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The Tea Party movement is an American political movement that is primarily known for advocating a reduction in the U.S. national debt and federal budget deficit by reducing U.S. government spending and taxes.[1][2] The movement has been called partly conservative,[3] partly libertarian,[4] and partly populist.[5] It has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009.[6][7][8]

The name is derived from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, an iconic event in American history.[9][10][11][12]Anti-tax protesters in the United States have often referred to the original Boston Tea Party for inspiration.[13][14][15] References to the Boston Tea Party were part of Tax Day protests held throughout the 1990s and earlier.[16][17][18][19]

The Tea Party does not have a single uniform agenda. The decentralized character of the Tea Party, with its lack of formal structure or hierarchy, allows each autonomous group to set its own priorities and goals. Goals may conflict, and priorities will often differ between groups. Many Tea Party organizers see this as a strength rather than a weakness, as decentralization has helped to immunize the Tea Party against co-opting by outside entities and corruption from within.[20]

The Tea Party has generally sought to avoid placing too much emphasis on traditional conservative social issues. National Tea Party organizations, such as the Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks, have expressed concern that engaging in social issues would be divisive.[20] Instead, they have sought to have activists focus their efforts away from social issues and focus on economic and limited government issues.[21][22] Still, many groups like Glenn Beck's 9/12 Tea Parties, TeaParty.org, the Iowa Tea Party and Delaware Patriot Organizations do act on social issues such as abortion, gun control, prayer in schools, and illegal immigration.[21][22][23]

The Tea Party generally focuses on government reform. Among its goals are limiting the size of the federal government, reducing government spending, lowering the national debt and opposing tax increases.[24] To this end, Tea Party groups have protested the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), stimulus programs such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act), cap and trade, health care reform such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, also known simply as the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare") and perceived attacks by the federal government on their 1st, 2nd, 4th and 10th Amendment rights.[25] Tea Party groups have also voiced support for right to work legislation as well as tighter border security, and opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants.[26][27] On the federal health care reform law, they began to work at the state level to nullify the law, after the republican party lost seats in congress and the Presidency in the 2012 elections.[28][29] It has also mobilized locally against the United Nations Agenda 21.[28][30] They have protested the IRS for controversial treatment of groups with "tea party" in their names.[31] They have formed Super PACs to support candidates sympathetic to their goals and have opposed what they call the "Republican establishment" candidates.

Even though the groups have a wide range of different goals, the Tea Party places the Constitution at the center of its reform agenda.[24][32][33] It urges the return of government as intended by the Founding Fathers. It also seeks to teach its view of the Constitution and other founding documents.[20] Scholars have described its interpretation variously as originalist, popular,[34] or a unique combination of the two.[35][36] Reliance on the Constitution is selective and inconsistent. Adherents cite it, yet do so more as a cultural reference rather than out of commitment to the text, which they seek to alter.[37][38][39][40][41] Several constitutional amendments have been targeted by some in the movement for full or partial repeal, including the 14th, 16th, and 17th. There has also been support for a proposed Repeal Amendment, which would enable a two-thirds majority of the states to repeal federal laws, and a Balanced Budget Amendment, which would limit deficit spending.[24]

One attempt at forming a list of what Tea Partiers wanted Congress to do resulted in the Contract from America. It was a legislative agenda created by conservative activist Ryan Hecker with the assistance of Dick Armey of FreedomWorks. Armey had co-written the previous Contract with America released by the Republican Party during the 1994 midterm elections. One thousand agenda ideas that had been submitted were narrowed down to twenty-one non-social issues. Participants then voted in an online campaign in which they were asked to select their favorite policy planks. The results were released as a ten-point Tea Party platform.[42][43] The Contract from America was met with some support within the Republican Party, but it was not broadly embraced by GOP leadership, which released its own 'Pledge to America'.[43]

Walter Russell Mead analyzes the foreign policy views of the Tea Party movement in a 2011 essay published in Foreign Affairs. Mead says that Jacksonian populists, such as the Tea Party, combine a belief in American exceptionalism and its role in the world with skepticism of American's "ability to create a liberal world order". When necessary, they favor total war and unconditional surrender over "limited wars for limited goals". Mead identifies two main trends, one somewhat personified by Paul and the other by Palin. "Paulites" have a Jeffersonian approach that seeks to avoid foreign military involvement. "Palinites", while seeking to avoid being drawn into unnecessary conflicts, favor a more aggressive response to maintaining America's primacy in international relations. Mead says that both groups share a distaste for "liberal internationalism".[44]

Some Tea Party affiliated Republicans, such as Michele Bachmann, Jeff Duncan, Connie Mack IV, Jeff Flake, Tim Scott, Joe Walsh, Allen West, and Jason Chaffetz, voted for progressive Dennis Kucinich's resolution to withdraw from Libya.[45] In the Senate, three Tea Party backed Republicans, Jim DeMint, Mike Lee and Michael Crapo, voted to limit foreign aid to Libya, Pakistan and Egypt.[46] Tea Partiers in both houses of Congress have shown willingness to cut foreign aid. Most leading figures within the Tea Party both within and outside Congress opposed military intervention in Syria.[47][48][49]

The Tea Party movement is composed of a loose affiliation of national and local groups that determine their own platforms and agendas without central leadership. The Tea Party movement has been cited as an example of grassroots political activity, although it has also been described as an example of corporate-funded astroturfing.[50][51][52][53][54] Other observers see the organization as having its grass roots element "amplified by the right-wing media", supported by elite funding.[55][37]

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Tea Party movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia