Tea Party to Attack Boehner's Leadership on the Debt Ceiling

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released today by Tea Party Founding Fathers:

WHAT: Press event to include the following themes:

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Europe’s Tea Party political parties on the rise

By Jason O'Mahony

DUBLIN (MarketWatch) — It’s very easy for Europeans and Americans to have stereotypical views of each other.

Americans look over the pond and shake their heads at those crazy Europeans and their leftwing liberal ideas. Europeans look back at the Americans, aghast at their lack of universal healthcare (or sheer bloody terror of the concept when it finally arrives) and obsession with Muslims and terrorism.

Then along comes a man like Timo Soini from Finland, a country famous for mobile phones, killing Russian soldiers in creative ways (when they invade Finland. Not for kicks), the odd Formula One racing driver and having a fair claim at being the home of the greatest fictional giveaway socialist of all time, Santa Claus.

Suddenly, the stereotype is on its ear.

Last month, the people of Finland delivered an electoral trumpet blowing that was heard all over Europe. They gave Soini’s party, the True Finns, a huge injection of extra support, boosting the party from its previous fringe status of 4% to a handsome third place 19%. Under Finland’s proportional voting system the party received a generous bounty of seats in parliament. Soini himself won the largest number of personal votes in the entire country.

Reuters Chairman Timo Soini of the True Finns celebrates with supporters after hearing preliminary results of Finnish parliamentary elections.

Soini’s party manifesto commits the True Finns to seeking cuts in both foreign aid and welfare payments to immigrants, and rejects any non-Finnish interference in the treatment of immigrants, a stance which will put the party in direct conflict with other EU states. He also provocatively questions support for the compulsory teaching of Swedish in Finland’s schools, which was instituted in recognition of the Swedish-speaking minority who make up 6% of the population.

Does it matter how the people of this tidy, well-run republic, which constantly appears in the top five nations in the world for standard of living, vote in their elections? Normally, the answer would be no. But Finland is a member of the euro zone, and in Europe, to paraphrase Lenin, everything is connected to everything else.

Although the policy platform above would seem mild by American Tea Party standards (indeed, a Democrat running in a rural district in the South would probably be slated as a liberal for running on such a platform) they are, by the standards of European politics, almost explosive. Soini’s agenda is to Finland, and indeed to the rest of the European Union, not that dissimilar to the rabble rousing populism of, say, a certain former Alaska governor. The only difference is that the EU main street is much closer to Castro Street, San Francisco than Main Street, Wasilla.

The True Finns also won support for wanting to defend Finland’s much lauded social welfare system from spending Finnish taxes on bailouts of profligate countries like Ireland, Greece, or more recently, Portugal. It’s a message which resonates in other EU countries, especially Germany, the EU’s perennial-but-getting-irritated paymaster.

Across Europe, a populist nationalist message tailored to the fears of individual electorates but marked with common themes is winning converts.

In France, centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy struggles in third place in polls behind the hard-line anti-immigrant nationalism of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. In The Netherlands, Geert Wilders has already led his populist Party of Freedom to a striking result in last June’s national elections, winning 16% and third place on a similar platform to the True Finns and Le Pen.

In Austria, always a place watched with nervousness by Europeans given its last contribution to world-class homicidal maniacs, the hard-right anti-immigration Freedom Party won 26% of the vote in local elections in Vienna last year.

Interestingly, hard-right parties in Europe have recently started to espouse pro-Israel positions to allow them to subtly distance themselves from the anti-Semites of the past while sending a dog-whistle message on Islam.

In France, for example, Jean Marie Le Pen, former president of the far-right National Front (and convicted by a German court in 1999 for “minimizing the holocaust” and referring to the gas chambers as “a detail of history”) has been replaced by his daughter Marine, who has been quick to publicly defend Israel’s right to self defence.

The themes that link these disparate parties are not that dissimilar to those espoused by the Tea Party in the United States. A distrust of government, politicians, and imagined “elites” (replace Washington with Brussels, the capital of the European Union) coupled with a fear of outsiders, in particular Muslims and to a lesser extent other EU member states with different values. Then throw in a protectionist response to a global economic crisis that is putting huge pressure on employment and public services.

