Tea Party, Occupy share similar beginnings

Amplify’d from www.usatoday.com

WASHINGTON – After spending months organizing demonstrations, building lists of supporters and helping broadcast the Tea Party message nationwide, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips organized his last rally on Nov. 7, 2009.

It was time, Phillips figured, for the conservative, limited-government movement to stop complaining about the problems they saw and channel that energy into the next year’s elections.
“When people talk about those early months of the Tea Party, that we were just venting, they’re right,” he said. “After a while, the big rallies died out. Why? Because campaign season started.”
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Tea party leader calls for Cain to drop out

Amplify’d from dailycaller.com

The leader of a tea party group is calling for scandal-embroiled GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain to drop out of the race.

Judson Phillips, the founding leader of Tea Party Nation, said Cain’s flailing response to sexual harassment allegations brought forward by several women was simply unacceptable.

“Herman Cain has got to go,” Judson said in an email to Tea Party Nation members. “I do not believe Cain’s accusers. There are too many questions about them. The allegations are not why Cain should leave. The campaign’s response is why he should now withdraw.”

“Ten days in, the Cain campaign is still stumbling around like newly castrated cattle. [Campaign manager] Mark Block should have been gone nine days ago,” Phillips continued. “Cain should have a competent team in place by now as well as someone really good at crisis management. So far, it is not there.”

When the allegations against Cain first surfaced, Phillips called them a “hatchet job,” but the Cain campaigns response has convinced Phillips that Cain is not prepared for office.

Read more at dailycaller.com
 

The Tea Party movement

Amplify’d from www.tetonvalleynews.net

I can’t speak for the Tea Party. No one individual can because it is a movement not a structured organization - no dues or membership cards. There are Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, TeaParty.net, and The American Tea Party. They are not all the same. The most prominent, the Tea Party Patriots, states its three core values as fiscal responsibility, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Others add principles or beliefs such as individual freedom, personal responsibility, free speech, or our military. To be sure, there is a thread of Conservatism running through all of them and all save one state limited government to be a core value or principle.

Nowhere have I seen or heard a mission, policy, or value stated that is of a social or religious nature. The one possible exception, if you interpret broadly, is that Tea Party Nation states our rights to be “God given.” However, as this is in the Declaration of Independence, it can hardly be considered radical. The Tea Party Patriots definitively state, “As an organization we do not take stances on social issues.” The John Birch Society has. The Tea Partiers have no alliance with the John Birch Society although they share some of the same values and it appears JBS is attempting to ride the coattails of Tea Party popularity.

Read more at www.tetonvalleynews.net
 

The Tea Party movement

Amplify’d from www.tetonvalleynews.net

I can’t speak for the Tea Party. No one individual can because it is a movement not a structured organization - no dues or membership cards. There are Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, TeaParty.net, and The American Tea Party. They are not all the same. The most prominent, the Tea Party Patriots, states its three core values as fiscal responsibility, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Others add principles or beliefs such as individual freedom, personal responsibility, free speech, or our military. To be sure, there is a thread of Conservatism running through all of them and all save one state limited government to be a core value or principle.

Nowhere have I seen or heard a mission, policy, or value stated that is of a social or religious nature. The one possible exception, if you interpret broadly, is that Tea Party Nation states our rights to be “God given.” However, as this is in the Declaration of Independence, it can hardly be considered radical. The Tea Party Patriots definitively state, “As an organization we do not take stances on social issues.” The John Birch Society has. The Tea Partiers have no alliance with the John Birch Society although they share some of the same values and it appears JBS is attempting to ride the coattails of Tea Party popularity.

Read more at www.tetonvalleynews.net
 

Tea party groups share views but don’t work together

Amplify’d from www.thesunnews.com
Without question, the tea party movement has more passion and energy than any other force in American politics today. But it also has no coherent central organization or plan, raising questions about its potential impact on the 2012 elections.

Tea party loyalists proudly concede that they’re a diffuse, diverse bunch who are bound by a commitment to smaller, less intrusive government. They abhor government authority that’s too big and dictatorial. They even recoil at the notion of any hierarchical structure controlling their own effort.

There are three prominent national organizations that pledge allegiance to the tea party – Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots – as well as dozens of local groups that may or may not be affiliated with any of them.

