Years ago, the Tea Party rose to prominence as a protest movement, the conservative response to President Obama, and especially to the Democrats’ pushing through a major tax increase via The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. It’s earliest sign of large scale support was the “Taxpayer March on Washington” in 2009, which was wildly denounced not only by Obama’s party but also his allies in the media.
The Tea Party was more than just a bunch of screaming protesters. It was mobilized into a political movement that energized Republicans into taking back the House of Representatives in a historic mid-term landslide in 2010.
The NAACP denounced the movement as racist. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka echoed this charge, as did celebrities such as Morgan Freeman. The racist accusation reportedly made it into the White House.
Ben Cohen of the Daily Banter and Think Progress even hypothesized that the Tea Party was possibly committing treason by opposing the president. Former Clinton aide Robert Reich, writing at Business Insider, described the Tea Party as “a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States.”
Despite the real legislative and electoral accomplishments it helped achieve, the Tea Party was painted by Democrats and the media as a treasonous wing of racist insurrectionists. CNN’s Anderson Cooper cracked jokes about “tea bagging.”
Now that Democrats have been kicked out of the White House (and both chambers of Congress), liberals are attempting to create a Tea Party of their own. In the wake of the Women’s March to protest President Trump’s inauguration, there are now calls to form a full-fledged opposition movement.
But the women’s marches were not filled with ideas about how Democrats can win back Middle America which seems to have forgotten their party exists. There were speeches about defending Obamacare and supporting Planned Parenthood, but no one roaming the crowd with clipboards to register voters.
Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were not interested in winning over the white working class vote in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. As a result, we now have President Trump.
Liberal publications from Slate the the New York Times are now advising the political left to adopt the playbook of the “treasonous” Tea Party in order to rebuild the Democrat Party in Congress.
“The Most Useful Guide to Resisting Donald Trump: It’s the Tea Party Playbook, Minus the Nooses” Slate wrote. Mother Jones published an article in December titled, “How Liberals Can Use the Tea Party Playbook to Stop Trump.”
Studying the Tea Party could offer liberals a “Blueprint for the #Resistance,” wrote Frank Ryan Walton of the Daily Kos. On January 2nd, the New York Times ran an op-ed titled, “To Stop Trump, Democrats Can Learn From the Tea Party.”
So far “The Resistance” is not a movement, but rather another way for celebrities and liberal journalists to hashtag their opposition to Trump and feel good about themselves.
Election analyst Varad Mehta noted on Twitter in a viral thread of tweets, the differences between how the Tea Party’s opposition to Obama was portrayed — “treason” and “obstruction” — compared to how liberal opposition to Trump is being portrayed in the media — “resistance” and “revolution.”
The New York Times characterized the Tea Party’s Taxpayer March in 2009 as follows:
The atmosphere was rowdy at times, with signs and images casting Mr. Obama in a demeaning light. One sign called him the “parasite in chief.” Others likened him to Hitler. Several people held up preprinted signs saying, “Bury Obama Care with Kennedy,” a reference to the Massachusetts senator whose body passed by the Capitol two weeks earlier to be memorialized.
The story ended with a quote from 57-year-old Ruth Lobbs: “I don’t know if anything will come of this or not, but this is a peaceful way of showing our frustration.”
The Anti-Trump Women’s Marches were mostly peaceful, a stark contrast from leftist movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. So at the very least they seem to have figured that part out.
Time will tell, however, if this current show of frustration actually does accomplish what those “racist” “extremist” Tea Partiers in revolutionary soldier costumes managed to accomplish.
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