Posted on 04/03/2010 2:15:24 PM PDT by Lorianne
Their faces sometimes twisted in anger, 'tea party' followers have been called neo-Klansmen and knuckle-dragging hillbillies.
To be sure, angry town halls, the N-word thrown at black congressmen, and signs comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler play into the hands of the movement's critics. And demonizing tea party activists tends to energize the Democrats' left-of-center base.
But political experts say that many such criticisms are near-sighted, if not outright inappropriate – and ultimately may miss the point. Indeed, polls suggest that tea party activists are not only more mainstream than many critics suggest, but that a majority of them are women (primarily mothers), not angry white men.
What's more, the release this week of the top three planks of the "crowd-sourced" Contract From America project, to some activists, shows a maturation from sign-wielding protesters to a political reform movement grounded in ideas.
The top three vote-getters among 360,000 respondents on the Contract From America website: Calling for an enumerated powers act to force lawmakers to check the constitionality of new laws; requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for any tax hike; and a legislative backstop to prevent the EPA from "backdoor regulating."
Tea party: 'Intellectual reform movement?' "[The ideas in the tea party-coined Contract From America] takes our protest movement and really sets forth a real kind of intellectual reform movement," says Ryan Hecker, a Tea Party Patriots activist in Houston, and a founder of the Contract From America website. "It's a response to the idea that the tea party people don't know what they're fighting about, and it shows there's a real intellectual center to this movement and that we really do have ideas."
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Oh man, that mean looking dude in #31 is gonna give me nightmares!
The Left has done everything in their power to destroy the Tea Party Movement and they just keep getting bigger, more popular and stronger as time goes on. It reminds me of the Romans persecution of the early Christians, which was the best thing that ever happened to the Church.
My local tea party group this month has added two new tea party groups in the area just to accommodate the attendance growth. We've outgrown the restaurants where we've been having our meetings. I attended one of the new meetings this week, and it had over 100 people in a standing room only crowd. The new meeting will be moved to a hotel next month.
I was talking to the leader of our local tea party organization, a pistol packing RN, and she says the restaurant where we have our original group meetings loves us. We're the only group whose members don't walk checks. People will seek out waiters to make sure they get their checks. As a result we're the only group that they don't require to pay at the door as we come in.
Thanks for the positive update.
You're welcome.
You are very welcome !
bebop bump
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N-word = Numbnuts, Nitwit, Neo-Marxist
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