The largest and most impactful grassroots political movement at least since the civil rights movement and perhaps in all of American history originated in the minds and efforts of less than a dozen Americans.
It was late February 2009 just weeks after the inauguration of Barack Obama and there was every reason for conservatives to fear the worst: That we had elected a polarizing far left and ultimately ineffectual president who would prove a threat to constitutional law our economy and Americas global standing in the world. Most concerning was that he would gradually or even quickly erode our nations two centuries of respect for individual rights and liberties upon which America was founded fundamentally transforming" (as he promised) our nation in destructive ways.
On the morning of February 19 2009 as was often the case I had the financial media outlet CNBC playing on a distant television in my suburban Philadelphia home. This particular cold February morning Rick Santelli a Chicago-based CNBC reporter was doing his usual stand-up reporting from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (COMEX). Santelli began reporting on Washingtons federal subsidies of housing under Obama when mid way through his report his sense of outrage began to escalate passionately.
Santelli accused the Obama administration of promoting bad behavior in subsidizing mortgages then at default risk with a $75 billion housing program known as the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. He then turned and while still live on CNBC stated assertively to COMEX floor traders: Were thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party! His suggestion of a Tea Party response to the federal governments overreach was greeted with supportive applause and whistles of approval from COMEX traders. Santelli then said: What we are doing in this country is making our founders roll over in their graves."
I found Santellis Chicago comments accurate inspirational and even bold for a mainstream reporter in a media world that really never challenged Obama on much of anything during or since the 2008 campaign. What I did not realize was that his remarks were viewed similarly by several other conservative-leaning Americans who would go on to inspire a national political movement that would shake the nation.
Just a few days following Santellis rant 12 or so conservative activists including me were invited to participate in a strategic organizing Tea Party conference call moderated by Nashville-based Stanford-educated conservative Michael Patrick Leahy. It was Leahy who earlier launched the now famous #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) hashtag where it remains today one of Twitters most commonly used hashtags and a key methodology for conservative communication.
Most on the call unlike me were new to political engagement. They had largely never worked in government public policy or politics. Aside from Leahy and me the others had never managed an organization either. They had largely never written or spoken on political or public policy themes even though all of us would soon be called upon to articulate our Tea Party message nationally and even globally in the weeks to come. Most had never even worked on a political campaign. But the passion on that call was infectious. The 12 or so of us left it with a feeling that a potentially influential national political movement was emergingand quickly.
Several follow-up calls were scheduled and they led us to devise a now well-known plan for Tea Party protests across the nation on Tax Day April 15 2009. The aggressive six-week timeline like much that the Tea Party movement has undertaken since its creation was organized hastily with a sense of urgency and not without its errors. But April 15 2009 is now a fairly notable day in American history in the sense that it was the physical manifestation of a national political movement comprising tens of millions of Americans and quite possibly the largest in American history that would go on to impact significantly the nations political debate and power structure.
The day of April 15 2009 was a busy one. For my part in the afternoon on Boston Square in downtown Boston just blocks from the original Samuel Adams-led Tea Party on December 16 1773 I spoke to a large and passionate crowd furious with Obama and the countrys direction. I then left Boston to speak that evening at one of the nations largest tea parties of the day held in lower Manhattan not far from the memorialized 9/11 attack location. Three days later on the grounds of Independence Hall in Philadelphia I spoke for a third time in just three days to a very large and vibrant Tea Party rally organized by the Independence Hall Tea Party Association of which I was then an officer.
The years 2009 and 2010 were full of flurry and a sense of urgency for the national Tea Party movement an urgency that has continued to this day. In 2010 in Quincy Illinois where Lincoln held his sixth debate with U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas on October 13 1858 I joined Leahy and the late media personality Andrew Breitbart in addressing a large Tea Party crowd on the precise location where Lincoln pointedly articulated his anti-slavery message: We (the Republican Party) also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself" Lincoln said that day in Quincy.
