Occupy Wall Street is NO Tea Party! The masses of people collecting in New York City, across the country and world in the name of OWS look more like riots (reminiscent of the 1960s free love variety) than a movement. Participants in this “inchoate” movement as liberal and conservative media have described it, have trashed parks, attacked police, set cars ablaze and paraded around topless in the name of what?
Attempts by Democrats and President Obama to label this a “populist movement” akin to the Tea party are wishful thinking. Unlike the Tea Party movement, OWS protesters are railing against big banks, corporations, eating well off donated food, and being co-opted by the big Unions for what purpose? The OWS protests are gaining lots of attention but are NOT affecting any change nor do they seem concerned with organizing for a purpose or goal in mind.
Here’s where the liberal media, Democrats and Obama need a little history lesson as they try to toss the Tea Party movement into the chaotic brew of OWS. The Tea Party movement began in organized, peaceful, methodical grassroots fashion. In early 2009, Amy Kremer (Tea Party Express), Jenny Beth Martin (Tea Party Patriots), Kari Carender and Michael Leahy were fed up with Obama policies of government over-reach, namely Obamacare, mounting US debt, bank bailouts and $800 billion stimulus which stimulated nothing.
As Peggy Noonan described the tea party’s theme is “stop the spending, stop the sloth, incompetence and unneeded regulation.” Together “they exploited the Internet to raise money and untie disparate activists.” On April 15, 2009, tea party protests were held from Seattle, WA to Richmond, VA to change the political debate and demand elected officials reign in country’s mounting debt, stop the endless government spending and taxation policies, Obamacare and get the country back on track. Over the course of two years, tea party supporters showed up at town hall members held by members of Congress, threatening political retribution in the form of votes if members of Congress voted for Obamacare.
There were no attacks on police, trashing of public parks, food donations from Union bosses or allowing the tea party movement to be co-opted by Republicans or anyone. Tea Party Express raised $7 million from 2009-2010 as well as other groups and put there money behind candidates. I guess the liberal media wants to conveniently forget the Tea Party Express backed unknown Scott Brown in the Senate race to fill the seat held by Ted Kennedy. Scott won and of course the rest is history. The tea party proved it had purpose and power when it backed numerous candidates in the 2012 mid-term Congressional elections, helping Republicans sweep into the majority in the House and narrowing the picking up seats in the Senate.
Many wish the tea party movement would fade away but it hasn’t and it won’t. Of course people would like to paint the Tea Party as a racist movement populated by a bunch of wackos but it’s just the opposite. Rep. Allen West and presidential candidate Herman Cain along with tea party activists of color across country kill that stereotype but as Noonan noted in a previous column, theses stereotypes help “Democrats keep their base.” This brings us back to Occupy Wall Street protestors and their riots.
From the very beginning of the Tea Party movement, the liberal mainstream media claimed the movement was racist because they didn’t see lots of black activists, perhaps because they didn’t look. Nevertheless, all the photos and footage I see of OWS I don’t see lots of black faces but reporters don’t seem to be talking about that.
While the great pretenders of the Democrat party would like to think they have found their version of a Tea Party salvation in OWS, which they HOPE will help Obama win a second term in 2012, it’s not that cup of tea. Headlines read OWS is united in “anger” but not purpose and if Americans start dying because of this so-called populist movement, the blame will be placed squarely on the shoulders of Obama, who has encouraged the protests.
While it might make for good headlines to equate the Tea party with Occupy Wall Street, the two “movements” are very different. OWS is as Macbeth said “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The Tea Party is a potent brew challenging the failed policies of Obama and status quo of liberalism one vote at a time.
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