Rep. Michele Bachmann, center, speaks at a press conference for the Tea Party Caucus July 21 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo)
The formation of an official Tea Party Caucus comes at a critical time in the movement’s quest for identity and influence, with midterm elections on the horizon. The existence of a caucus in Washington potentially puts pressure on Tea Partiers to better define themselves before somebody else does it for them.
The caucus debuted Wednesday and already counts nearly 30 House Republicans as members. They did not claim to speak for the Tea Party movement, and Tea Partiers say that’s the way it ought to stay.
“They’re not the leaders of the movement. … They don’t give orders of any kind,” said Shelby Blakely, a leadership council member for Tea Party Patriots and the director of the network’s online publication. She said Tea Party Patriots is fine with the caucus, provided its only job is to listen. She described it as just another Tea Party, nothing more.
“We went from 2,350 groups to 2,351 groups nationwide,” Blakely told FoxNews.com.
But the Tea Party has traditionally picked which candidates and lawmakers it supports, not vice-versa. Blakely said the motives and loyalties of incoming caucus members is “something worth watching for.”
This morning, we broke video of a USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, recounting for attendees at an NAACP awards dinner how she withheld help from a white farmer seeking the agency’s help in saving his farm.
Fox News is reporting that Ms. Sherrod has resigned. From Fox:
I told you a while back about a small group of Republican Senators sitting down for drinks at the Capitol Hill Club. They’d been to a tea party rally that day and were openly mocking the tea partiers. One of them, a guy tea partiers adore, seemed to hold them in open contempt at this table.
Well, between the tea partiers and Jim DeMint, these Republican Senators are getting a lot of heartburn and are starting to speak out. One of the good old boys of the club who can speak freely because he’s on the outside lobbying in now is the former leader of the Senate Republicans, Trent Lott.
Recent statements claiming the Tea Party movement is racist are not only destructive, they are not true. Tea Party activists are your mom or dad, your local grocer, banker, hairdresser or doctor. They are a diverse group of passionate Americans who want to ensure that our nation returns to founding principles that honor the Constitution, limit government’s role in our lives and support policies that empower free markets and free enterprise. Enough with the name-calling.
Thanks to Big Government.com
Andrew Breitbart appeared on the ‘Hannity’ show tonight to discuss the NAACP’s resolution condemning the Tea Party Movement as racist. The NAACP used the dubious claims of Rep. Andre Carson, that fifteen protestors yelled racial slurs at him fifteen times on March 20th prior to a vote on ObamaCare in Washington DC.
Breitbart conducted a search of all available video of the moment Rep. Carson described – as he and Rep. John Lewis “came down the steps at (the) Cannon” Office Building on their way to the Capitol.
This segment on ‘Hannity’ marks the very first time these videos, which show no evidence of anyone shouting racial slurs and which contradict every description Rep. Carson made of the scene, have been shown on national television.
The NAACP adopted a resolution Tuesday condemning “bigoted elements” in the Tea Party movement and calling on the movement’s leaders to repudiate racism, despite claims from Tea Partiers that the measure is just a political ploy
The nation’s leading civil rights group took up the language at its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo. The resolution initially said the NAACP would “repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties” and stand against the movement’s attempt to “push our country back to the pre-civil rights era,” though the wording was amended to downplay criticism of all Tea Partiers while asking them to repudiate bigots in their own ranks.
“We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy,” the NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a written statement announcing the unanimous vote. ”What we take issue with is the Tea Party’s continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements.
“The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement.”
NAACP leaders have referenced an incident in March when Tea Party protesters allegedly hurled racial epithets at black lawmakers on Capitol Hill ahead of a health care vote.
William Temple attends a Tea Party rally in the desert outside Searchlight, Nev. Saturday, March 27, 2010. (AP)
The NAACP reportedly is about to take up a resolution to condemn the Tea Party movement for “explicitly racist behavior.”
The Kansas City Star reported that the organization plans to vote as early as Tuesday on the language at its annual convention in Kansas City. The resolution reportedly will call on “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties” and stand against the movement’s attempt to “push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”
As President Obama’s poll ratings tumble and the Democratic majority in Congress continues to post record disapproval numbers, some on the Left have consoled themselves with the thought that the growing grassroots hostility to incumbent candidates transcends party and ideology. In this exegesis, liberal and progressive discontents are just as wound up – and just as influential – as their conservative Tea Party counterparts. If this week’s primary election results proved anything, it’s that this reading of the nation’s political map won’t wash. While the Tea Parties continued to notch victories in pivotal primary races, the Left’s insurgents were rebuffed.
The most prominent example came from Arkansas, where embattled Senator Blanche Lincoln staved off a bruising challenge from her union-backed rival, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. Lincoln drew Big Labor’s wrath for heresies like opposing “card check” legislation, which would have eliminated secret ballots to facilitate union organizing. As payback, unions, aided by a battery of progressive political action groups, put their full political clout into the race, sponsoring Halter to the tune of $10 million. But while the lavishly funded challenge did force Lincoln into a runoff, the unions’ purchasing power came up short. As one agonized Obama White House official told Politico: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” Lincoln remains deeply vulnerable. Polls show she trails her Republican opponent John Boozman by some 25 points. But her defeat, if it comes, will be punishment for being too loyal to the Left’s agenda (Lincoln cast the decisive 60th vote to pass ObamaCare) rather than for straying too far from it.
'Don't Tread on Me' flags were a popular choice at the Tea Party Tax Party on Thursday, Apr. 15, in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
Although Democrats control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the head of ProgressiveCongress.com said the liberal movement is not doing enough to further its political agenda and is, in fact, being out-lobbied by tea party activists and people on the political right.
“I have spent the last 14 months in Washington, and we are not advocating for our side the way that the right is advocating for theirs,” said Darcy Burner, executive director of ProgressiveCongress.com at a discussion sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America’s Future on Monday.
“I sit in the offices of members of Congress and listen as the phone calls come in, and there will be ten tea party phone calls to every one of ours,” she said. “The right has built this infrastructure that provides information to members of Congress. We have not done enough to counter that.”
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