“There is a place for the people who voted for ObamaCare,” were the words on the banner. “That place is HELL.” This was my introduction to the Tea Party movement.
Last Thursday, hundreds of Tea Party supporters flocked to the Capitol Building to hear a number of conservative speakers speak about the importance of “taking back the nation” and “enacting real change.”
For those of you who have remained in the dark about such things, the Tea Party movement is a right-wing protest movement that grew out of support for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, before morphing into a larger movement of right wingers united by a disdain for President Obama and the White House.
Essentially, mix one part populism with two parts talk radio and then white wash everything, and you have the Tea Party movement.
My assignment was to try and talk to as many people present and figure out if the typical depictions of these supporters were accurate. Typically, these are the people who are portrayed as raving psychopaths when pictures of them surface on the web or videos leaked on the evening news.
In this task, I took along a recording device and a colleague who specialized in dealing with strange people.
I quickly realized that there had been some kind of warning to not speak with anyone who did not appear to be a member of the group. Inquiries for comment, which usually contained the words “N.C. State,” “Technician,” “student,” and “newspaper” were usually rebuffed with “I have no comment,” or some variation thereof.
Most of the people who were willing to talk to us – and to be fair, this group represented the majority of the people there – were a grab bag of very nice middle-aged people with some vague disdain for the behavior of their government and a desire to see one or two right-wing pet projects enacted.
There were other conservative constituencies present. One man, in particular, who appeared to be in his fifties, took to carrying around a flag of the nation of Israel, declaring that the United States threatened to be in violation of God’s law if Obama succeeded in cutting overseas aid to the state of Israel.
Another man was particularly incensed at the threatened budget cuts for NASA. When gently informed that NASA’s budget had been steadily cut under multiple presidents, including the previous one, he became quite agitated.
“When will you people get over Bush and be a man and answer for Obama,” he said. “This interview is over.”
The closer one moved to the protestors across the street, the nuttier things became. A sizeable chunk of the “tea partiers” wished to do little other than trade expletives with the equally raucous but rather small group of counter-protestors. One of these more combative sorts revealed himself to be a member of the Birther movement, which challenges the citizenship and thus qualifications of Barack Obama to be president.
“Do you think he loves America the way it is today? I don’t think so. He just wants to change, change, change,” the man said.
After evading questions about the possible birth reference in his sign, which was a Soviet flag with the words “Kenya Spell Communism” scrawled on it, his female companion spoke up, and said, “I don’t think he’s from this country. I think he would produce his birth certificate if he was.”
This was closest we got to getting anyone with a truly nutty sign to speak to us. There were, however, two large men wearing shirts with the words, “Water the tree of liberty” – an allusion to the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of Liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of tyrants.” They were not particularly inclined to explain their shirt’s meaning, however. There were at least two dozen others with similar shirts.
There was no uniformity of politics present. Everyone seemed to be anti-something – be it healthcare, abortion, immigration or homosexuals. One of the speakers, Mr. Terry Hardison of the Constitution Party and a pastor by trade, for example, seemed to be quite bothered by homosexuals and called plans for gay marriage “A plan to ensnare you and me.”
He did not explain the details of this plan or how its insidious goal would be accomplished.
The most fascinating of the protestors was a self-proclaimed “broke” middle-aged couple that said they espoused a disdain for private interaction in the economy or any other sector of society. These were people who are currently on unemployment, yet unpleased with the government for trying to extend unemployment benefits to them, for regulating the banks or for trying to decrease the overall cost of healthcare.
The telling bit of the whole experience came at the end as we made our way back to our car. While walking, my colleague found a discarded sign with the words “Socialism muzzles intellect” embossed on an upside down American flag. It was then that we encountered a family of four, including two children who were both very small and no older than five or six years old.
The experience summed up the trip pretty nicely.
“You boys are great Americans,” the father said. “Our country needs more people like you.”
“We’re not Americans, sir,” my colleague said. “We’re journalists.”
The expression on his face changed as did his general hue. The general warmth and pride he felt before for the youth of his nation was suddenly dashed. His wife clutched the children tightly, obviously terrified that her husband had unwittingly exposed his family to the exact thing the man on the radio had warned them could happen: they had been cornered by the communist youth whose survival depended on their ability to secure the flesh of good capitalists for consumption.
From this, The Tea Party movement does not look like the kind of political force that will change a nation. Their only real unifying characteristic was a mutual love of talk radio. The more extreme members of the movement will turn off regular Americans, and the average “tea partier” was not the kind of person to vote against the GOP.
The only thing the 1,000 some odd people present on the Capitol would have agreed upon was that Rush is right, followed by a loud unison proclamation of “Ditto!”
