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Joy Stroup never really got involved in politics until Donald Trump was elected president.

A homemaker and substitute teacher from Plymouth, Stroup felt disgusted and defeated when Trumps Electoral College victory sent him to the White House. Galvanized by that feeling, she demonstrated at the Womens March in St. Paul the day after inauguration, along with her 14-year old daughter and about 100,000 others.

The experience left Stroup with energy and passion to spare, but no obvious outlet for it. After the march, she said, its sort of like, OK, now what do we do?

A friend pushed her to start putting calls in to Rep. Erik Paulsens office, the Republican who represents her district. That led to paying close attention to Paulsens votes on key bills in Congress, which led to Stroup hosting people at her home to write postcards to Paulsen, expressing their opinions on Trump and the issues.

Its pushed her out of her comfort zone. But it feels like youre doing something, Stroup said. When you hear theres thousands of people doing the same thing, you dont feel silly for doing it.

Indeed, there are lots of Joy Stroups in Minnesota: people who didnt really engage in political activism before the election who now feel like they have to do something to stop Trump and his GOP allies in Congress.

It is natural that Paulsen is a top target for Democrats and Trump foes looking to turn the heat up on the GOP.

The mild-mannered former state legislator from Eden Prairie has represented the 3rd Congressional District since 2009, winning reelection handily each time. Democrats thought they had a shot to knock him off in 2016, but he dispatched former state Sen. Terri Bonoff by 13 points.

But Hillary Clinton bested Trump in these largely affluent, west metro suburbs by nine points. Paulsen himself declared he would not support Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes were released, but some people here are watching to see how closely the congressman hews to the presidents agenda.

Stroup and others have participated in activism with local chapters of a group called Indivisible, which aims to organize grassroots resistance to Trump. Indivisible picked up steam after its organizers posted a guide to Tea Party-style resistance that went viral after the election.

There is an Indivisible chapter for the 3rd District, and members have been active in spearheading protests, such as a February 4th event outside Paulsens Eden Prairie office, where demonstrators demanded he hold a town hall meeting open to the public.

Thats a major sticking point with activists, who say Paulsen hasnt held an in-person meeting where constituents could openly ask questions since 2011.

A Paulsen spokesman did not confirm or deny that claim, simply saying that Paulsen has held over 100 town hall events reaching hundreds of thousands of constituents since taking office.

MinnPost file photo by Brian Halliday

Rep. Erik Paulsen

In the past, Paulsen has held so-called telephone town halls, in which constituents are called randomly (by ZIP code) and can ask questions directly on a phone call.

He has done two so far this year; the calls typically last an hour, with the bulk of that time reserved for questions. Paulsens office says he gets to as many questions as he can, and that several thousand people can listen in to the call, even if their questions arent handled.

This is not enough for CD3 activists, however, who hope to get Paulsen in front of constituents to answer their questions. Its a key element of the Tea Party playbook: put members of Congress before angry audiences and make them explain what's going on in this case, Trump's initiatives and the GOP's designs on programs like the Affordable Care Act.

Already, rowdy town halls in Colorado and California have led to bad press for Republican congressmen, some of whom snuck out of forums to avoid questions or got escorted out by police details.

A strong majority of 6th District Rep. Tom Emmers constituents back Trump and the GOP, but some constituents are promising to give him an earful at an upcoming town hall later this month. (Emmer is a prolific holder of town halls, with 24 in his first term alone.)

The Facebook page advertising Emmers town hall features numerous comments from constituents angry with Trump and with Emmers enthusiastic backing of his agenda, including his executive orders. Several people expressed they plan to go, to register their displeasure with Emmer in person.

The front lines of resistance to Trumps agenda, of course, arent in the House of Representatives, but in the Senate, which has the power to debate and vote on the presidents selections for cabinet positions and the Supreme Court.

Encouraged by celebrities, politicians and advocacy groups, people have flooded the phone lines of U.S. senators since Trumps election, registering their opinions on a variety of topics, such as presidential appointees and his executive orders.

Minnesotans find themselves on the backburner of Senate drama: those receiving the most calls have been potential swing votes, like moderate Democrats who could plausibly vote with the GOP such as North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp or moderate Republicans who could provide Democrats a crucial no vote, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

MinnPost file photo by Devin Henry

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are not considered key swing votes. Neither has been among the most hard-line Democrats in opposing Trumps picks, only voting against his more high-profile nominees.

