If I’ve come to any conclusion regarding the nascent Tea Party Movement, it’s that it’s virtually impossible to get an objective assessment of it. Whether its cable news, newspapers, the internet, or even the Tea Party Movement itself, everyone views the movement through their own subjective political or partisan lenses, and virtually everyone who comments on it, can’t seem to do so without offering their own “colorful” views of the movement.
Thus, having never been to a Tea Party gathering before or having any close friends or family members in the movement, I thought I would take the opportunity to visit one of the Tea Party gatherings in order to separate fact from fiction as well as assess my own views and biases with regards to the movement. Therefore, I visited one of the many April 15 Tea Party gatherings that were held throughout the nation yesterday, and while I was there, I listened to the some of the invited speakers, conversed with attendees, and even conducted some (admittedly amateurish) polling myself.
However, for disclosure purposes, allow me to give a little background of my own political views:
I’m a libertarian-leaning/classical liberal voter in my late 20’s. I essentially take a “live and let live” view on life and share George Washington’s view on government:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
I am not now, nor have I ever been registered or affiliated with any political party. More often than not, I have supported Libertarian Party candidates for political office at both the state and federal level. I voted for Libertarian Michael Badnarik for president in 2004 and for libertarian Charles Jay, the Boston Tea Party nominee for president in 2008 [It should be noted that the Boston Tea Party is a very small political party that was formed in the summer of 2006, a full 2 1/2 months before the first Tea Party protests. Although there is some ideological overlap between the Boston Tea Party (political party) and the Tea Party Movement, the two are not affiliated with one another].
THE SETTING
Yesterday, I attended the Tax Day TEA Party, which was organized by the Morristown Tea Party. Morristown, New Jersey is a town of roughly 19,000 people located about 25 miles west of New York City. I am not aware of the exact political demographics of the town, but the county in which it is located leans Republican, having supported Bush over Kerry by a 15.8% margin in the 2004 presidential election and McCain over Obama by an 8.1% margin in the 2008 presidential election.
The event took place on the Morristown Green, where a platform was set up for the roughly a dozen or so scheduled speakers who had been invited by the Morristown Tea Party organization. It would be difficult task to assess just how many people actually attended the event, as people who attend political gatherings tend to come up with wildly divergent assessments from local law enforcement officers hired to provide security from such events. I would argue that there were certainly at least 1,000 people gathered at the event but certainly no more than 10,000. It was certainly not as large as prior Tea Party gatherings that I have seen in national media coverage but still fairly impressive when you consider that Morristown is a town of not quite 19,000 residents.
The event was scheduled to run from 11AM to 2PM. I arrived late at 11:25 and was there for the rest of the event except for the 20 minutes it took me to repark my car. I listened attentively to the speakers until 12 noon, at which time, I began passing out political surveys to attendees. The final speaker finished early at about 1:53PM, and within 10 minutes, virtually everyone in attendance had scattered, leaving perhaps 50 attendees left. I continued to pass out surveys until around 2:30PM, by which time, only a dozen or so attendees remained.
THE DEMOGRAPHICS
When you’re talking about numbers between 1,000 and 10,000, it’s virtually impossible to give a completely accurate assessment of the demographics. It was my perception that the vast majority (>95%) of the attendees were Caucasian and that at least 75% of attendees were either middle-aged or older. Men and women appeared to be represented fairly equally. I personally saw about 20 African-Americans at the event, but there very easily could have been more in attendance. Four of them, however, made it very clear that they did not support the Tea Party Movement and were merely there to see what the gathering was all about.
Among the attendees were also some infants, children, and adolescents, but they made up a very small minority of all attendees. I also met or saw a couple of Asian-Americans, a several Hispanic-Americans, and several Jewish-Americans, but they too made up a very small minority of all attendees.
THE SIGNS
Ah, yes, the infamous Tea Party signs. Part of the reason I came to this event was to see firsthand the kind of signs that are shown during Tea Party Movement events, and I certainly saw quite a few of them. By my estimate, roughly 20-30% of attendees carried a sign. Roughly half of them addressed political issues (i.e. taxes, spending, the deficit, health care, smaller government, the ills of socialism) while half of them addressed politicians (i.e. President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi, Harry Reid, Blue Dog Democrats).