By this time the message of our movement was being refined and polished comprised mostly of three universal themes that were and continue to be both constructive and broadly popular with the American people: First the federal government has grown too big and its taxes vastly too excessive. Second the sovereignty of the United Statesin controlling its borders in developing its national security and foreign policies and in other matters-- must be defended at all costs. And third that the U.S. Constitution was a document containing absolute truths to which government needed to adhere if it was to avoid lawlessness chaos and an erosion of its foundational liberties.
As I was in Boston and New York City Leahy and others organized one of the days largest and most successful events in Nashville drawing thousands. In downtown Chicago just a couple blocks from where the Santelli rant heard round the world took place another Tea Party founder Eric Odom organized a large and hugely successful Tea Party rally.
Quickly the passion and activism of this small cadre spread to thousands then tens of thousands and ultimately to millions of Americans who identified themselves as being supportive of the Tea Party movement. On November 2 2010 a highly motivated Tea Party movement rocked the nation sending 65 new Republican House members to Washington and thus forcing then Speaker Nancy Pelosi to surrender her gavel to new Republican Speaker John Boehner. Four years later on November 4 2014 the Tea Party movement again proved a huge difference maker further increasing Republican presence in the U.S. House and increasing its U.S. Senate seats by nine including pulling out wins in hugely contentious races in many states including Colorado Georgia Kansas Louisiana and South Dakota.
Meanwhile in the U.S. House of Representatives a Tea Party Caucus chaired by former Congresswoman Michele Bachman had been developed with the movements input to coordinate the Tea Party agenda in Congress. And the national strategy discussions continued. In Chicago for instance Odom and I spent three long days in detailed discussion on the movements strategy messaging decentralized structure and allocation of limited resources.
In the months and years since along with other Tea Party founders from the February 2009 conference call we continued tireless efforts of what by then had become a vast influential though sometimes chaotically organized movement of political consequence. All the Tea Party movement founders from Leahys first conference call are impressive in their own ways and have their own personal stories about what sparked their leadership in this now historical movement.
In the years that followed along with other national Tea Party leaders Leahy Odom and I crisscrossed the nation articulating the Tea Party message and helped to organize the movement politically in order to prevail in elections.
In Dallas for instance Leahy organized a national Tea Party leadership meeting that included many of the founders from the original February 2009 conference call. Lets begin this meeting with a prayer to God for His guidance of this movement" I suggested privately to Leahy who agreed. We began the meeting exactly that way. Later also in Dallas we organized a two-day training course for regional and other Tea Party leaders on political and public policy activism.One of those leaders was Chicago-based Eric Odom who has been an ongoing national Tea Party force--and a friend. Odom had been a part of the first Tea Party organizing calls and influential in the development of the successful April 15 2009 Tea Party rally in Chicago. In fall 2010 from Las Vegas Odom and I poured ourselves into the final days Nevada State Senator Sharron Angles U.S. Senate campaign in hopes of replacing the Obama administrations strongest Senate ally Harry Reid. As the movements prominence (and the associated strategic questions facing it) evolved I found Odom one of the movements most constructive leaders. We visited together for strategic discussions in Chicago. And on my home turf of Philadelphia I invited Odom to join me in addressing a large and important pre-election Tea Party rally held on the iconic grounds of Independence Hall in front of the very building where 56 founders of our nation pledged with a firm reliance of the protection of divine providence" their lives fortunes and sacred honor" to remove imperial British forces and rule and establish a self-governed nation rooted in liberty and the rule of law.
But together Odom and I also helped each other laugh off the obsessive unjustified and inaccurate politically-motivated criticism we endured by organizations supported by billionaire liberal George Soros and others whose agenda has been to mortally wound our movement. Some of it bordered on the outrageous. In May 2011 for instance Odom and I were leading a highly confidential national Tea Party strategic leadership call when Lizz Winstead creator of Comedy Centrals Daily Show and liberal comedian Elon James White crashed our call after call details secured codes and other information were leaked or surreptitiously obtained by a still unknown source.
