[Windflier]

Who started the Tea Party movement?

There's no doubt that it was Rick Santelli's rant on CNBC that sparked the movement. He challenged Americans across the country to meet him for a new American Tea Party in response to the damage that Obie Won Husseini is causing to the nation.

Go to YouTube and do a search on "Rick Santelli Tea Party", and you'll find the video of the rant that started it all.

[DB]

You are correct.

It wasn’t Beck or Paul.

[Natural Born 54]

Shortly before Santelli’s rant, there were 3 people Wiki credits as being precursors of the Tea Party movement. The first was Rush Limbaugh 3 weeks before ranting about porkulus. Then a couple weeks later, FreedomWorks activist Mary Rakovich protested outside of an Obama town hall meeting in Florida. When reporters interviewed her she ranted about “government wasting way too much money helping people receive high definition TV signals” and got some face time on TV after that. Last was a blogger named Liberty Belle organized a porkulus protest in Seattle. Within days, there were 2 more protests in other locations (Denver & Mesa) followed by Santelli’s dubbing the movement the new Tea Party. That was Feb. 19, 2009.

[dancusa]

Rick Santelli gets the credit with his CNBC rant. Jim Vicevich spoke at the first one in Hartford with about 150 people attending in Febuary. It mushroomed in April with about 5,000 in April at the State Capitol in Hartford. On 9/11/09 over 2,000 attended in a driving rain storm at the same site. I was there on 4/15 and 9/11.