Tale Of The Tea Party...

"All political parties die at last of
swallowing their own lies..."
- Dr. Arbuthnot, Life of Emerson

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Back in 2009, barely months into President Barack Obama's first year in office, a number of Republicans banded together with the sole purpose of crippling any re-election ideas the Democratic president might have been entertaining. It was a group later to brand itself the Tea Party Movement (TPM), a collection of seemingly angry Americans insisting they were mad at the federal government, at its inability to balance the budget and at its, they said, encroachment on more and more personal freedoms. They got an initial buzz with that, and the press quickly dubbed their effort a "populist" movement.

Of course, it wasn't.

The Tea Party has reared its head for three long years. It has found traction in some quarters, although most sectors of the country stil see it as a fringe enterprise. It did get some headlines when a few of its members won local and state elections, and when a handful won seats in Congress. But it failed to grab the national rope. It is now fast becoming known as what it always was, a sub-wing of the Republican Party's awful Right - a group of angry Americans, most of them White, who enjoy and practice confrontation and engage in provocative sign-making.

So, what happened?

Two things: That initial burst of energy fizzled with every passing month. And its political candidates, the successful ones who won office, discovered that power does not come as quickly as fame when one hits Congress. There, tradition rules, especially in the stodgy U.S. Senate. Their harsh and loud voices in the campaign for office had translated into votes, but that spark went out once they took their oath of office and found themselves pegged as obstinate junior members.

Teabaggers are still out there. Their most notable national figures include Republican politicians such as flinty Ron Paul, his son Rand, the annoying Sarah Palin, Congressman Eric Cantor and failed presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, among others. Paul, says Wikipedia, is the movement's "intellectual godfather." Mr. Paul, an elderly congressman from a district in the Texas Gulf Coast, remains in the race for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination, although he has a knack for finishing fourth in the four-man contest on primary nights.

That Ron Paul is the figurehead of the Tea Party says it all. Teabaggers are nothing more than Republicans in lousier clothing. As things developed, there really was no need for this splinter group. They are Republicans. That is why they arrive at Republican Debates. That is why they cheer for adulterer/historian Newt Gingrich at all GOP debates. Unlike Ross Perot's Reform Party of 1992, Teabaggers did not noisily secede from the GOP. And who knows, maybe they only see themselves as the "soccer mob" of the party, the ones who will raise Hell, throw verbal bombs and still slink up to the voting booth to vote Republican.

Did the Tea Party mean anything?

Not much. It has no leader and its gripes are the gripes we've heard from establishment Republicans such as nomination frontrunner Mitt Romney and his portly nemesis, Gingrich. Why didn't they birth their own genuine party? Again, because at heart they are Republicans. So, when you hear Tea Party this and Tea Party that...just know that these people are not zealots of conviction. They are really just a gang of malcontents who needed attention and, when they got some, began to wildly believe their own ridiculousness. It happens in America, and these are the days of 24-hour news, endless radio and TV talk shows and spontaneous press conferences.

It may have been a different story for the country had these Teabaggers actually created a real political party and rousted America into perhaps supporting a true Third Party national candidate, which in my estimation would be a very good thing for the United States. We're in a rut. Too many of us say there is little distinction between the traditional Democratic Party and the traditional Republican Party.

Too bad these Americans were nothing more than fattened Rednecks simply interested in fueling bigotry and racial unrest. No one outside that soiled sphere was going to buy their silliness. You'd need some intelligence behind any effort to generate an overland rage, and we all know that it'll take more than a spark to beat President Obama in the Fall.

This Tea Party Movement will fade, soon to be forgotten. It's the sad side of life, but lies will doom even the most noble of efforts...

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