The Week: Most Recent the-tea-party

After Dick Lugar: Who will the Tea Party target next?

The Week — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:30:00 -0400

Energized conservative activists reveled in their power this week after the GOP primary defeat of Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) at the hands of Tea Party-backed Richard Mourdock. The Tea Party has struggled for visibility since its heyday leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, but grassroots activists crow that their victory over Lugar, the longest-serving Republican senator in Washington, will reinvigorate the movement. "We're already starting to see the momentum carry to other states," Jackie Bodnar, spokeswoman for the Tea Party umbrella group FreedomWorks, tells The Wall Street Journal....

Michele Bachmann's Swiss citizenship: The best jokes

The Week — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:10:00 -0400

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the former presidential candidate and conservative darling, is officially a Swiss citizen. Bachmann's husband Marcus has long been eligible for dual citizenship due to his parents' Swiss origins, and he went through with it in March, automatically making his wife and three of their young children dual citizens as well. Bachmann is even eligible to run for office in the Swiss "canton," or district, of Thurgau. The improbable development was sure to strike the funny bones of bloggers everywhere, given that Bachmann has suggested that President Obama holds "anti...

The Tea Party's waning influence: 4 theories

The Week — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:22:00 -0500

Nevada was a hotbed of Tea Party activity in the 2010 midterms, but in the weekend's GOP presidential caucuses, the Silver State activists' least favorite candidate, Mitt Romney, trounced the field. In Colorado — which, along with Minnesota and Missouri, picks its preference for the GOP presidential nominee on Tuesday — the Tea Partiers who dominated the political scene two years ago are no longer holding many rallies. And now an Ohio Tea Party leader tells The Daily Beast that while the movement may have been a giant killer in 2010, it's "dead" and "gone" this year. What happened?...

Is the GOP presidential field a Tea Party failure?

The Week — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:15:00 -0500

More than a year ago, the Tea Party capped an incredible 18-month run with a historic midterm election that took a whopping 68 House seats away from the Democrats, and handed the speaker's gavel to Republican John Boehner. No party had lost more seats in a midterm election in 72 years. While that outcome didn't surprise many activists in the Tea Party movement, it certainly appeared to catch many others off guard.

Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot. Fourteen months after that singular achievement, the Republican field for the presidential nomination seems to have no real Tea Party candidate...

Does Herman Cain's rise prove that the Tea Party isn't racist?

The Week — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:13:00 -0400

Of all the things Tea Partiers hate — socialism, President Obama, Big Government — perhaps none wrankles them more than the allegation that they're racist. Now, many Tea Party backers are lining up behind a black man, Herman Cain, as their choice for president. In a new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 69 percent of Tea Party supporters gave the former Godfather's Pizza CEO a "favorable" score. Does this prove once and for all that the Tea Party isn't racist?

Yes. This confirms the racism smear was bogus: The Left can't deal with "Herman Cain's rise to Tea Party favorite and top-tier GOP...

Will the Tea Party abandon politics?

The Week — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:07:00 -0400

Remember the Tea Party? It used to be a very big deal in this country. Yet here we are, weeks away from January Republican primaries that are likely to be decisive, and one by one the Tea Party candidates for president have fallen away.

Sarah Palin: Bowed out.

Michele Bachmann: Campaign imploded.

Donald Trump: Remember him?

Ron Paul: Too odd for prime time.

Newt Gingrich: Dead on arrival.

Tim Pawlenty: Miscast in the role.

Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour: All declined the part.

Herman Cain: At minute 13 of his 15 minutes of fame.

And the messiah who was supposed to turn things...

2012 GOP race: Has the Tea Party already lost?

The Week — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:55:00 -0400

Tea Partiers hoping to catapult a staunch fiscal conservative into the Republican presidential nomination have suffered a string of recent setbacks: Just this week, Chris Christie and Sarah Palin announced they won't jump into the race. Another Tea Party favorite, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, is sinking in the polls. The first primary contests are still three months away — but has the Tea Party already failed in its bid to pick the nominee?

Yes. Tea Partiers are being too fickle: We get it — the Tea Party wants "an authentic conservative" to be the one to challenge President...

The 'gruesome' video game that kills off zombie Tea Partiers

The Week — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 10:31:00 -0400

The video: A new free video game lets players club, shoot, or otherwise destroy post-apocalyptic zombie versions of conservatives and Fox News personalities like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Not all the target zombies are celebrities — you can also decimate undead creatures with generic right-wing names like "Pissed Off Stupid White Trash Redneck Birther Zombie." (Watch a clip below.) The "gruesome" online game — called "Tea Party Zombies Must Die" — was created as a "personal project" by Jason Oda of video game ad firm StarvingEyes...