The Tea Party movements efforts as even its detractors would concede have since proven hugely consequential ensuring that Obama at least since 2011 was not given full reign of the legislative and executive branches of government. A Tea Party-influenced Republican House and Senate along with our extensive grassroots efforts have held liberal Obamas agenda at bay despite the Tea Partys ultimate inability to defeat Obamacare. Along the way tens of millions of Americans comprising all races religions political party affiliations and demographics have embraced our work and embraced our patriot and Tea Party labels. Since that first February 2009 conference call the founding and ongoing development of the historic Tea Party movement is comprised of many intriguing personal stories and a singular collective story. Along the way we have done many things well (removing Pelosi and then Reid as Speaker and Majority Leader respectively) strengthening the Republican Party as a party that stands more than before for conservative principles expressed (but too often ignored) in the GOP platform and we also quickly obliterated the 2008 progressive political culture that maintained that Obama was a man who singularly held the answers for the nation. Time has proven his ideas were not at all innovative and were actually just a rewording of those from the liberal playbook of more government and more taxes. In all these ways since those February 2009 planning calls the national Tea Party movement has exceeded the accomplishments of the effective and well-constructed 2008 Obama for America campaign that ultimately propelled Obama to the presidency.
All this history is important because it reaffirms the veracity of Margaret Meads famous statement: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Its worth asking: If those first organizing calls had not been launched would Republicans today control the U.S. Senate and House? If no that means that Obamas entire far-left political agenda would have been rubber stamped by an equally liberal Congressional leadership. Has the Tea Party movement saved the nation? I believe it likely has.
Yet to be truthful about the inner workings of the Tea Party movement we have done many things well but failed in others. In 2015 the Tea Party and patriot movements top priority must be communicating and impacting public opinion and explaining why and how Tea Party principles can make America great again: creating jobs and economic prosperity restoring rigid adherence to the U.S. Constitution and restoring a strong America that can defeat serious national security threats. We must demostrate to the American people as they already seem to be recognizing that liberalism is a false religion ultimately about the manipulation of society for political ends. With a reliance on divine providence again lets roll back this utterly destructive unconstitutional government and welcome in a century or more of strong liberty leadership. Next step: We must explain our Tea Party vision and solutions for America.
The largest and most impactful grassroots political movement at least since the civil rights movement and perhaps in all of American history originated in the minds and efforts of less than a dozen Americans.
It was late February 2009 just weeks after the inauguration of Barack Obama and there was every reason for conservatives to fear the worst: That we had elected a polarizing far left and ultimately ineffectual president who would prove a threat to constitutional law our economy and Americas global standing in the world. Most concerning was that he would gradually or even quickly erode our nations two centuries of respect for individual rights and liberties upon which America was founded fundamentally transforming" (as he promised) our nation in destructive ways.
On the morning of February 19 2009 as was often the case I had the financial media outlet CNBC playing on a distant television in my suburban Philadelphia home. This particular cold February morning Rick Santelli a Chicago-based CNBC reporter was doing his usual stand-up reporting from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (COMEX). Santelli began reporting on Washingtons federal subsidies of housing under Obama when mid way through his report his sense of outrage began to escalate passionately.
Santelli accused the Obama administration of promoting bad behavior in subsidizing mortgages then at default risk with a $75 billion housing program known as the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. He then turned and while still live on CNBC stated assertively to COMEX floor traders: Were thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party! His suggestion of a Tea Party response to the federal governments overreach was greeted with supportive applause and whistles of approval from COMEX traders. Santelli then said: What we are doing in this country is making our founders roll over in their graves."
I found Santellis Chicago comments accurate inspirational and even bold for a mainstream reporter in a media world that really never challenged Obama on much of anything during or since the 2008 campaign. What I did not realize was that his remarks were viewed similarly by several other conservative-leaning Americans who would go on to inspire a national political movement that would shake the nation.
Just a few days following Santellis rant 12 or so conservative activists including me were invited to participate in a strategic organizing Tea Party conference call moderated by Nashville-based Stanford-educated conservative Michael Patrick Leahy. It was Leahy who earlier launched the now famous #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) hashtag where it remains today one of Twitters most commonly used hashtags and a key methodology for conservative communication.