Klobuchar and Franken voted against Secretary of Education pick Betsy DeVos, Secretary of State pick Rex Tillerson, and Attorney General pick Jeff Sessions; Franken also voted against CIA chief pick Mike Pompeo. They approved the remainder of the eight nominees who have come to the floor thus far for a vote.

The two are almost certain to vote against controversial upcoming nominees, like EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt and Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price. But Minnesotans are flooding their offices lines with calls anyway.

Frankens D.C. office, which typically receives no more than 1,000 calls a month, got over 12,000 calls in January. Over half of those calls were to express opposition to the confirmations of DeVos and Sessions. Klobuchars offices in Minnesota and D.C. received close to 20,000 calls in January.

Jena Martin, a pathologist from Minnetonka, has been putting in calls to both Franken and Klobuchar. She even went to the senators Minnesota offices to deliver monkey wrenches to, symbolically, throw into the confirmation process.

To Martin, its especially important to hold Democrats accountable to a party base that is hungry to see Trumps agenda blocked at every turn. The Tea Party strategy, after all, was more focused on pushing Republican officials toward extreme opposition to Barack Obama than it was about confronting Democratic politicians.

We want A-plus representatives, not B-minus one, she says. The days of settling for B-minus Democrats is over.

Martin said she is calling Klobuchar in particular because shes disappointed with her votes so far. Klobuchar is not holding firm, she said, though she understands that the senator is up for reelection in 2018. Shes better than Mitch McConnell, but no, Im not happy.

Anti-Trump activists have ambitious goals, such as defeating Republicans like Paulsen and laying the groundwork to take back Congress.

The Tea Party they are emulating ultimately ended Democratic control of Congress, but it was unable to stop Obamacares passage. Democratic-aligned activists hope they can do more to block specific GOP policies in Washington.

For now, though, the Trump administration and 115th Congress are only a few weeks old, and making elected officials squirm is a desirable and achievable enough objective for the nascent movement.

Even if Paulsen doesnt hold a public forum, Nancy McRae, a marketing consultant who lives in Excelsior, wants to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the congressman.

She is new to activism, but in the past few weeks, she has called Paulsens office several times to register her concern over GOP plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, among other things.

McRae said she hopes Paulsen never for one day feels comfortable that hes got this sewn up in his district. If he refuses an open town hall, she said shell help put a cardboard cut-out of Paulsen front of his office. That might get a rise out of him.

Getting involved is bittersweet for these new activists, though: there's no small amount of guilt that it took Trump's ascension to the presidency to get them in the street and on the phone.

Its a shame we werent more vocal before the election, Joy Stroup said. Were at where we are because we werent vocal.

So many people were so divided, people stopped talking about it because it was ruining relationships, she said. I think it would have been worth ruining a few relationships to not have Trump in office.

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Better late than never? Opposing Trump, Democrats take lessons from Tea Party - MinnPost

WASHINGTON It was the summer of 2009, and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) was sitting in a restaurant in his home state of North Dakota, eating breakfast, when a waitress came to his table and handed him a bag of tea.

This was peculiar, since Pomeroy hadnt asked for tea. Nor, for that matter, had the waitress brought him a cup in which to drink it just the bag.

Pomeroy quickly surmised that this was about politics, and not some ploy to enhance her tip. That summer, tea party protests had erupted at town hall meetings where he and his colleagues met with constituents. Those had been bad, forcing him to nix the in-person meetings in favor of less troublesome dial-in phone calls.

Now, however, he was being targeted while eating his eggs a sure sign that even voters, even those with North Dakota nice dispositions, were agitating for change.

In retrospect, that was the beginning of the end, Pomeroy said of the encounter. You didnt have to be a genius to know something was up.

After 18 years in Congress, Pomeroy was ousted in the Democratic bloodbath of 2010. But he remains in Washington, D.C. emerging in the greener pastures of the firm Alston & Bird LLP.

And as Pomeroy looks over at his old stomping grounds on the Hill, hes starting to see signs of the kind of discord that led his waitress to turn a tea bag into a symbol of protest eight years ago.

There is no question there is currently a widespread level of engagement that Ive not seen in many, many years, he said of his Democratic brethren.

As for the Republicans, he offered advice: Listen respectfully to what is being said and agree when you can find areas with agreement. Because over the years, the Democratic Party did not do a good enough job of that itself.

