Tea Party protests: Could they rally change in government?

Atlanta protester Dwight Alcala says that both his parents are Filipino but he came to the protest because “I’m an American first.” His main concern is that free-for-all government spending leads to a freeloader mind-set that’s antithetical to the Constitution’s guarantees of individual rights. “We’re fed up, and we think there’s a better way,” he says.

Some protests eschewed party politics: One event in Chicago refused an entreaty from GOP head Michael Steele to speak. Others, such as the one here in Atlanta, were high-tech affairs, with huge TV screens, bands, and a recitation by “Paul Revere” (“The taxes are coming!”) – as well as appearances by state politicians like John Oxendine, Mr. Armey, and Fox News TV personality Sean Hannity, who aired his show last night from the scene.

Some have raised questions about how grass-roots the efforts really are, but even critics who attended the events or have talked to protesters say they are sincere.

“These are all average Americans in leadership roles,” insists Michael Patrick Leahy, a Nashville blogger and organizer of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition. “These are people who are mad at the fiscal profligacy of the last years of the Bush administration, and Republicans as well as Democrats.”

The movement has already had an impact on Jeremy Kata, a 20-something grad student at Indiana University at South Bend, who helped organize a protest there. A former plant manager, Mr. Kata is now determined to enter politics, though at what level and where he’s not sure.

Ultimately, the impact of the Tea Party movement at the local level may be what’s most important, he says.

“This idea of what we are willing to pay in taxes and what do we need in terms of services, it’s even more visible at the local level,” he says. “These are issues being debated in almost every town and state in the union.”

Influencing state and congressional races is the movement’s ultimate goal, says Mr. Leahy, but there’s a more immediate priority: the upcoming budget vote.

“Policymakers will be following these protests in the news,” Professor Bennion says. “Republicans might feel emboldened as a protest party, and ‘blue dog’ or moderate Democrats may also feel empowered to speak out against the Democratic leadership, meaning that the majority party will have to look much more carefully at their concerns regarding spending and how they’re going to pay for things.”

Marc Cooper, director of Annenberg Digital News at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and a Huffington Post contributor, disagrees. For Republicans especially, he says, the Tea Party movement is an unwelcome charge by “the angriest, most rogue, extreme – not in a dangerous way – voices that I think do a lot of damage to Republicans.”

He adds: “These protests are really off the wall because they’re completely out of sync with a historic moment ... [where] people are now looking to government, much as they did in the 1930s, for solutions. There’s a minority that’s going to oppose that, but that’s not where the center of the gravity is in the country.”

In fact, a study from the Pew Research Center released Wednesday found that 56 percent of Americans support Obama’s stimulus plan.

Standing back from the crowds at the Atlanta rally, J.C. Greene, an AmeriCorps volunteer, said he expected the crowds to be much larger – and more diverse. “They’re trying to build some momentum,” he says, “but I think it just mostly shows the state of our country right now.”

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