What a difference a year makes. From the beginnings of the Tea Party, in the spring of 2009, liberal Democrats have made no effort to conceal their hatred for the movement. President Obama said the Tea Partiers ought to be thanking him instead of protesting his policies. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Tea Partiers of harboring Nazis. Most famously, actress Janeane Garofalo said “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.” Since then, this liberal meme has been repeated endlessly in an attempt to discredit the Tea Party as nothing more than a collection of angry, mean-spirited, old white people.
Meanwhile, the movement has played by the rules, organized and grown all over the country, and become a force to be reckoned with in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. At least seven incumbent senators and representatives have been knocked out of office by Tea Party insurgencies so far, and the only question remaining seems to be how many freshmen congressmen will join the Tea Party Caucus on Capitol Hill in January 2011.