Only three weeks into Donald Trumps presidency, Democrats are dreaming of an inverse of the tea party wave of 2010. People who were previously indifferent or foreign to the political process are taking to the streets in millions to march against Trumps inauguration, or going to airports to rally against his ban on refugees and immigrantsfrom seven Muslim-majority countries. Theyre hitting the phones, overwhelming House and Senate offices with displeasure over Trumps Cabinet choices. Their anger over the potential repeal of former President Barack Obamas health care law has forced several members to literally fleetown hall meetings.

For Pomeroy and others, its provided a dash of optimism just when the party is hitting its modern-day nadir. For Republicans, it hasnt yet caused panic. But its forced them to begin contemplating the need for inoculation.

I think theres no question that the Democrats are synchronized, coordinated and animated. And the use of misinformation ...leading to false conclusions has empowered their side and brought the public almost to a frenzy, said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).

There is a lathering effect thats happened on the left that will have possible powerful implications going forward, he added. It will be our responsibility to defuse it with truth and good information.

Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

On Tuesday, the House GOP held a strategy session to discuss how demonstrators have disrupted their town hall events. Republican leaders told members to be gracious and not create a scene, according to aides.

But some lawmakers at the session had quirkier remedies. Along with basics like developing a safety plan and keeping an open line of communication with local law enforcement, former sheriff Rep.Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) said he tries to offer protesters donuts.

I have 33 years of law enforcement experience, so House leadership asked me to share some security recommendations for other members of the conference to consider implementing in their district offices, Reichert told The Huffington Post.

Republicans didnt expect theyd be in this position so soon after Trumps election. But their need to quickly shift gears from celebrating an election triumph to addressing heated protests is not without precedent.

The Obama White House was first besieged by questions over the Tea Party protests in mid-February 2009. And its initial response, like the Trump administrations after it, was to dismiss them. Then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs famously mocked CNBCs Rick Santelli as over-caffeinated and inauthentic. Later, he called the tea party movement astroturf.

It was probably the biggest mistake we made as a White House: not taking seriously that we had to engage that fight, a former Obama administration official conceded. On the inside, it wasnt clear that this was the spark for a fundamental shift in politics.

The next few months will show whether the current protests represent a fundamental shift or something less tectonic. But their intensity is unmistakable(the town hall eruptions in 2009 didnt really start until the summer) and theyve left Republicans struggling to anticipate the fallout.

Any time that you have a group that is willing to get out and spend their Saturday for a cause, [it] shouldnt be ignored, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said of recent protests.You have to take any grassroots movement serious, he added.

And for some Republicans, including those intimately involved in the 2010 wave, faint echoes are apparent.

Oh my gosh, yes, there are a lot of parallels [between 2010 and now], said Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman during the 2010 elections. Put it this way: The parallels are potentially there. The question is, will the Democrats, in some respects, try to force it? Because that just wont work.

But not everyone is convinced that 2018 will be a 2010 redux. Liberal populist movements have sprouted up before, only to dissipate over time. Some observers, including members of the Trump administration, argue that the current discord has the distinct flavor of orchestrated chicanery.

Theyre trying to put huge political pressure on us, said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), indicatingthat he and other Republicans believe demonstrators are being funded by Democratic interest groups. Theyre busting into our offices. Our staffs across the nation are having to call security agencies, he said.

Brat called Democratic backers efforts to organize people the biggest news story probably in the country right now, but one that no ones reporting on it because it comes from the left.

For now, the GOP is pressing ahead with its agenda, hoping that protests simply dissipate. Repealing Obamacare remains a priority. And rarely, if ever, do members publicly rebuke Trump at least, not in harsh terms.

House Rules Chairman Pete Sessions, whose Texas district went for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump 48.5 to 46.6, is now in the crosshairs of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He suggested that the best way to respond to the new pressure is to deliver results.

We all have pressure on us to deliver an agenda that gets more people back to work, that is fairer for people literally to make America great again, he said.

Mike McAuliff contributed reporting.

Excerpt from:
Democrats Were Blindsided By The Tea Party Wave. Now ... - Huffington Post

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Tea Party members to receive update on Inauguration

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Submitted 9:15 a.m. ET Feb. 10, 2017

FREMONT - Jill Steinbaugh will report on the President Donald Trump Inauguration at 7 p.m. Monday meeting of Patriots Against Government Excess (American PAGE) at the at The Fremont Baptist Temple, 1150 South County Road 198, Fremont.