Read more at www.thesunnews.com
 

Jimmy Hoffa won’t apologize for tea party comments

Amplify’d from www.politico.com

A defiant Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa insisted Tuesday that he would “never apologize” for his heated comments against the tea party movement.

Hoffa’s statement came after a Labor Day rally in which he called for workers to “take these son-of-a-bitches out” in 2012.

He had also said that the right was engaging on a “war on workers” and that teamsters would “remember in November” which lawmakers were for or against the president’s agenda.

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips said that the left is engaging in uncivil rhetoric, not the tea party. “We need to call them out on this. There is a myth that the Tea Party is the source of the heated rhetoric,” added Phillips.

Read more at www.politico.com
 

Blaming the Tea Party! I’m Ok with that!

Amplify’d from www.teapartynation.com

So let me get this straight.  The Tea Party congressmen offered and eventually pass a bill that S&P says would have allowed them to keep our AAA credit rating. The President and, honestly for me, no one in the Democratic Party even offered a plan. In fact the Senate refused to even vote on the tea party plan. Then everyone had to compromise to insure that our credit rating stayed where it was. It drops anyway and somehow that is the tea party’s fault?

At what point will the power and money addicts in Washington understand that we really do care?  The Tea Party has to play the role of the adult handing out tough love.  This is not a game of chicken. This is a real fight for the life of our country.  We must stand firm in our resolve to change the way our government works.  We must take the steps necessary to wean the addicts from power.  Tough love on our part is going to have to come from standing firm and voting in more people that have a backbone to stand up to the elitist in Washington.

So if they want to blame the TEA PARTY for DOING THE RIGHT THING; I am ok with that.  If they want to blame the tea party for standing up and saying NO MORE; I am ok with that too.    They can keep blaming me for their inability to curb spending and I will continue to not support their habit anymore.   We are done with bailouts, cash for clunkers, endless spending on programs that help no one, and government giveaways that we cannot afford anymore. 

Read more at www.teapartynation.com
 

Tea party headed to Wisconsin to defend Republican state senators

Amplify’d from www.rawstory.com

Two prominent tea party groups will begin their four-day “Restoring Common Sense” tour in Wisconsin on Friday to support the Republicans facing recall elections.

CNN reported that the Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Express will hold rallies across the state to defend six Republican state senators.

“The tea party stands for fiscal responsibility, and Republican Senators in Wisconsin stood firm for those principles,” Amy Kremer, chair of Tea Party Express, told CNN.

“Now they are under attack for doing the job they were elected to do. It is critical that we support and defend them from these undeserved attacks and in that effort we are proud to be joined by our friends at Tea Party Nation.”

Read more at www.rawstory.com
 

Tea Party Boiling Over Budget Compromise

Amplify’d from www.thenewamerican.com

“A go-along, get-along Republican” who “doesn’t have stomach for a fight.” Those were the words used by Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips to describe Speaker of the House John Boehner after Boehner cut a deal with Democrats to keep the federal government funded.

So dismayed and disappointed are the Tea Party faithful that dispatches from the various Tea Party outposts suggest that the movement will back a challenger to Boehner in the 2012 elections.

The discrepancy in the extent and fervor of the dissatisfaction of the electorate is easily explained away. To voters, particularly Tea Party-affiliated voters, this crop of freshmen lawmakers are perceived to have broken their campaign vows to reduce government and break the cycle of deficit increases. Their erstwhile supporters feel betrayed and used. Many feel that these candidates who at one time drew near them with their lips, had their hearts far from them once they started breathing the self-congratulating and incumbent-friendly atmosphere of Washington, D.C.
Read more at www.thenewamerican.com
 

Tea party leader lashes out at Sen Brown

Amplify’d from www.politico.com

Sen. Scott Brown has thrown his tea party supporters “under the bus” with his recent critiques of some Republican budget cut proposals, a movement leader said Friday.

Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, on Thursday denounced GOP suggestions to cut social and cultural programs as “irresponsible,” and Judson Phillips, a leader of Tea Party Nation, is steamed.

Brown has downplayed his connection to the movement, saying in February that he is “a Republican, period” and that while he respects the tea party, he isn’t part of it.

Read more at www.politico.com