The Rise of the Tea Party Movement

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The Rise of the Tea Party Movement Abstract: As a traditional right-wing grass-root movement, the Tea Party movement is widespread in the United States. Though it has showed downturn after the debt-ceiling crisis, the movement has influences upon the American politics and society. With the introduction of the Tea Party movement, the paper explains the reasons for the rise of the activism and the meanings behind it. The movement is believed to be triggered by the people’s anger for overburdened tax and to be a continuance of the American conservative thoughts, and moreover, the media and the interest groups also contribute to the happening of the Tea Party. Key Words: the Tea Party Movement, taxation, conservatism, media and interest groups Interestingly, the Tea Party is not a registered party. It has neither a united organization nor a party leader. It has no nominations of a presidential candidate but has a big say for the Republican presidential and congressman candidates. It is a national grass-root movement with a huge nationwide protest of above two million people. More importantly, it is a continuance of American conservative values in opposition to the gradually expanded taxation and government. The situation provides us an opportunity to cast a glimpse into the American values and the essence of a grass-root movement. 1 The Tea Party movement was initiated by a blogger named Keli Carender on February 16th, 2009. She held a rally in Seattle only of 200 against the Obama’s stimulus bill which was just signed the day before. They had not named themselves “Tea Party” yet. On February 19th, CNBC Business News editor Rick Santelli criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages. He said those plans were “promoting bad behavior” by “subsidizing losers’ mortgages”. He suggested a tea-party for traders to gather and dump the derivatives just
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