Is the Tea Party Just a Response to President Barack Obama"s Election?

Question: Is the Tea Party Just a Response to President Barack Obama's Election?

Tea Party members often say that they want to restore fiscal responsibility, but when President George W. Bush approved the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and said the free market must be abandoned to preserve the free market, where were they? Why did the Tea Party only emerge a month after President Barack Obama took office?

Answer:

The Left would have everyone believe the Tea Party simply sprung up one day in 2009 in direct response to the inauguration of President Obama. The implication, of course, is that since it allegedly formed out of opposition to Obama, it must then be a movement founded by racists.

The reality, however, is that the individual components that led to the formation of the Tea Party had been simmering for years. Well before Obama even announced his intention to run for office, many conservatives were privately murmuring their disapproval about the direction the federal government was headed under President Bush. By 2004, many conservatives had become disenchanted with Bush, especially after sending him into office on a wave of "compassionate conservatism" in 2000. By 2006, the dissonance turned into frustration, and by 2008, the frustration was beginning to boil over into anger.

If conservatives had been annoyed with President Bush for using 9/11 to undertake one of the largest expansions of executive power in U.S.

history, they became even more upset when the newly elected Democratic Congress began to expand the entire government at an exponential pace in 2006.

For many conservatives, President Barack Obama's inauguration was indeed a cause for concern, but not because of his race. In the month and a half leading up to the historic event, Obama had been publicly calling for a massive spending package to stoke the growth of the economy. Conservatives were doubtful that additional spending was the answer to the nation's economic woes. Only after it became clear that Obama and Congressional Democrats were not going to reach across the aisle as the president had promised, and indeed were intent on forcing the stimulus package on the American people regardless of their wishes, did the first vestiges of the Tea Party begin to form. The first protest -- held on Tax Day in 2009 -- was in direct response to the $787 billion spending plan approved on Feb. 14 of that year.

Many of these same people were privately chuckling when the Left began to call the demonstrations against ObamaCare "astroturfing." Many of the same people involved in organizing those events were simply citizen-activists, who were completely unaffiliated with multi-national insurance companies or other well-financed special interests. The more their efforts were mocked by Democratic leaders, the more furious their desire became to organize. Not finding the reception they were looking for from an increasingly disconnected Republican Party, these people found what they needed in the loosely-formed Tea Party organizations.

Did President Barack Obama have a role in helping the formation of the Tea Party? Absolutely. Was he the sole reason for its inception? No.

More Tea Party Myths: