Republican leaders are rejecting Democratic claims that protests at GOP town halls are similar to the 2009-2010 Tea Party uprising, claiming that they are simply the outbursts of liberals “sad they lost the election.”
Noting that the Tea Party was an organic protest that also blasted Republicans for spending too much and busting the federal budget, several GOP House members said that the new protests many are facing back home are instead organized by Democratic social media groups and focused only on blasting the right.
“On the other side you’re hearing people complain because they are sad that they lost the election,” said Rep. Raul Labrador, elected with Tea Party help in 2010. “Get over it. Grow up. And start making sure that your party becomes more representative,” he said.
Virginia Rep. Dave Brat, another lawmaker with Tea Party support and who knocked off former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014, said he welcomes the protests but added that they are being fueled by outside groups.
“There’s some coordinated activity going on out there,” he said at a “Conversations with Conservatives” press event moderated by Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation. “I think by now you’ve all Googled ‘Indivisible,’ ‘Resist,’ and all these kind of things to learn about what’s going on, right?”
Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry dismissed attempts by liberals to take use the Tea Party model to describe the anti-Trump protests around the country.
He said that the 2010 Tea Party started in “living rooms” and “fire halls” in Middle America to press for structural changes in Washington.
“I don’t think that this is quite the same,” said Perry. “When you see ads, and they’re out there, for paid protesters to come, and when you see the signs that are not made in someone’s living room, they’re printed up in different languages and so on and so forth, this is a different operation than one that came out of somebody’s living room by people that just found a like cause that they’re government is heading in the wrong direction,” he added.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
