The Tea Party Movement

For my last blog for the class, I have decided to save the most meaningful one to me for the end. For a little over a year now, the Tea Party Movement has emerged throughout the country. As the days go by, the movement seems to keep growing at an effective rate. I remember just before a year ago on Tax Day 2009, there were many protests throughout many sections of the country. Most of these were covered by Fox News, and virtually ignored by many of the other networks, or at least not taken seriously. This was not a surprise to me since President Obama’s approval numbers were still relatively sky-high along with the fact that the Republican Party’s perception was relatively still very low.

Yet the movement did not stop. It continued to grow and began to gain more attention and credibility as the weeks and months went by. The past summer of 2009, the main issue that I can recall was health care reform, which kept being fought on throughout the whole calendar year and into the new year of 2010. The 2009 election year, a very small one compared to most, featured two surprising Republican Party victories in the states of Virginia and New Jersey. They were followed up by arguably the most shocking political upset in history as Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s former seat in Massachusetts, on the issue of healthcare nonetheless, which happened to be Kennedy’s lifelong crusade. After these victories, along with the passing of the Healthcare Reform Bill last month, the Tea Party Movement grew louder and stronger.

Near the Eve of Tax Day 2010, roughly 1 year after the Tea Party Movement began to form, I find myself sitting her and thinking to myself “This is the perfect example of popular culture itself”. I think there is no greater example, or at least no higher example, than ordinary citizens like you and me coming together, speaking out over an issue, and forming together to create a movement that has the power to effect each and every one of our lives. The Tea Party Movement is an effective example of this, and I believe that we won’t be seeing the last of it for a while.