Why The Tea Parties?

Hugh Hewitt
Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Hundreds if not thousands of gatherings will take place tomorrow that are under the umbrella of "tea parties." Some ink has been spilled figuring out who started them, and some fevers have swept the left on the subject of who is organizing them.

What matters though is who attends them and what they are communicating by their presence.

There are scores of reasons why a particular tea party protester might show up. Three months into the Obama Administration there is no denying that the president has swung the country hard left from the center-right course that George W. Bush had piloted for eight years. From 1980 until first quarter, 2009, the country had proceeded in a steady center-right direction that even Bill Clinton had generally accepted. With the exception of his commitment to Afghanistan, President Obama has turned the wheel wildly left, and the sudden sharp shift has left millions shaken and confused.

The most obvious sign of the radical change is the president's budget and its massive deficits stretching out as far as the eye can see. The "stimulus" bill that wasn't could be understood as a one-time spending frenzy designed along long ago-discredited-but-still-worshipped economic theories of the left, but the budget was different. It commits the country to a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a tripling of it in ten years. Defense gets shorted, of course, and the F-22 is a symbol of the roll-out of the build-down. The president's progress across Europe reminded many at home of his willingness to blame America for all challenges the world, even as the crazy dictator of North Korea lets fly another missile. the rest

Tea Party Protesters Gird for Possible Liberal Backlash