Tea Party Revolt

What has fascinated and absolutely captivated me during the 2010 midterm elections is the emergence of the anti-establishment tea party movement and its vocal disgust and active revolt at the political process, system, expanding government, rising taxes and the career politicians and bureaucrats for their lack of adherence to the Constitution, who were enriching themselves and their Wall Street financial backers at the expense of America’s founding principles and taxpayers. Career politicians are not what the Founding Fathers had in mind for America.

The volatile 2010 midterm election brought out the angry voters willing to punish career politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. The anti-incumbent wave went beyond anger at the Democrats, Republicans, Left, Right, Conservative or Liberal. Voters were angry at every Washington career politician and their Wall Street corporate influence peddlers who have hijacked the system and created a corporate welfare state at the expense of hard working taxpayers.

The Tea Party is the new phenom on the U.S. political landscape. It concluded the primary season with eight “citizen” Senate nominations and 33 candidates running in congressional districts, shocking not only the Democratic and Republican establishments, but the political pundits, who again, got it wrong misreading the anger and revolt brewing in America.

The Silver State senatorial race between Senator Harry Reid and Sharon Angle was a nail biting “man up” showdown, the nastiest and highest-profile Senate race that epitomized two of the strongest political trends of the 2010 election year: anger against incumbents and the vulnerabilities of the Tea Party candidates.

Tea Party Express began as a PAC called Our Country Deserves Better that political operative Sal Russo, a long-time conservative Republican ad man, and former California Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian formed in 2008. They were frustrated that Senator John McCain wasn’t drawing enough contrast with Obama during the 2008 presidential election. They rebranded the PAC after CNBC’s Rick Santelli made his famous “tea party” remarks on the air in February 2009 that spurred the protest movement.

Christine O’Donnell, notwithstanding her refreshing frank wackiness and “checkered background,” is on the Tea Party frontline carrying the banner of big business, like her sister Sarah, who told Karl Rove to “buck up,” to his checkered background comment about O’Donnell. It doesn’t matter to the party movers and shakers if O’Donnell loses, as long as she sweeps some like minded people into office elsewhere in the country on her tea leaves.