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The Tea Party, Sarah Palin and mutiny "Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman and anti-illegal immigration campaigner, told the audience in Nashville that Obama was elected by people "who could not spell the word vote or say it in English". By Alex Spillius
Published: 8:02AM GMT 08 Feb 2010
Just a year ago "tea party" was, for Americans, a term stuck in history, associated only with the glorious 1773 uprising in Boston. Now it pertains to a movement whose supporters – and their champion Sarah Palin – believe they can deliver another revolution against forces also seeking to ruin the country with high taxes and the big boot of intrusive government. A loose, grassroots coalition of disaffected conservatives, evangelicals and a smattering of libertarians, they have already helped derail Barack Obama's health care reform and kill plans for a carbon tax. Tea party volunteers and canvassers aided the capture by a little-known Republican of a cherished Senate seat vacated by the death of the liberal potentate Edward Kennedy, so denying the Democrats the 60-seat majority that makes governing so much easier. Their first events were not even held until last April, when pockets of the disgruntled minority – they would call themselves the silent majority – who did not share in the joy of Barack Obama's historic election appeared at rallies against the President's high-spending agenda. Some demonstrators split open sacks of tea in honour of their forefathers' rebellious dumping of British leaves into the Boston harbour. Fuelled by the internet – as Obama's own rise had been – the name caught on. Initially dismissed by the media, with the exception of the cheerleading Fox News, the protests – organised town by town, state by state by a variety of groups – started to attract thousands, gathering a momentum that reached a watershed over the weekend in the form of the first National Tea Party Convention. Fittingly for its ambitions to change the nation, it was held in the grand setting of the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, the largest hotel in the US without a casino. What it lacks in roulette tables, however, it makes up for with five swimming pools, an indoor river with its own Delta flatboat and two or three jungles, all contained under a giant atrium roofed by an expanse of steel and glass. A leading Right-wing blogger who introduced Mrs Palin, the headline act on closing night, joked that he had never expected his first meeting with his hero to be on the set of Avatar. Given the message the former Alaska governor delivered in her inimitably raw and folksy style, it was an appropriate crack. Like the planet Pandora in the hit film, the Tea Party world is one of black and white, pitting good against evil, and Godly Americans against closet communists. If and when conservatives recaptured Washington, Mrs Palin said she would call for "America's spirit to rise again, to go back to our roots as a God-fearing nation" that would "start seeking some divine intervention". Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, who on the 99th anniversary of his birth was honoured by successive speakers as the conservative exemplar, she said: "The Cold War applies to the war on terror – bottom line: we win, they [the enemy] lose." The former vice presidential candidate unerringly taps into America's conservative psyche. She voices – indeed embodies – their fears and anger that the culture of family, church, low taxes and small government is being lost. "We just want our country back," said Jim Linn, uttering a refrain heard over and over. Back from what? "From a government that is taking us further and further down toward socialism, and further and further away from the constitution," he said, fully clad and bewigged as Samuel Adams, the early revolutionary. Jeff McQueen, laid off a year ago from his marketing job in Michigan's benighted car industry, had started the USRevolution2 website. He has redesigned the country's first flag, placing a roman numeral II inside the circle of stars representing the first 13 states. Mr Obama, he said, was "a Marxist" for taking car giants General Motors and Chrysler under the government's wing rather than giving them a loan. "That's what socialists do," he said. A notion of America at the verge of apocalypse is widely shared. "We are truly on a precipice, looking down at disaster," said Walter Backes, one of few to attend from the liberal stronghold of California. "For the first time in my memory people are afraid for their country," said Phil Valentine, a talk radio host. "Very afraid." "They argue the size of government isn't in keeping with the constitution, isn't consistent with the intent of the founding fathers," said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "But this argument is as old as the union itself. Thomas Jefferson wanted small government, while Alexander Hamilton [the first secretary of the treasury] wanted a strong federal government." In Nashville, Washington is seen as a corrupt, over-bearing monstrosity that has stopped listening to the people and is determined to bankrupt the nation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced similar criticism when he pushed through the New Deal, so did Lyndon Johnson when Kennedy's death allowed him to pass the civil rights legislation and free health care for retirees in the mid-1960s. The frustrations of the Right had been brewing before Mr Obama took office. God was long ago taken out of the classroom and the courthouse. Morality was sinking. Federal government was expanding, no matter which party was in power. But the presence of a liberal President trying to spend his way out of a recession has fired up a resistance that has stunned Washington and has both established parties scratching their heads. Critics say an undercurrent of racism propels the tea partiers' animosity to the President. Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman and anti-illegal immigration campaigner, told the audience in Nashville that Obama was elected by people "who could not spell the word vote or say it in English". If only segregation-era literacy tests had been in place, this "committed socialist" would not have won. Another speaker, Joseph Farrah of WorldNetDaily.com, questioned whether the President was born in the United States and was qualified to hold the highest office. A lifelong Republican who has worked for two presidents, told me that "race is part of it, especially down South". "These are people uncomfortable with the country becoming more diverse, more mulatto, and Obama represents that." The Nashville crowd was 99.9 per cent white, and 90 per cent middle aged and above. The charge of racism is, of course, denied. Offensive banners that were common if not prevalent at rallies – Obama with a bone through his nose, a target on the back of his head, and lampooned as Hitler or the Joker from Batman – are now rarely seen, as the movement has matured. "There is not a racist bone in my body," said Bonnie Sachs, a primary school teacher from Alabama. "Give me a Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell any time. It's not the colour of Obama's skin, it's what he and this liberal Congress are doing to our nation. He took over a mess but he has added trillions to our national debt." Like other delegates, Mrs Sachs, in bright red knitwear with salon-prepared hair, didn't look much like a revolutionary. But come November, when the House of Representatives and dozens of Senate seats and state governorships are up for grabs, she and her cohorts plan to upset the equilibrium of American politics. Tea party factions have already started bickering and some boycotted the convention for profiteering – tickets to see Mrs Palin were $350. There are purists who fear the movement's energy will be co-opted by the Republican Party. But most are united in their desire to reform the party from within, and to become a political force for candidates who meet their tough conservative criteria. Sitting Republicans deemed too moderate will be challenged by Right-wingers who are the partiers' cup of tea. This may lead to split votes in some places, but it is more likely to be a shot in arm for a party dismissed as moribund after the Democrats' clean sweep in November 2008. The aim is to win back Congress, then the White House in 2012. "He is a one-term President, I can tell you," declared Mrs Sachs, who is happily brewing a nightmare for Barack Obama.
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