Many on the left pretend that the Tea Parties are just about supporting Republicans and attacking Democrats. This probably has something to do with the fact that the left views everything through the lens of interest groups tribalism. Of course many Republicans are only too happy to agree about the basic purpose of the Tea Parties.
But Americans were angry before the Tea Party title became widespread. This is a point that Republican candidate Stephen Bailey makes in a recent interview and that FreedomWorks’s Matt Kibbe made in a September talk in Colorado.
I’ve always been interested in politics as an armchair observer and commentator. However, the decision to run began in late 2008 when the TARP bailout legislation was first brought to a vote. I was on a business trip in Europe and celebrated when the bill was defeated. When Congress and President Bush signed the TARP bailout two weeks later, against the wishes of the American public, it initiated the chain of events that led to the creation of the Tea Party movement and my resolve to not allow my country, my freedom and my families freedom to be destroyed. The resolve accelerated over the next year as President Obama and the Democrats rammed one tyrannical bill after another down our throats, engorging themselves and their political cronies in an orgy of spending that is bankrupting America.
This echoes Kibbe’s views (and Bailey attended the event where Kibbe spoke). A transcript follows the video.
My organization was watching this grass-roots anger that we believe grew out of the frustration with Republican spending. The boiling point was when George W. Bush said we are scrapping the free market to save it, and we’re going to bail out Wall Street with TARP.
And people forget this now. But inside the beltway, there were very few willing to oppose that, and it was considered a fait accompli that this was going to happen.
And all of a sudden this wave of grass roots shut down the capitol. The first House vote failed dramatically. We believe that that was the founding day of what we now call the Tea Party. And it was frustration with Republicans.
And what did Obama run on? He ran on fiscal responsibility and transparency. He didn’t mean it, it turns out. But people with hope in their hearts for this country said we’ve got to try something, because clearly John McCain is not up to the task of a freedom movement.
And what’s the first thing [Obama] did? He tried to jam through a trillion dollar hidden, murky, I’m-not-going-to-let-you-read-it, “stimulus” bill. And we all got up out of our couches, we stopped yelling at the TV, and we started protesting.