Can someone please email, fax, tweet, call, telex, messenger pigeon, signal, telegraph, or simply tell every journalist on the planet that there is no question Ron Paul was the impetus of the modern Tea Party movement?
Yes, the movement has changed since his supporters first staged their famed Tea Party protest back in 2007, but that is where it all began. I recall it well. Unable to attend, I was one of the anonymous bazillions who contributed money to the November 5th money bomb, timed to blow up on Guy Fawkes Day. We raised $4.2 million for Ron Paul. That is an extraordinary number even today after three years of inflation and an assault on the US dollar by the Federal Reserve. (My only regret is that we all should have agreed to buy one ounce of silver and put it aside for four years until the next campaign).
But this article in the Houston Chronicle, like so many others, muddies waters of an issue that should be crystal clear. To read Richard Dunham and Jennifer Smialek's piece, neocon Rick Perry was right there at the start of the Tea Party. They claim that he helped "launch the movement," citing his attendance at a 2009 Tax Day protest. The pace of politics can be glacial, but attending a tea party event in April 2009, almost a year and a half after Ron Paul supporters dropped the money bomb heard 'round the world, is hardly launching anything.
Of course, the authors here are intimating that Perry was among the first major GOP political players to adopt the Tea Party ideals, but that is preposterous. By 2009, after the McCain/Bush/borrow and spend/neocon theology had been humiliated by the Obama/Change/borrow and spend/liberal approach, everyone in the Republican party was running to the Tea Party. Mike "The Bible Should be in Every Classroom" Huckabee (who had mocked Ron Paul during the primary debates) was the most obvious of the reversals, but Sarah "My Husband Rides a Snowmobile So I Can Speak in Idioms and Not Sound Inauthentic" Palin was right there with him.
The Tea Party has, to a degree, morphed into something different since 2007. But it is unfair to try and discredit the enormity of Ron Paul and his supporters in the movement's founding. The base appeal of the Tea Party- the idea of adhering to the Constitution, of appropriately sized government, of putting America's interests first- has been and will be adopted by many politicians aspiring for power. Some of them will do so based on the idea that the movement's principles are sound. Others will do so simply because it is convenient. Deciphering who is genuine in their beliefs and who is opportunistic is the responsibility of the voters, but objective reporting on the facts by the press is a critical part of that effort.
So get listen up media types, pecking away on your keyboards late at night imagining you are going to uncover the next "-gate" scoop: Ron Paul started the Tea Party. Everybody else is just trying to crash it.
Sensible libertarian views on nearly everything- except foreign affairs.