ORLANDO, Fla. — Andrea Shea King stood backstage during Thursday
night’s Tea
Party rally at Lake Eola Park here, where thousands turned
out on a cool, overcast evening to raise their voices for
liberty.
“You should have been here in March,” said King, who spoke at
one of the earliest rallies in what has since become a nationwide
phenomenon. “It was mobbed — and the media barely paid
attention.”
The media are paying attention now. They have no choice.
Over the past nine months, hundreds of thousands of citizens have
answered the Tea Party movement’s call to direct involvement in
politics. Their activism has ignited the spark that now threatens
to incinerate the agenda of Hope and Change that once seemed
impervious to conservative opposition.
Nine months ago, commodities analyst Rick Santelli was
interviewed from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade about
the stimulus-and-bailout policies of the new administration. At
8:11 am. Eastern time on Feb. 19, Santelli launched into a rant
that instantly became a YouTube
classic.
Turning to the commodities traders in Chicago, Santelli
asked: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s
mortgage who has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” He
was answered with a chorus of jeers.
“President Obama, are you listening?” Santelli then asked.
“We’re thinking about having a Chicago tea party in July. All of
you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m going
to start organizing it.”
Santelli didn’t have to organize. His rant on CNBC inspired
other Americans to emulate the spirit of the original Boston Tea
Party in 1773. They spontaneously staged rallies in their
communities, far from Chicago. The Tea Party movement begun that
February morning has been supported by major conservative
institutions — including FreedomWorks and
Americans for
Prosperity — but the movement itself is organic,
generated by the passions of the people who turn out for the
events.
Ron and Kay
Rivoli, a musical duo who have performed at more than
70 events on two Tea Party Express tours, estimate they have
appeared before crowds totaling in excess of 350,000 — not
including the 9/12 March On Washington, which drew a throng that
topped a million, according to some estimates.
Protest songs like “USSA” and “Big Fat No” have made the
Rivolis celebrities on the Tea Party circuit and earned them an
appearance on Mike Huckabee’s Fox News program. A similar
newfound fame has enveloped others associated with the movement,
including Kenneth Gladney, who was
beaten up while selling flags at a St. Louis town hall
meeting hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.). Gladney spoke at
Thursday’s Lake Eola Park rally where he waved the Gadsden Flag
and invoked its famous revolutionary motto, “Don’t Tread On
Me.”
More than anything else, the Tea Party protests encouraged
conservatives who seemed downtrodden and dispirited in the wake
of Barack Obama’s electoral landslide of a year ago. Some have
cited Tea Party activists as the grassroots foot soldiers who
helped produce the off-off-year victories for Republicans in the
New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections.
Yet this uprising of “patriots,” as the Tea Party people
proudly call themselves, also threatens to disturb the GOP status
quo.
It is something of an ironic accident that the Tea Party
Express tour’s final stop was here in Orlando. Florida has become
the Alamogordo Test Range for the Tea Party movement’s
mushrooming power, and this state’s Republican establishment may
soon feel the thermonuclear blast. As The
American Spectator’s Tampa-based
Larry
Thornberry reports today, Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer and
Gov. Charlie Crist have found themselves in the crosshairs of
reinvigorated populist sentiment.
The grassroots energy that has made Crist’s Senate primary
challenger Marco Rubio a hero to conservatives resembles one of
the tropical storms that so frequently strike the Florida coast:
powerful, unpredictable and capable of inflicting cataclysmic
damage wherever it makes landfall.
The Tea Party movement has drawn into politics people who
have seldom been part of the process before. At last night’s Lake
Eola Park event, a woman in blue jeans distributed orange flyers
advertising a “Freedom Rally”
scheduled for February’s annual Bike Week in Daytona Beach. When
hell-raisers on Harleys come roaring into the national debate,
who can predict the outcome?
“Hey, Pelosi, You Don’t Speak for Me!” one handmade poster
in the Orlando crowd proclaimed. “We are the
American People and We’re Not Going Away!”
Rick Santelli asked in February if Obama was listening. Is
he listening now?