It’s here where the U.S. and EU Tea parties diverge. In Europe, the populist right draws its support not only from the newly frightened middle classes but also from the low paid and unemployed who rely heavily on public spending.

Unlike the U.S. Tea Party, the angry anti-political establishment cry is not for less government but more, or at least the maintenance of existing government. Socialism is not feared anywhere near as much as the dangers of the untrammeled “neo-liberalism” of free markets and privatization. The baddy of the piece from Europe’s point of view is the International Monetary Fund or World Bank or the EU imposing Friedmanite solutions onto the European model of social solidarity. That is, high taxes on business and the middle and high earners to fund, well, everything.

Will Germany see a True Finns-style revolt? It’s unlikely, as Germany’s political system (for obvious historical reasons) does not look favorably upon xenophobic rabble-rousers. This hesitance can be seen in other European countries scarred by 20th century history. Even in Finland, for every True Finns voter, there were four voters who walked into polling stations and cast their ballots for other, less extreme parties.

Nevertheless, German politicians, like elected officials anywhere else, need to be elected, and need to recognize what the public are feeling, and respond accordingly. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party recently suffered a stunning defeat against the Green Party in regional elections. While that was probably more to do with nuclear policy in light of recent events in Japan, it still demonstrates an inherent weakness in the political strength of the Chancellor. With popular tabloid newspapers stirring up resentment of foreign bailouts, could Merkel be tempted boost her poll numbers by getting tough, or at least being seen to, with the rest of Europe?

In the Netherlands, Denmark, and Italy, hard-right parties are either in government or part of the parliamentary majorities that sustain those governments. And that means that their ideas are seeping ever closer to mainstream thinking.

One only has to look at President Sarkozy’s recent decision to temporarily close the Franco-Italian border to prevent North African refugees from crossing the border from Italy. Open borders and freedom of travel is one of the defining principles of the European Union, and it’s hard to imagine that Sarkozy did not take the action with at least one eye on the centre-right voters being tempted by the tough borders message of Marine Le Pen.

After all, he wouldn’t be the first conservative politician to recognize the voter potential of stopping poorer, darker-skinned people from the south trying to get across the border to the more prosperous north, would he?

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In Arizona, Tea Party License Plate Draws Opposition From Its Honorees

The surprise was that the biggest opposition has come from Tea Party members themselves, who say their renegade, grass-roots movement was built on suspicion of government, and they are not too keen to start playing financial footsie with the enemy.

“No, I won’t buy one,” said Jim Wise, a Tea Party activist from this community northwest of Phoenix, who wrote to lawmakers in a failed effort to nix the plates. “I realize the people behind this had the best of intentions, but it goes against what we stand for, which is limited government.”

There has been a movement in state capitals across the country to commemorate the Tea Party on the backs of cars, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The group has tallied at least 10 other states considering such plates this year, three of which — Virginia, Texas and Mississippi — have joined Arizona in endorsing them. But opposition has been most heated in Arizona, and mostly from Tea Party backers.

Even before Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill creating the plates last week, Arizona had dozens of specialty license plates, including those honoring organ donors, discouraging abortion, lamenting child abuse, promoting the spaying and neutering of pets, and urging people to follow the golden rule.

“In Arizona, we let people express themselves on their plates as long as it’s legal,” said John Kavanagh, a Republican representative who supported the Tea Party plates. “And to discriminate against one group over the other would not be right.”

The plates are fund-raising tools for organizations, which must come up with $32,000 for the state to produce them. In exchange, for every $25 fee taken in to issue a plate, $8 goes to the state and the other $17 to the groups.

Initially, Arizona planned to pay $32,000 for the Tea Party plate, which will feature a likeness of the historic bright yellow Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag popular in the Tea Party.

But protests from frugally minded Tea Party members prompted the subsidy to be dropped, and supporters of the plates will now have to raise the money.

Still, the bureaucracy created to handle the plates rubs many activists the wrong way. A 13-member committee appointed by the governor, the Senate president and the House speaker will dole out the money from the plates to Tea Party groups. Groups must submit applications to be considered and agree to open their books for government audits to show how they spent the money.

