American taxpayers will hold ‘Tea Party’ rallies to protest exploding government spending and the inevitable higher taxes that will be needed to pay for it. We wish we could direct you to one website that had a comprehensive list of all the events and a clear mission statement for the movement, but none exists. The defenders of big government desperately want to dismiss today’s rallies as a top down corporate funded campaign, but they can’t even get their conspiracy theories straight. The Center for American Progress says former Majority Leader Dick Armey is to blame for the whole thing while Paul Krugman tries to blame Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh.
The truth is the tea parties are a completely grassroots movement with no specific leader or origin. Some point to CNBC analyst Rick Santelli’s February 16 on-air criticism of President Barack Obama’s housing bailout plan as the start but Presidential candidate Ron Paul has been raising money with Tea Party rhetoric since 2007. There are many established conservative groups that are supportive of the movement’s limited government message, including the Heritage Foundation, but no one is taking orders from Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, or even Armey’s Freedom Works.