Most on the call unlike me were new to political engagement. They had largely never worked in government public policy or politics. Aside from Leahy and me the others had never managed an organization either. They had largely never written or spoken on political or public policy themes even though all of us would soon be called upon to articulate our Tea Party message nationally and even globally in the weeks to come. Most had never even worked on a political campaign. But the passion on that call was infectious. The 12 or so of us left it with a feeling that a potentially influential national political movement was emergingand quickly.
Several follow-up calls were scheduled and they led us to devise a now well-known plan for Tea Party protests across the nation on Tax Day April 15 2009. The aggressive six-week timeline like much that the Tea Party movement has undertaken since its creation was organized hastily with a sense of urgency and not without its errors. But April 15 2009 is now a fairly notable day in American history in the sense that it was the physical manifestation of a national political movement comprising tens of millions of Americans and quite possibly the largest in American history that would go on to impact significantly the nations political debate and power structure.
The day of April 15 2009 was a busy one. For my part in the afternoon on Boston Square in downtown Boston just blocks from the original Samuel Adams-led Tea Party on December 16 1773 I spoke to a large and passionate crowd furious with Obama and the countrys direction. I then left Boston to speak that evening at one of the nations largest tea parties of the day held in lower Manhattan not far from the memorialized 9/11 attack location. Three days later on the grounds of Independence Hall in Philadelphia I spoke for a third time in just three days to a very large and vibrant Tea Party rally organized by the Independence Hall Tea Party Association of which I was then an officer.
The years 2009 and 2010 were full of flurry and a sense of urgency for the national Tea Party movement an urgency that has continued to this day. In 2010 in Quincy Illinois where Lincoln held his sixth debate with U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas on October 13 1858 I joined Leahy and the late media personality Andrew Breitbart in addressing a large Tea Party crowd on the precise location where Lincoln pointedly articulated his anti-slavery message: We (the Republican Party) also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself" Lincoln said that day in Quincy.
By this time the message of our movement was being refined and polished comprised mostly of three universal themes that were and continue to be both constructive and broadly popular with the American people: First the federal government has grown too big and its taxes vastly too excessive. Second the sovereignty of the United Statesin controlling its borders in developing its national security and foreign policies and in other matters-- must be defended at all costs. And third that the U.S. Constitution was a document containing absolute truths to which government needed to adhere if it was to avoid lawlessness chaos and an erosion of its foundational liberties.
As I was in Boston and New York City Leahy and others organized one of the days largest and most successful events in Nashville drawing thousands. In downtown Chicago just a couple blocks from where the Santelli rant heard round the world took place another Tea Party founder Eric Odom organized a large and hugely successful Tea Party rally.
Quickly the passion and activism of this small cadre spread to thousands then tens of thousands and ultimately to millions of Americans who identified themselves as being supportive of the Tea Party movement. On November 2 2010 a highly motivated Tea Party movement rocked the nation sending 65 new Republican House members to Washington and thus forcing then Speaker Nancy Pelosi to surrender her gavel to new Republican Speaker John Boehner. Four years later on November 4 2014 the Tea Party movement again proved a huge difference maker further increasing Republican presence in the U.S. House and increasing its U.S. Senate seats by nine including pulling out wins in hugely contentious races in many states including Colorado Georgia Kansas Louisiana and South Dakota.
Meanwhile in the U.S. House of Representatives a Tea Party Caucus chaired by former Congresswoman Michele Bachman had been developed with the movements input to coordinate the Tea Party agenda in Congress. And the national strategy discussions continued. In Chicago for instance Odom and I spent three long days in detailed discussion on the movements strategy messaging decentralized structure and allocation of limited resources.
In the months and years since along with other Tea Party founders from the February 2009 conference call we continued tireless efforts of what by then had become a vast influential though sometimes chaotically organized movement of political consequence. All the Tea Party movement founders from Leahys first conference call are impressive in their own ways and have their own personal stories about what sparked their leadership in this now historical movement.
In the years that followed along with other national Tea Party leaders Leahy Odom and I crisscrossed the nation articulating the Tea Party message and helped to organize the movement politically in order to prevail in elections.