James Hoffa's call to 'take out' the Tea Party: 'Inexcusable'?

The Week — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:55:00 -0400

The video: In a fiery Labor Day speech, Teamsters Union President James Hoffa accused the Tea Party of starting a "war on workers," and promised President Obama an army of voters to take the country back. (See the video below.) "We are ready to march," Hoffa said shortly before Obama took the stage at a Michigan rally Monday. "Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back, and we keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong." Tea Party leaders quickly condemned Hoffa's remarks as an "inexcusable" call "for violence...

A Democrat's 'race-baiting' Tea Party attack: 'Beyond the pale'?

The Week — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:57:00 -0400

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) is facing a fierce backlash for telling a largely black crowd at a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) event in Miami that "some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me... hanging on a tree." After audio of Carson's speech was posted on a conservative website Tuesday, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) — the only member of both the CBC and Tea Party Caucus, and no stranger to racially inflammatory comments — said he might quit the CBC over Carson's "race-baiting" remarks. Carson is standing by his words. But...

Can the Tea Party accept that it won the debt-ceiling battle?

The Week — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:59:00 -0400

The standoff over the debt ceiling has finally come to an end. The House and Senate passed the compromise reached at the eleventh hour, and President Barack Obama signed it into law, just in time to allow Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to sell bonds to fund continuing deficit spending. The debate over spending and taxation will now focus on a bipartisan Congressional commission and a presidential order that will raise the debt ceiling once more before the next election.

Who won, and who lost? Did anyone win? If we gauge winners and losers by the reaction from politicians and activists across...

Tea Partiers: 'Terrorists' or patriots?

The Week — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:27:00 -0400

Vice President Joe Biden said in a closed-door meeting that Tea Party Republicans "acted like terrorists" during Congress' messy debt ceiling negotiations, after another Democrat said the fiscal conservatives had "threatened to blow up the economy," according to Politico. Sarah Palin, among other GOP leaders, said it was "appalling" that Biden would use such an insult. Biden's office denied the vice president used the term. Is the "T" word out of line, even in a political fight as vicious as this one?

Absolutely. Biden should be ashamed: It would be easy to dismiss this as just another one...

Petty controversy: Tea Partiers vs. endangered manatees

The Week — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:18:00 -0400

The controversy: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is joining the IRS and "ObamaCare" on the Tea Party's list of Big Government enemies, after it proposed new rules to protect the endangered manatees in Florida's Kings Bay. In the past decade, boats have killed 13 manatees there, and the feds have now proposed ending a "summer water sport zone" that allowed boats to zip through the bay. So what's wrong with saving gentle sea cows from being killed by speeding motor boats? "We cannot elevate nature above people," says Citrus County Tea Party Patriots leader Edna Mattos, 63. "That's against the...

Tea Party summer camp: Indoctrination for kids?

The Week — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:27:00 -0400

Americans have been sending their kids to summer camp since the 1880s, providing a (mostly) palatable mix of fun and learning — and giving tapped-out parents a much-needed break. So perhaps it isn't surprising that a Tampa Tea Party group has latched onto this storied U.S. tradition to teach kids about history, economics, and... the evils of socialism and paper currency? Here, a brief guide to America's new Tea Party summer camp:

What is the Tea Party summer camp?
Tampa Liberty School is a weeklong day camp for kids ages 8 to 12. It's run by the Tampa 912 Project, a Tea Party–affiliated...

Is America over the Tea Party?

The Week — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:05:00 -0400

Barack Obama isn't the only one facing record-low popularity ratings. The Tea Party, so influential in the 2010 midterms, is facing its worst-ever polling numbers. A CNN poll shows that 47 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the grassroots movement (a number that's nearly doubled since January 2010), while only 32 percent of Americans view it favorably. The Tea Party's unpopularity surged among lower-income Americans in particular, rising 15 percentage points since last October. Is the Tea Party truly turning off America? (Watch Harry Reid discuss the poll.)

Yes. The Tea Party...

Why is the Tea Party silent on Libya?

The Week — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:49:00 -0400

The president's decision to authorize military action in Libya has plenty of liberal critics up in arms — Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), for one, has threatened Obama with impeachment over the airstrikes — and plenty of conservatives are howling, too. And yet, "the relative lack of Tea Party angst over the no-fly zone has been surprising," writes Dave Weigel at Slate. None of the big national Tea Party umbrella groups — the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Party Express, and FreedomWorks — has commented on the military action, nor on Obama's decision to pursue it without seeking...