What the Tea Party Has Achieved

By Stephen Moore

Remember the much maligned Tea Party movement? These were the patriotic Americans—millions of them—who took to the streets and the town halls across America and revolted against President Bush’s corporate bailouts, President Obama’s stimulus spending blowout and Obamacare, and the Federal Reserve’s policy of tossing trillions of dollars out of helicopter windows (figuratively).
Good news: They helped change and maybe even slightly fix America. The latest budget deficit numbers for the fiscal year just ended find that the deficit has fallen by $1 trillion since Obama’s tragic first term. The deficit is still near half a trillion, but the hole is a lot smaller than it was before the Tea Party spontaneous combustion happened back in 2009.
This was a movement about saving America from itself. Tea Party members are homemakers, veterans, small business owners, retirees, college students, and blue-collar workers. They generally don’t want anything from government. At the 9-12 rally in Washington a few years ago, an activist from Florida explained to me what his goal was: “All we want from government is less of it.” They wanted a lot less of it from a president and a Congress who kept dispensing trillions more.
The media portrayed the Tea Party as a spoiled three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. The left pilloried these patriots, offensively calling them “Tea Baggers” and racists and crazies.
Let’s hope the history books get the Tea Party chapter right. These weren’t a bunch of angry white males organized by the Koch brothers to protect industry. This was and still is a save-America crusade as impactful as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-tax activism of the 1970s. They arrived just in time, and America still needs them.