Interestingly, here are some of the things I did NOT see:
* Depictions of Obama comparing him to Hitler: NONE
* Depictions of Obama associating him with the Swastika or with Fascism or Nazism: NONE
* Depictions of Obama comparing him to Stalin or Mao: NONE
* Depictions of Obama associating him with the Hammer-and-Sickle, Communism, or Marxism: NONE
* Depictions of Obama in whiteface comparing him to the Joker character: NONE
* Messages suggesting that Obama is a Muslim: NONE
* Messages suggesting the use of violence against elected officials: NONE
In fact, the most shocking thing about the Tea Party event signs was just how tame they actually were. To be sure, there were a couple of exceptions. One man, for example, held up a sign that read “Somewhere in Kenya a Village is Missing Its Idiot”, a sign which a couple of Tea Party activists admitted was “untrue” and “unhelpful to the cause.” There were also several signs making reference to Obama and other as “socialists” or comparing their ideas to “socialism.” There were also at least 20 signs calling for Obama’s impeachment, which shouldn’t be particularly shocking given the frequency with which anti-war protesters had called for Bush’s impeachment.
But probably most disappointing of all (from my perspective) was that of the hundreds of signs that made references to politicians, I came across only ONE sign that criticized both the Democrats and the Republicans (It read: “Elephants and asses, fleecing the masses”). The remaining hundreds of signs placed the blame solely upon Democrats without even hinting that Republicans might also be part of the problem.
THE SPEAKERS
As I mentioned before, the event featured about a dozen scheduled speakers, all of whom had been invited by the Morristown Tea Party. Since I arrived 25 minutes late, I could be off a little in my count, and since I was attempting to pass out surveys to attendees, I missed much of what the later speakers had to say. However, three of the speakers who spoke during the first hour stand out in my mind:
Jason Mattera
Mattera is a young conservative activist and author of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation who is a member of the Young America’s Foundation and moonlights as Michelle Malkin’s TV correspondent for HotAir.com. Without getting bogged down in Mattera’s political views, I think it’s safe to say that he has said and done quite a few controversial things dating back to his days as a college student. The speech he gave at yesterday’s event was little different (if different at all) from the speech he gave to CPAC last February, in which his gems of wisdom consisted of such lines as “Except, unlike the left’s gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences, and our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine.” Much of the thrust of his speech was arguing that too many people of his (and my) generation vote for Democrats in a knee-jerk fashion without even stopping to consider the consequences of the Democratic Party’s platform—an argument that probably would have carried greater weight if it had not been so chock-full with so many ad hominem attacks against Democrats and liberals.
Alison McHose
McHose is a Republican politician who represents New Jersey’s 24th legislative district in the New Jersey General Assembly. She appears to be pretty solidly conservative on fiscal/economic issues, though her website doesn’t give any indication of her views on individual liberty or foreign policy. Her speech stood out in that it was by the far the shortest speech of the event, lasting no more than a few minutes. I agreed with about 75% of what she had to say, so I don’t really have much more to add on her.
Mychal Massey
Massey is a conservative columnist for WorldNetDaily and a member of Project 21, a conservative public policy group that refers to itself as “The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.” His speech had a two-pronged message. During the first part of his speech, he made it a point to discuss all the negative publicity being drawn towards the Tea Party Movement based on accusations that many of its members were hostile. Being an African-American himself, Massey called for any Tea Party member who harbored any racist ideas to stand up and announce himself, and he then paused a few seconds for dramatic effect. When no one stepped forward to proclaim their racist ideas, Massey condemned both racists as well as those in the mainstream media who would use a couple of instances of racist acts in order to tarnish the entire Tea Party movement. This portion of his speech received a rather enthusiastic response from the attendees. Much of the rest of his speech was essentially boilerplate conservativism—focusing mainly on fiscal/economic issues but also throwing in a few statements in favor of social conservative (which as a libertarian, I obviously did not agree with).