Steinbaugh, representing the Ottawa County Republican Women, attended the Inauguration with five other women from her county. She will also report on the Freedom Ball.

American PAGE is the local TEA Party group. For more information email mbower412@twc.com, call 419-332-3259 or go to http://www.americanspage.com/.

Read or Share this story: http://ohne.ws/2kWG1oE

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Tea Party members to receive update on Inauguration - Fremont News Messenger

The Republican Party looks like its in solid shape. They control Congress and the White House. And at the state level, Democrats have been decimated. The 2018 map heavily favors the GOP. Donald Trump has a good chance of appointing at least two conservative justices over the next four years.

Look a little deeper, however, and the picture gets a bit less rosy. The Republican coalition is unstable. Trump is unpopular, as is the Congressional leadership.

Moreover, it should be increasingly clear that the left is winning in the contest of ideas. In an effort to burnish his moderate creds, Bill Clinton famously said in the 1990s that the era of big government is over, but now it appears that the opposite is true.

Americans want more government, with more benefits, a trend thats only likely to continue as more of them find themselves out of a job due to automation. Even the glitch-filled Obamacare, that piata of the Tea Party, is proving to be much more resilient and popular than Republicans had hoped.

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It appears Republicans shifted their slogan on Obamacare from "repealing" to "repairing." Republican strategist and CBS News contributor Frank Lu...

Trump won in large part by tapping into this feeling, this sense that the economy is failing workers and therefore must be managed by an outsider who keeps their interests in mind. That is to say, he won in large part by jettisoning economic conservatism, with its fuddy-duddy faith in markets and the inevitable success that they said stems from hard work.

Twenty years after NAFTA and the break-neck globalization that followed, Americans have seen their wages stagnate and wealth become increasingly concentrated at the top. That wealth inequality is a major political problem, because after awhile people wont stand for it. Were an increasingly proletarian nation, and proletarian nations skew left.

Trump and his court ideologists, most notably Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, appear to intuit all this. Thats why Bannon seems so decidedly left-of-center on economics, what with his dreams of industrial renewal flowing from massive stimulus spending. In an interview with The Washington Posts David Ignatius this week, Mike Flynn described Bannon as more left than right, which at this point should not come as a surprise.

This is the reason that, despite its shaky beginnings, Trump-style nationalist populism could be a success; they get, in some sense, which way the sand is moving beneath their feet. Popular left-wing economic ideas could be co-opted and repurposed by the administration.

This brings us to back to the real left, and how they can most effectively fight back. The most popular road map proposed so far seems to be one that involves digging in, never compromising, and obstructing everything. In particular, some attention is being paid to the creation of a left-wing Tea Party, one that could direct popular dissatisfaction toward targets convenient to progressives.

There are merits to this idea. In some ways the Tea Party was successful at helping right-wing candidates, particularly at the state level, and was useful in encouraging the Congressional obstructionism that hampered President Obama from the moment he entered office. Still, its a strategy that brings with it certain dangers.

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President Trump is spending the weekend with his family at the so-called "Winter White House" in Florida. But it won't be a quiet one. There's a ...

The Tea Party, for one thing, was never all that popular according to Gallup, it maxed out at a 32 percent approval rating in 2010, a number that has dropped considerably in recent years. Part of that had to do with its tendency to promote candidates in primaries who were unable to win general elections; Missouris Todd Akin was one particularly disastrous example.

However, Democrats would likely benefit politically from moving further left, and in this regard a Tea Party-like project would likely be advantageous to them. But the creation of some progressive Tea Party, particularly one run by Clintonite power brokers, could very well do the opposite, moving money and resources behind identity-politics-obsessed liberals unsuited to the new landscape. This would be the best case scenario for Bannon and company.

Who would run the various pressure groups to make up this new Tea Party is then the first thing that needs to be figured out before one could rise and grow. And the second thing, teid to the first, is how to resist the temptations of grifterism.

Play Video

Democratic lawmakers joined a demonstration on the Supreme Court steps Monday on President Trump's travel and refugee ban. Thirty-three senators ...

The right-wing Tea Party of the Obama years fell victim to this early, and within a couple years was less of a serious political movement than a network of scams. Conservatives donated to fly-by-night PACs that promised reform and instead spent its money shaking down more and more people. Consultants got rich even as victories became more elusive, and the movement died.

