Tea Party Congressman makes a spash, first day on commitee

[KyrieTheFuture]

The problem with Curt is that he's just a businessman trying to go to Washington to change the current establishment.

He just got elected a couple of months back and probably has a lot of catching up to do. Seems like an honest mistake, but apparently some of you are satisfied with the current establishment and rather demonize the entire Tea Party as a whole due to his blunder.

It's even less excusable as a businessman. Imagine if that were a business meeting where he didn't realize a potential partner wasn't a foreigner. Just because the current system sucks doesn't mean any change is good. Influx of idiots won't help us

[Akrazotile]

What I dont understand is why he was addressing these guys in the first place if he didn't know who they were? If the meeting was ABOUT India it would be a reasonable mistake to make. If the meeting was about something else completely you'd think he'd be making statements relevant to the topic, not going on about India.

My issue isnt that he mistook a couple Americans for Hindians, it's that he must have had no idea why he was even at the meeting in the first place.

[masonanddixon]

Garbage in, garbage out. You have a population of unenlightened dimwits going to the polls, they're going to elect unenlightened dimwits to represent them.

This.

[KevinNYC]

the tea party wasn't always terrible. In the beginning wasn't it made up with people across multiple political parties and agendas. It sort of reminded me of the early years of the Reform party(Canadian Politics)

No. It was not. It was always associated with and led conservatives and libertarians.

The movement didn't spring into being when the TARP bill was signed by President Bush in Oct 2008. It sprung into being in February 2009. The anger may have been there in the fall of 2008, but nobody was in the streets until they had a Democratic president in office to focus their anger on.

This woman was credited with holding the first anti-stimulus protest and would go on to become a national coordinator with the Tea Party Patriots started her blog 5 days after the inauguration and quite openly identifies as a Republican and a Conservative. The Tea Party Patriots would team up with Glenn Beck to hold a protest that brought about 70,000 people to Washington. His Fox News show also started in Jan 2009. He wasn't the only host on Fox who heavily promoted the Tea Party. Check out this clip.

Other conservatives have heavily promoted the Tea Party. The initial spark was a rant by Rick Santelli, and ex-derivatives trader on CNBC which no one really watches, but it was promoted by the Drudge Report and went viral.

The first tea party website was set up with a day, www.reTeaParty.com. See where that link take you now. The Tea Party was promoted a spontaneous populist uprising, but long-term conservative activists from the Beltway provided the organizational structure and the money. Check out any news on the Tea Party from 2009 and 2010.

FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group run by lobbyist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, helped fund the protests. The Web site Tea Party Patriots encouraged supporters to be aggressive at Democrats' town hall meetings that summer.

Also that summer, the bus tour Tea Party Express (TPE) was launched, backed by longtime Republican operatives. The tour's sponsors were the Our Country Deserves Better PAC (formed in 2008 to oppose Obama), and Americans for Prosperity (launched by oil and manufacturing billionaire David Koch). Americans for Prosperity also provided tea party activists with lists of elected officials to target and helped them with strategy, online coordination and training.

Sal Russo: The chief strategist for Tea Party Express, Russo has worked for a range of establishment Republican campaigns going back three decades. He was an aide to Ronald Reagan when Reagan was governor of California. Russo has also worked for Orrin Hatch, Jack Kemp and George Pataki.

In Feb 2010, the first "Tea Party Convention" was held and Sarah Palin was the headliner.

[KevinNYC]

When they did polling on the Tea Party, they basically found they were the more conservative wing of the Republican party particularly on economics.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

......
But while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the greatest number of Tea Party supporters blame Congress.

They do not want a third party and say they usually or almost always vote Republican. The percentage holding a favorable opinion of former President George W. Bush, at 57 percent, almost exactly matches the percentage in the general public that holds an unfavorable view of him.