INTERACTIONS WITH ATTENDEES
The mood of the event was calm and peaceful. I didn’t see any arguments breaking out until around 2pm, by which time the event was already over. The argument was between an African-American (who believed that there was an element of racism in the Tea Party Movement—particularly in the South) and a Caucasian Tea Party member who argued that other gentleman was unfairly making a generalization about the entire Tea Party movement based upon a couple of instances which neither of them had even seen firsthand. The argument went on for several minutes, but in the end they agreed to disagree and peacefully went their separate ways. And that’s about as argumentative as I ever saw any two people at this event get. Kind of anticlimactic if you ask me.
I will admit that not being a conservative or a Republican, I was a bit nervous attending the event—not because I in any way feared for my safety but because I wasn’t sure what proportion of the attendees were hard-core conservatives, what proportion were partisan Republicans, and what proportion were genuinely smaller government libertarian-leaning voters like myself.
What I found interesting and disappointing regarding this event was how reluctant attendees were to engage in any meaningful political dialogue with me or each other. Attendees were incredibly polite to the scheduled speakers and gave them all boisterous rounds of applause, yet the vast majority of attendees who I came across seemed utterly uninterested in hearing what I had to say or even telling me about their own political views. I found it incredibly ironic that so many Tea Party attendees—a group renowned for expressing its views—seemed utterly uninterested in actually sharing and discussing their views with me. Even people who were carrying quite elaborate signs with witty slogans were reluctant to discuss their views with me or to fill out my political surveys.
The other thing that I found interesting and disappointing was the response that I tended to get from attendees once they “found out” that I was “libertarian” or “libertarian-leaning.” I was actually rather subdued when I spoke to attendees, going to great effort to not throw my libertarianism in their faces. But when asked about my political views, I was completely honest and did not hedge one bit. No one insulted me or said any nasty to me, but in almost every case in which I told an attendee that I was “libertarian” or “libertarian-leaning”, I could see the sudden change in their facial expressions and listen to the change in tone of their voices and whatever conservation we were having deflate before my very eyes. The reaction that most attendees had upon learning that I was “libertarian” was akin to “Oh . . . you’re one of those people. You know, I suddenly realize that I have more important things to do than to stay here and talk.”
This seemed to be the underlying theme during my conservations with Tea Party attendees, which was disheartening. For a movement that professes to support small government, less taxes, less government spending, free markets, and individual freedom (all of which are libertarian tenets), one would think that the Tea Party movement would welcome libertarians with open arms. Sadly, that was not what I perceived in my admittedly limited interactions with Tea Party attendees.
And I’m not so sure that I feel any more reassured by those attendees who actually did express some interest in speaking with me (however briefly). One woman, upon hearing that the survey that I was giving had been created by a libertarian organization asked, “Oh, you mean anarchists?” Another woman, upon learning that I was “libertarian” was convinced that libertarianism was equivalent with socialism and was under the impression that Hillary Clinton was a libertarian. I very candidly informed her that libertarianism was 180 degrees opposed to socialism and that Hillary Clinton was not the least bit libertarian, but I’m not sure I got through to the woman, as she seemed more interested in talking about abortion and how Christian governments were the only moral governments.
There were exceptions, however. Out of the hundred or so people that I managed to talk to, I came across exactly one Ron Paul supporter—whose support was made evident by his “Rand Paul for Senate” T-shirt. He described himself as a libertarian-conservative and was probably the most friendly and open-minded attendee I came across. I saw him talking with conservatives and even a few liberals, and in all cases, he conducted himself with poise and was always polite in his disagreements. And thus, in the second great irony of the day, I realized that for all the flack Ron Paul supporters get from both Democrats and Republicans calling them “Paulbots” and “isolationists” and “extremists” and other ad hominem attacks, the one person who happened to be more personable and polite than anyone else that I came across, happened to be a Ron Paul supporter. Go figure.
NOTE: This concludes PART I of this article. To view the data that obtained from informal polling conducted at yesterday’s Tax Day TEA Party as well as my concluding thoughts, please refer to PART II.
Please feel free to email me at [email protected] in order to convey any questions, concerns, or suggestions that you might have for me.
Birthplace: San Diego, CA
Birthdate: That’s for me to know
Political Party: Independent
Political Philosophy: Libertarian-liberal