HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — As experts and pundits and political alchemists try to read the withering tea leaves left in the aftermath of President Obama’s Wednesday night health care address, busses across the country are being loaded with a different kind of TEA, headed for a national rally Saturday on the Capitol mall in Washington, D.C.
Glenn Gallas, business owner and organizer of the Hot Springs Tea Party, said as he prepared to board a bus to Washington, “I’m doing this to save my country, and to make clear to Congressman Ross that I want him to vote against Obama’s trillion-dollar socialized and rationed medicine scheme.”
Ross noted in his constituent newsletter last week that an “overwhelming number” of his constituents oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it was that feedback that led him to oppose the public option, as well. “We are pleased that Ross is listening to us, and that all of the cards, faxes, and e-mails have paid off,” said Gallas.
The Taxed Enough Already or TEA Party movement sprouted seemingly from nowhere on Tax Day, April 15th, in just about every American city, big and small. Critics at first labeled the demonstrations as Republican sour grapes in the wake of President Obama’s election, and they were famously denounced as racist by comedienne Janeane Garofalo on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” But the TEA Partiers didn’t disappear.
They emerged again on July 4th, a few notables garbed as 1776-era minutemen. They waved flags, copies of the Constitution, and held handmade signs that condemned the trillion-dollar pricetag of government spending and snowballing debt. Again the demonstrations were paid little heed by the media. In August, they could no longer be ignored.
At July’s end, Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that she wasn’t “scared of August,” but as soon as Congress broke for recess, town hall meetings were flooded by a new breed of political activist. Congressmen and senators ran for the hills away from the TEA Partiers, and a few of them were chased. Scheduled town halls were cancelled and Congressional schedules laid empty for weeks. While Speaker Pelosi denounced the mysterious political activists as swastika-bearing Nazis, her Blue Dog Democrats transformed into rigid fiscal conservatives and the “public option” seemed to die on the vine.
On Wednesday, President Obama did his best to resuscitate his unpopular health care bill, but the TEA Partiers this Saturday will bring their case against it to the White House’s backyard.