In Dallas for instance Leahy organized a national Tea Party leadership meeting that included many of the founders from the original February 2009 conference call. Lets begin this meeting with a prayer to God for His guidance of this movement" I suggested privately to Leahy who agreed. We began the meeting exactly that way. Later also in Dallas we organized a two-day training course for regional and other Tea Party leaders on political and public policy activism.One of those leaders was Chicago-based Eric Odom who has been an ongoing national Tea Party force--and a friend. Odom had been a part of the first Tea Party organizing calls and influential in the development of the successful April 15 2009 Tea Party rally in Chicago. In fall 2010 from Las Vegas Odom and I poured ourselves into the final days Nevada State Senator Sharron Angles U.S. Senate campaign in hopes of replacing the Obama administrations strongest Senate ally Harry Reid. As the movements prominence (and the associated strategic questions facing it) evolved I found Odom one of the movements most constructive leaders. We visited together for strategic discussions in Chicago. And on my home turf of Philadelphia I invited Odom to join me in addressing a large and important pre-election Tea Party rally held on the iconic grounds of Independence Hall in front of the very building where 56 founders of our nation pledged with a firm reliance of the protection of divine providence" their lives fortunes and sacred honor" to remove imperial British forces and rule and establish a self-governed nation rooted in liberty and the rule of law.
But together Odom and I also helped each other laugh off the obsessive unjustified and inaccurate politically-motivated criticism we endured by organizations supported by billionaire liberal George Soros and others whose agenda has been to mortally wound our movement. Some of it bordered on the outrageous. In May 2011 for instance Odom and I were leading a highly confidential national Tea Party strategic leadership call when Lizz Winstead creator of Comedy Centrals Daily Show and liberal comedian Elon James White crashed our call after call details secured codes and other information were leaked or surreptitiously obtained by a still unknown source.
The Tea Party movements efforts as even its detractors would concede have since proven hugely consequential ensuring that Obama at least since 2011 was not given full reign of the legislative and executive branches of government. A Tea Party-influenced Republican House and Senate along with our extensive grassroots efforts have held liberal Obamas agenda at bay despite the Tea Partys ultimate inability to defeat Obamacare. Along the way tens of millions of Americans comprising all races religions political party affiliations and demographics have embraced our work and embraced our patriot and Tea Party labels. Since that first February 2009 conference call the founding and ongoing development of the historic Tea Party movement is comprised of many intriguing personal stories and a singular collective story. Along the way we have done many things well (removing Pelosi and then Reid as Speaker and Majority Leader respectively) strengthening the Republican Party as a party that stands more than before for conservative principles expressed (but too often ignored) in the GOP platform and we also quickly obliterated the 2008 progressive political culture that maintained that Obama was a man who singularly held the answers for the nation. Time has proven his ideas were not at all innovative and were actually just a rewording of those from the liberal playbook of more government and more taxes. In all these ways since those February 2009 planning calls the national Tea Party movement has exceeded the accomplishments of the effective and well-constructed 2008 Obama for America campaign that ultimately propelled Obama to the presidency.
All this history is important because it reaffirms the veracity of Margaret Meads famous statement: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Its worth asking: If those first organizing calls had not been launched would Republicans today control the U.S. Senate and House? If no that means that Obamas entire far-left political agenda would have been rubber stamped by an equally liberal Congressional leadership. Has the Tea Party movement saved the nation? I believe it likely has.
Yet to be truthful about the inner workings of the Tea Party movement we have done many things well but failed in others. In 2015 the Tea Party and patriot movements top priority must be communicating and impacting public opinion and explaining why and how Tea Party principles can make America great again: creating jobs and economic prosperity restoring rigid adherence to the U.S. Constitution and restoring a strong America that can defeat serious national security threats. We must demostrate to the American people as they already seem to be recognizing that liberalism is a false religion ultimately about the manipulation of society for political ends. With a reliance on divine providence again lets roll back this utterly destructive unconstitutional government and welcome in a century or more of strong liberty leadership. Next step: We must explain our Tea Party vision and solutions for America.