The Tea Party and Its Significance in American Politics

This essay delves into the significance of the Tea Party in the United States, examining its origins, goals, and impact on the political landscape. It traces the party's emergence in response to policies enacted by Barack Obama, particularly the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and its core objective of reducing taxes and lowering national debt. The essay analyzes the changes brought about by the Tea Party, including its opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and addresses criticisms of its methods, such as public protests and symbolic actions. Furthermore, it assesses the party's longevity and its position within the American political system, considering its appeal to conservative voters and its influence on fiscal policy debates. The analysis draws upon various scholarly sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Tea Party's role and influence.

Running head: THE TEA PARTY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
The Tea Party and its significance
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1THE TEA PARTY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
Introduction
Parties are formed with the objective of raising certain important
societal and political issues of the community. They are meant to spread
the message of national interest among the people so that they can be
made aware about the requirements of the society (Skocpol &
Williamson, 2016). It is always not necessary that parties should be
political in nature. There can be many different kinds of parties with
various agendas to pursue. However, the main function of every political
party is to ensure that they get a political power and influence over the
people so that they can fight for their purpose (Nguyen et al., 2015). The
aim of this paper is to discuss about the importance about the Tea Party
in the United States of America. The focus of this party has also been
looked in to and the impact of the Tea Party on the political scenario of
the United States has been analyzed in this paper.

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Tea Party and its goal
The Tea Party that exists within the United States of America is a
part of the Republican Party (Van Dyke, 2016). The main objective of
this Party is the reduction in the amount of taxes that is collected from
the people. They also demand the lowering of the nation debt of the
country so that the deficit in the federal budget which is being
experienced, can be brought down to a manageable extent. Situation
which led to the rise of the Tea Party.
The Tea Party was established on 19th February 2009 by Rick
Santelli who was a reporter in the CNBC at that time (Tope, Pickett &
Chiricos, 2015). The party came to existence as a result of the policies
that were initiated by Barack Obama, the ten President of the United
States. Obama belonged to the Democratic Party and therefore had quite
a liberal outlook on the economy of the country. He advocated for the
institution of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which
would place a huge burden on the common people (Tope, Pickett &
Chiricos, 2015). The conservative Tea Party aimed to bring down such

3THE TEA PARTY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
policies by the way of protesting against the raising of taxes and their
adverse impact on the life of the people. Santelli took the opportunity of
him being a reporter and announced it on the floor of the Chicago Stock
Exchange that this was not the American Dream. The forefathers of the
country believed in providing welfare system to the people at the
possible lowest cost and this was being violated by the Democratic
Party.
Changes brought about by the Tea Party
The Tea Party initially began with a small group of people who did
not have any particular aim or goal in mind. The Party was established
by a news reporter who one day was frustrated by the Act introduced by
Barack Obama. The protest organized by Santelli appealed to all the
conservatives within the Republican Party that it led to the formation of
a movement known as the Tea Party (Fetner & King, 2016). The Party
was so loosely organized in the first instance that it was considered as a
movement rather where people expected it to die down. However,
several important changes have been brought about by this Party ever
since its inception.

4THE TEA PARTY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
In 2010, the Government of Barack Obama proposed a health care
bill for the people (Street & Dimaggio, 2015). This Bill aimed to provide
eight hundred billion dollar relief to the people in the form of tax
incentive (Street & Dimaggio, 2015). This would have had a huge
burden on the fiscal expenditure of the country. The Tea Party therefore,
protested heavily against this action of the Government and organized a
formal protest everywhere where the signing of this Bill was done. The
Healthcare Bill did become an Act known as the Obama care but the
public of the United States still remember the strong opposition that was
done against the Bill.
However, the Tea Party has faced several significant criticisms.
Such criticisms were usually linked to the way the Party functioned in
the country of the United States of America. The members believed in
the idea of distributing tea packets for free and without any cost across
the cities of the country. Furthermore, the members of the party also
dumped the tea packets in the water bodies as a sign of protest. This is
significant to understand because they are trying to draw similarities

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between their actions and the one done by their fore fathers who were
responsible for gaining America her independence (Dionne, 2016).
Through this course of action, the party members believe that they can
appeal to the support of the people. There was one incident when one
member of the party threw a tea bag inside the White House. Such
courses of action are seen to be bothersome to the people. Instead of
appealing to the emotive side of the people, the Tea Party has not been
able to gain wider significance across the country.
Longevity of the Tea Party
The Tea Party is a relatively new party that is formed within the
United States. The two main political parties of America are the
Democratic Party and the Republican Party. All the different politicians
who are desirous of holding a party post for themselves owe their
allegiance to these two parties. The Tea Party has the aim of providing
monetary relief to the country in the form of tax relief and reducing the
budget deficit of the country. In this respect, it can be seen that although
the party is not very popular among the people, the focus of the party is

6THE TEA PARTY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
so relatable that it has been able to gain a position for itself within the
society (Wald & Vasquez, 2016).
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude, it can be seen that the Tea Party is a popular
party in the United States. It appeals to the conservative side of the
people who want to take care of the taxes of the people. Thus, the Tea
Party can be termed as a fiscally motivated party within America.

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References:
Dionne, E. J. (2016). Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism--from
Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. Simon and Schuster.
Fetner, T., & King, B. G. (2016). Three-layer movements, resources, and
the tea party. In Understanding the Tea Party Movement (pp. 49-
68). Routledge.
Nguyen, V. A., Boyd-Graber, J., Resnik, P., & Miler, K. (2015, July).
Tea party in the house: A hierarchical ideal point topic model and
its application to republican legislators in the 112th congress.
In Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics and the 7th International Joint
Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 1: Long
Papers) (pp. 1438-1448).
Skocpol, T., & Williamson, V. (2016). The Tea Party and the remaking
of Republican conservatism. Oxford University Press.
Street, P., & Dimaggio, A. R. (2015). Crashing the Tea Party: mass
media and the campaign to remake American politics. Routledge.

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Tope, D., Pickett, J. T., & Chiricos, T. (2015). Anti-minority attitudes
and Tea Party Movement membership. Social Science
Research, 51, 322-337.
Van Dyke, N. (2016). Understanding the tea party movement.
Routledge.
Wald, K. D., & Vasquez, A. P. (2016). Cultural foundations of right-
wing politics in the United States: The case of the Tea Party
movement. Surveyjournalen, 3(2), 2-19.