If Trumpism is to be defeated, it will likely be because small groups of people take their mission very seriously. Protests have a purpose because they allow people to meet each other while still displaying popular displeasure. The same goes for phone calls to representatives, which already seem to have had an impact, and other tried-and-true tactics like writing campaigns.

And the best thing about actions like this is that they dont need big PACs because their power stems from their spontaneity, particularly in this newfangled age of social media, where a viral tweet can bring people to the streets with ease and efficiency. We saw this with the protests in airports after Trumps travel ban was announced, all organized without some lefty clone of the Tea Party Express.

The truth is, you dont need to fork over cash to someone in D.C. or Brooklyn when a simple phone call to your senator has more impact. You dont need to sign a petition written by one of David Brocks underlings because it would be more effective if you just wrote one yourself.

Perhaps a left-wing Tea Party, in its puritanical zeal, will take its mission more seriously and abstain from playing pickpocket. Better to avoid the temptation entirely, however, and stick to more under-the-radar organizing that brings together the likeminded, stays clear of big, new, PACs, and keeps the movement decentralized.

Organizing, at least the kind that really matters, doesnt require an infrastructure of well-paid organizers. In fact, if the previous Tea Party has shown us anything, theyll only make it harder in the long run.

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Commentary: Does the left need a Tea Party? - CBS News

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But there is no parallel and no moral equivalence between a nonpartisan grass-roots opposition movement thatwanted to broaden public debate, and a hyper-partisancommunity organizer campaign that rejectsnormal politics, aims to disrupt public debate and stifle free speech.

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As I documented in my bookWacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, the movement had its roots in opposition to President George W. Bushs bailout of Wall Street, emerged in the wake of President Barack Obamas disastrous stimulus, and became a potent political movement in opposition to Obamacare. President Obama had wantedhis health care bill passed by thelate summer of2009, and sent Democraticmembers of Congressto their districts to explain a bill they had not read.

To many Americans, this was the third in a series of major pieces of legislation that was being forced down their throats with no real debate. They arrived at town hall meetings to ask questions and, yes, to protest.

But the real disruption was on the other side, as Democrats organized activists tostifle public opposition. At one town hall in suburban Chicago, for example,left-wing activists conspired to block members of the public from asking questions and were caught red-handed on video.

To the extent there was violence at the town hall meetings, it was almost alwayscarried outagainst Tea Party members.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media vilified the Tea Party, playing up Democrats accusations that it was a racist organization. The worst of many examples of media misinformation was the false accusation that protesters at an anti-Obamacare rally on Capitol Hill had used the N-word against members of the Congressional Black Caucus a claim for which no evidence was ever found.

Since the midterm sweep of 2010, Democrats have been looking for their own Tea Party and the media have been eager to help, doting on the new movements with generous media coverage while covering up their violence and extremist rhetoric.

First there was Occupy Wall Street in 2011, then Black Lives Matter in 2014-16, and now the Resistance a name hinting at theHunger Games and ultimately at theSecond World War, implying that our elected government is a totalitarian regime.

After Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) had to leave a town hall last week under police guard, and leftists rioted to stop Breitbart Tech editor Mio Yiannopoulos from speaking at UC Berkeley, Republican politicians, understandably, fear for their safety, as Politicos Rachel Bade reports.

ButBade writes, erroneously: Protesters have disrupted town halls and other public events, jeering and yelling at Republicans just as conservatives did to Democrats when they were writing the law eight years ago.

There is no equivalence whatsoever. The Tea Party showed up at town halls to be heard; the Resistance is showing up to stop people from being heard. Moreover, they are doing so against a background of lies by the Democratic Party, which is sowing fear with defamatory e-mail campaigns warning supporters about a white supremacist presence in the White House, complete with the sort of targeting imagery the media belatedly complained about after the Tucson mass shooting in 2011.

There is a path back to political relevance, and perhaps political power, for the left. It is simple: find policies and messagesthat appeal to the sort of voters who once backed Obama but switched to Donald Trump last November.

Instead, Democrats and their base are feeding each others hysteria, talking about impeachment as the media openly imagine the assassination of the new president.

They are creating justificationsfor violence,whichfalse comparisons to the Tea Party only reinforce.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the most influential people in news media in 2016. His new book,How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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No Moral Equivalence Between the Tea Party and the 'Resistance' - Breitbart News