Atlanta Georgia Airport May 29th 2010:
One of the things I was hoping to do during my week in Atlanta to cover the Ga-4th district race was to meet with some of the local members of the Tea Party movement.
It was a bit of a disappointment for me. I had been posting regularly and had sent out e-mails to various members of the movement whose info I could find online. I didn't receive any contact back except for The Galley Wench who was unfortunately out of the country.
I did however run into Juan at a local Boarders where I and some friends were having a deep discussion on religion, philosophy and the like and we was sitting near us. He talked about attending some tea party events and the importance of fiscal responsibility but had reacted strongly saying that some in the movement seemed to be “a little extremest”. I was a little surprised to hear that description, particularly since I had not seen anything remotely of that type at the meetings or the events I had attended.
At the Tysinger breakfast forum this morning (a weekly town hall type event held at the Ga-4th Republican headquarters in Tucker Ga) I asked about the tea party movement, the gentleman I talked to, a regular at the event, was unimpressed. One lady had a tea party shirt but other than that there was no visible presence of the movement either at the event, or the Matthews cafeteria event the day before, nor the candidate's forum in Norcross on Monday.
There was however no shortage of support for tea party issues such as the fair tax and the repeal of Obamacare. At Tysinger's a candidate for Attorney General spoke about Georgia's efforts to join the lawsuit against the mandate of healthcare to the approval of the attendees. The strength and conservatism of the republican party in Ga may account for the lack of tea party urgency as their issues are well represented. It's a state of affairs that is certainly not the case back in Boston.
One thing for sure both here and in Boston; there are those who hate the Tea Party; hate it with a passion! It took on a different form than in Massachusetts but the bigotry behind it remains the same.
Comments
The Libertarian party is big in GA, mostly due to talker Neil Boortz. So...many of the natural constituents of the Tea Partiers already have outlets for their activism: the conservative-leaning ones via -- as you say -- the already quite conservative GA GOP, and the libertarian-leaning ones via the Libertarian party.
'Course, I have to wonder if all that Big-L Libertarian element, by splitting the natural Tea Partiers into two different groups actual vitiates the Conservative/Libertarian "brand" -- and explains why the Dems do better in GA than one would expect. It's not like the Dems have any Sam Nunns or Zell Millers these days; todays GA Dems are...more to the left than they ought to be.
Link to yourself much?
Well Paul yes I did, because unlike many articles I've written the genesis of this one was what I saw in Ga and the best sources were the posts I put up during the trip.
Normally I tend to link to other sites and reports, but since it concerned my week in Ga-4 I was the natural source of the info there. It does seem like a bit of shameless blogwhoring when you put it that way though doesn't it?
Anyway thanks for reading.
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