American Revolution, part 2: Tea Party movement is growing in Seattle of all places

SEATTLE - Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv comedy, taught low-income adults, has a teaching degree from Oxford University and is familiar with hipster clubs in this solidly Democratic city. She looks like most of her young liberal friends of a few years back who hated Republican George W. Bush and cheered when Democrat Barack Obama won the White House.

But there was a warm round of applause for Carender when she rose to speak at a far-right Tea Party rally in the state capital of Olympia last weekend in front of an older group of angry anti-government folks who don't look like her but regard the 30-year-old as one of the pioneering agitators who kick-started the conservative movement now roiling American politics.

It's counterintuitive that someone from Seattle (and from the downtown theatre scene no less) is a Tea Party heroine but it was Carender who single-handedly organized a small protest against Obama's economic stimulus program in early 2009 -- just days before rallies broke out across the U.S. under the new Tea Party brand.

Carender was one of thousands of young, tech savvy libertarians who helped start the Tea Party -- a movement that has resonated with many older middle-class voters who believe the America they knew growing up is being eroded by the Great Recession and Obama's spending programs.

Wearing blue jeans, a baseball cap and a hoodie from Oxford University where she studied, Carender was introduced at the rally here on the steps of the state legislature as "Liberty Belle," her right-wing website's nom de blog, and as the Tea Party's "sparkplug."

A natural performer, the Tea Party heroine asked the 70 people sitting on the steps of the state legislature to stand up, start clapping and shout out one word that describes what the Tea Party is about.

None of these were very surprising responses considering that many people at the rally believe they are engaging in the Second American Revolution to prevent Obama (who, they say, may be a Muslim born outside the U.S.) from moving their nation away from its God-fearing, limited-government origins.

Some believe that health care reform and other Obama policies are moving America toward enslavement under Marxism or the United Nations.

Signs held by rally participants include "ReElect Nobody," "Time to Cap and Trade Congress" and "Obama: Pied Piper of Bankruptcy." A few people wear the tricorne hats worn by the American revolutionaries of 1776.

And then Carender proceeded to voice one of the main grievances that animates the Tea Party revolt -- how so-called liberal elites are taking tax money from the beleaguered middleclass and giving it to poor people.

"They think they are the boss of everyone," said Carender, of the latte-swilling, public radio-listening, pointy-headed, big city chattering classes.

"How do we teach our children to be charitable if the government won't let us because they force us to take care of people they want us to take care of?"

Carender concluded by telling the Tea Party supporters to ignore their critics and to rejoice in how they've helped choose many of the far-right Republican candidates running in next month's pivotal U.S. midterm congressional elections.

"It's taken -- what? -- 100 years for it to get this bad. So it's going to take a few years more to get it back. So be patient and have the strength to carry on," Carender told the crowd.

"I know from being a conservative person in Seattle that there's lots of pressures and criticism. But you know what -- it's made me so much stronger."

It wasn't easy being a young conservative in Seattle, recalled Carender in an interview, especially when you hung out with theatre types who were all liberal.

"There are a couple of friends I don't talk to any more. Or I should say: they don't talk to me."

Until about two years ago, Carender had no conservative friends. Even her husband, an apolitical theatre and science geek, voted for Obama.

So did all of her co-workers at an adult education non-profit. They broke into cheers while watching Obama's inauguration on a big screen installed in their office for the historic occasion.

Carender phoned her two sisters, who are also conservative, during the inauguration and had a good cry.

Carender stopped being a closet conservative in 2008 when, as blogger Liberty Belle, she began her website Redistributing Knowledge. Early on she wrote of the need for conservatives to stop laying in the weeds.

"I myself am in a mecca of radical liberalism," wrote Carender. "It wasn't until I saw the threat to our liberty embodied in one man, yes, Barack Obama, that I decided that I could no longer stay quiet."

Carender moved into her upfront firebrand phase in February 2009 when she became incensed over Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus bill.

While liberals and Keynesian economists said the combination of massive tax breaks and government spending was required to resuscitate the moribund American economy, Carender believed it was folly to massively increase government spending when government deficits were already sky-high.

Carender began calling her senators to complain but was unable to get a hearing. So she got a protest permit, contacted family, friends and every conservative she knew and urged them to come out to the rally she called a Porkulus protest, borrowing a phrase from right-wing radio icon Rush Limbaugh.

About 120 people showed up. A week later the anti-Obama spirit she was sensing took off when cable news reporter Rick Santelli (a former futures trader) ranted on air against Obama's planned assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Santelli called for a tea party in Chicago, modelled on the protests of early New England colonists in their revolt against British rule. Santelli's tirade became an Internet sensation and the Tea Party phenomenon was born.

Carender held a second rally in Seattle, doubling the first protest's turnout, and then staged a third rally six weeks later, attracting 1,000 people. Carender spoke to the crowd dressed as Alice in Wonderland.

The Tea Party movement flexed its outrage in the summer of 2009 when its activists began heckling Democratic politicians over their support for health care reform.

Again, Carender was at the forefront of this new tactic. In a YouTube video, viewed more than 73,000 times, Carender confronted Democratic Representative Norm Dicks at a town-hall meeting.

"If you believe that it is absolutely moral to take my money and give it to someone else based on their supposed needs," Carender told Dicks, waving a $20 bill, "then come and take this $20 and use it as a down payment on this health care plan."

Carender's impolite tactic was similar to other Tea Party events where conservatives vented their anger in ways very different from the country-club gentility of the old Republican Party.

Carender said many Tea Party activists have adopted the "loud and obnoxious" tactics of left-wing protesters.

"We don't want to cross the line and get arrested but we do want to wake people up. And you can't do that if you're always sitting on your hands."

