Tea Partiers shaking up races across country

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By BETH FOUHY

A once-dismissed loose confederation of Tea Party activists opposed to big government, bailouts and higher taxes is causing heartburn for establishment candidates across the country.

They swept into Massachusetts with lightning speed when polls began to show that the eventual winner of last week's special election, Republican Scott Brown, had a shot at upsetting Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat that liberal lion Edward M. Kennedy had held almost 47 years.

Relying on Internet tools like Facebook and Twitter for communications, tea partiers have organized meetings, marches and protests almost overnight, often catching establishment politicians off guard. They've put together a Capitol Hill rally hours before President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday to protest his health care plan. the rest image-streetprotest tv