That sounds like an expansion of government to some Tea Party members. Many of them studiously avoid government money in running their groups and oppose the idea of increasing government, even by 13 people.

“This is classic government,” said Trent Humphries, a co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who said he would not serve on the committee if asked. “I don’t know a Tea Party person who supports this.”

Mr. Humphries is pushing for the law to be amended in the next legislative session so that the money raised from the plates goes directly to ease the state’s budget woes and not to finance individual Tea Party groups, a change he believes fellow activists would back.

Mr. Wise, a retiree who belongs to two Tea Party groups, has been criticizing the plates wherever he can. “I’ve brought it up at Tea Party meetings, and there’s been a lot of groans,” he said. “There are a lot of e-mails going around. We’re establishing a government organization to take taxpayers’ money and pass it back to grass-roots organizations. Is that what we want?”

Not all Tea Party activists are opposed. Don Shooter, a farmer who led the Tea Party in Yuma before being elected to the State Senate last fall, sponsored the legislation. And Russ Clark, a radio talk show host in Yuma, said he planned to put a Tea Party plate on his GMC truck and to kick in $10,000 to help offset the cost of the plate’s production, so long as he is paid back with plate revenues.

His biggest concern is the reaction on the road. “There are some who hate the Tea Party so much that I will expose myself to some anger,” he said. “But I need to stand up for the Tea Party.”

Groups are eligible for the revenue from sale of the Tea Party plates, the law says, if they promote the Constitution, state sovereignty, border security and limited government, which Arizona Democrats say sounds like the money might go to further political ends.

“I think we’re really treading into some dangerous territory by doing something like this, and I think it’s setting a very bad precedent,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, a Democrat who opposed the plates.

The Arizona plates have attracted the attention of Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, who introduced legislation in Washington this week to take away 15 percent of a state’s federal highway money if license plate revenue goes to groups advocating for political candidates.

“Using official government resources to help bankroll an explicit political agenda — whether on the right or left — is flat-out wrong,” said Mr. Ackerman, who is calling his bill the “License Plate Political Slush Fund Prevention Act.”

To win support for the Tea Party plates, Arizona Republicans merged their legislation with bills for plates on hunger, littering and cancer in children.

“Who could vote against that?” Mr. Wise asked.

Salvador Rodriguez contributed reporting from Phoenix.

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Tea Party Attacks Republicans Who Voted For Illinois DREAM Act

On Wednesday afternoon, the Illinois State Senate passed a landmark bill that would support the efforts of children of immigrants to go to college. The Illinois DREAM Act would create a privately funded college scholarship program for undocumented students who met certain criteria, and provide them with more educational and counseling resources.

Immigrant rights groups around the state celebrated the decision. But at least one conservative group, the Palatine Tea Party, set aside its national focus to hammer state legislatures on passing the bill.

The Capitol Fax publishes an email blast sent by the Tea Party:

The Illinois Republican Senators who voted ‘YES’ to Dream Act SB 2185 are part of the problem in Illinois. Instead of focusing on issues like jobs, taxes and our economy they are more interested in getting votes. It is clear our current elected officials are much more concerned with their reelection than what matters for the citizens of Illinois. We will Never forget your VOTE!

But as Rich Miller, author of Capitol Fax, points out, "It really isn’t a gigantic bill." Indeed, Republican State Senator Ron Sandack -- who was mentioned by name in the Tea Party email -- pointed out the limited nature of the bill in a press release.

“It is important to clarify that this bill is not an immigration bill," Sandack said in that statement. "It does not grant any sort of legal citizenship status."

He sought to avoid confusion with the federal DREAM Act, a failed measure from which the Illinois bill draws its name but none of its content. That law would have created a path to citizenship for young people who were children of undocumented immigrants.

States can't legislate immigration or citizenship issues, so the Illinois bill is focused instead on getting immigrants to college.

The bill passed the Senate by a margin of 45-11, with eleven Republicans in favor. It will soon go before the State House for consideration.

Read More: Immigration, Tea Party, DREAM Act, Illinois GOP, Chicago, Illinois, Illinois Dream Act, Illinois Immigrants, Illinois Tea Party

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