The video went viral, further cementing Carender's pioneer status in Tea Party lore.

In September 2009, Carender attended a massive Tea Party march in Washington, D.C. Then earlier this year she flew to Washington again for election training sessions conducted by Freedom Works, a libertarian group, which itself is a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a group set up by billionaire businessman David Koch (Koch Industries).

The support given by wealthy rightwingers such as Koch has led many critics to say the Tea Party is less a grassroots movement than an "astroturf" one.

More likely it is a hybrid: one sustained by regular people upset with their country's direction but one financially supported by plutocrats hoping the Tea Party's passion will help elect Republicans dedicated to low levels of taxation and regulation.

University of Washington history professor Margaret O'Mara said the Tea Party phenomenon is not entirely new.

"The Tea Party is very reminiscent of earlier moments of populist outrage in American history when there was similar rhetoric about the people -- the little guy -- standing up to the powerful and the politicians," said O'Mara.

In the past this anti-elitist anger fuelled left-wing movements, which blamed big business for America's ills and saw government spending and regulation as a solution, she added.

These days the American middleclass is grappling with declining status and often rejects -- rather than welcomes -- government intervention, said O'Mara.

"Middle class security has been slipping since the '70s. So people are ticked off and government is an easy to target to blame.

"People want a simple explanation. And it's harder to blame some amorphous, complicated global economy than it is to blame the White House and Congress.

The irony of the Tea Party, according to O'Mara, is that many of its supporters are people who would benefit from government social spending on job creation, unemployment benefits and health care.

Instead they support limited government and low-tax policies that often work to the advantage of the country's wealthiest citizens, she added.

"Many of these Tea Party people are in the core constituency of who the Democrats claim to represent when pushing for greater social spending and health insurance. But these are the things that Tea Party members rail against. They fight policies that are often in their economic self-interest." This contradiction was clear at town hall meetings last year, said O'Mara, when Tea Party supporters shouted "get your government hands off my Medicare" -- medicare being a government program.

"A lot of these people arguing against big government are older people who depend on government programs," said O'Mara.

Antipathy to government was clearly on display at the Tea Party rally in Olympia where Carender spoke. So was evidence of why many commentators bring up historian Richard Hofstadter's famous line about the "paranoid style in American politics" when writing about the Tea Party.

There was Peggy Hutt, for example, a Seattle-area woman who believes her country is moving toward communism.

"American people have been asleep while we've been walking in the muck of socialism," said Hutt.

"But with socialism and communism at a fast rate in your face -- hey, Obama woke us up, and so we're here to change it back to be the way it was meant to be."

She believes Obama could be Muslim and may have been born outside of the U.S. "I mean we don't know anything about his past other than what he wants to tell us in his book, which was written by him."

Her husband, Lawrence Hutt, told the rally at Olympia: "Scripture talks about what we are doing.

"Ezekiel: 37 talks about how everything starts rising up and that's what we are doing.

Craig Mann, another speaker, brandished a Bible and told the Tea Party supporters that "God worries about us."

Mann said the "high-ranking people" are sellouts who are "taking care of the multinational corporates."

"God wasn't doing anything because we weren't doing anything. But we got help and he sees us."

Wendy Birnbaum, from Orting, Wash., said: "The United Nations is taking control of our property rights and the UN is controlling what our children are being taught in school."

Dawn Woodworth, a Tacoma woman who grew up in B.C., said about Obama: "If you take time to study all of the people around him, most of them are either Marxists or Communists.'

And she fears the U.S. is heading down the road toward the socialism that now infects Canada, her native land.

"They don't have any voice in Canada," said Woodworth of Canadians. "What they're told is what they have to do."

Young libertarian Carender comes across as moderate compared to some of these people. She rarely mentions God, makes no references to social value issues and sticks to her message of individual liberty.

But even Carender uses arguments, which would be considered extreme in Canada, where Obama continues to enjoy popularity.

Where our political traditions are based more on "peace, order and good government" than on American notions of individual rights and limited government.

And where even politicians with libertarian roots -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper or B.C. Health Minister Kevin Falcon, for example -- proudly administer publicly financed health care systems without fear that they are sending Canada down the road to Marxist tyranny.

Not that the Canadian example resonates with Carender who believes its her duty to prevent Obama from moving toward government programs found in her northern neighbour and Europe.

In her blog, Carender said of Obama: "This man is worse than Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Chavez and Castro combined. He doesn't give a you know what about anything this country was founded upon, or anything that made this country great ...

"I told a friend that I feel like the human beings in the Matrix, living in Zion, trying to fight the machines as they breach the city walls."

...her co-workers at an adult education non-profit. They broke into cheers while watching Obama's inauguration on a big screen installed in their office for the historic occasion.

I would be interested to know if they are still cheering.

Note: Margaret O’Mara is a history professor at University of Washington.

“The irony of the Tea Party, according to O’Mara, is that many of its supporters are people who would benefit from government social spending on job creation, unemployment benefits and health care.”

The above are the words of a delusional, elite, over-paid snob who knows nothing of practical, moral or historical value! JMHO

No, her comments do the opposite.

They show that TEA Partiers are fundamentally more in line with the idea of America than are university professors.

They’re not leeches. Hypocrisy isn’t going against your self interest, hypocrisy is pretending to help with government handouts when what you really want is a free cut of the pie.

The Party of Logic and Common Sense. The Tea Party can even add and subtract. The Tea party does not buy the CBO and OMB Bullhockey.

I think the author has a Progressive bug up his butt. What in the world is anti-government about "Freedom, liberty, capitalism and 'leave me alone?" When asked what the TEA Party meant to them that's what they said. Not one said "down with the government."

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