Sorry, but Rick Santelli launched the modern Tea Party movement, not this person.
Well in some ways, they both sort of did.
Santelli make his remarks on CNBC on February 19, 2009 (I watched it live, and it was amazing!)
As Per Wikipedia:
Keli Carender (born c. 1981) is an American blogger credited with being the first Tea Party protest activist[1][2][3] when she was the principal organizer of a protest of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on February 16, 2009. Carender started her blog Redistributing Knowledge on January 25, 2009, writing under the nom de plume Liberty Belle.[4][5][6]
So Santelli make the comments, and Carender started a blog on January 25 and organized a protest that occurred on January 16.
Oh I stand corrected, MIchelle Malkin has an earlier date than Feb. 16...
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/15/a-tax-day-tea-party-cheat-sheet-how-it-all-started/
It’s here!
For the Johnny-Come-Latelys in the MSM who will be dispatched by their editors to file obligatory stories about the hundreds of Tax Day Tea Party protests across the country today, here is a cheat sheet to get you up to speed.
Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle†spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist†or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen.
Feb. 16: An energetic crowd of about 100 people came downtown to lambaste the Chicken Little process and the lard-up of the stimulus bill:
(American Typo)
Here’s Keli with the yummy lunch. Yeah, big-money conspiracy! I pitched in a few hundred bucks to buy some pulled pork for the Seattle protesters:
Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly. I met the head of the state AFP for the first time on the steps of the Capitol. No conspiracy here, tinfoil hatters. It was a union of like minds in an impromptu show of outrage against the legislation-without-deliberation process in Washington. Also there: Jon Caldara of the libertarian Independence Institute on one end of the spectrum and Tom Tancredo on the strict immigration enforcement end (hundreds of the protesters were mad about the absence of E-Verify standards for the stimulus funding):
(Photo via People’s Press Collective)
More big-money conspiracy! I promised to bring a roasted pig. Paid for out of pocket. No corporate lobbyist pitched in. Tasted great and worth every penny:
Speaking of pigs, you can’t leave out the tax-and-spend revolt campaign against Chuck Schumer in response to his arrogant statement that only the “chattering classes†cared about the “teeny, tiny†pork amendments in the Generational Theft Act. Local radio host Leland Conway in Kentucky called on listeners to send Schumer pork rinds. A mountain of 1,500 bags poured into the station on Feb. 16 and was shipped to Schumer:
On Feb. 18, 500 fed-up taxpayers showed up in Mesa, AZ to oppose President Obama’s campaign for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement and to mock what SC Gov. Mark Sanford rightly called savior-based economics. No top-down organization. Just the effort of local talk radio station KFYI. No Beltway GOP involvement. Zero national media coverage. But reader Al Swanson shared his photos with us here:
On Feb. 19, reader Amanda Grosserode e-mailed that she was organizing a tax revolt protest in Overland Park, KS the following weekend. More than 400 people showed up in freezing weather to protest Rep. Dennis Moore’s vote for the bill. Glenn Reynolds did the reporting the MSM didn’t do.
Here’s Amanda:
On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party†call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans (proposals I’ve protested whether from Democrats or moron Republicans):
David Hogberg of Investor’s Business Daily was the first MSM reporter to cover the burgeoning tax revolt protests. Here’s an excerpt of what Hogberg wrote on Feb. 20:....
Soo technically I think she did start it, but there were many patriots on same page with a lot of groups forming :)
Bingo.