27 Journal in Humanities; ISSN 2298-0245 27 Understanding the Tea party Movement How Gay Rights and Racism Overweighed Tux-cut Politics of Tea Party Salome Gogberashvili* Abstract The Tea Party Movement emerged as an important player on the American political and social stage in the end of the frst decade of the 21st century. Although a new movement, it gained on the one hand a political, social and media attention and on the other hand, fnancial as well as political support of the current and former Republican leaders. The Tea Party Movement started as an “angered” response to the economic stimulus package and stood for fair taxes, healthcare and a smaller government. However, in this paper I will argue that in the recent period its concentration on its founding principles such as lower taxes and smaller gov- ernment. For example “general or economic liberty” was overshadowed by too much attention on racism and gay rights that could be put under “individual liberty”, thus contradicting with the main principles and ideology of most of the American people, that of freedom and equality. At the same time this paper will suggests that the Tea Party will likely expire if it does not change its strict attitude towards the above mentioned ideology and politics and will remain only as a movement which lasted for a little amount of time in the American history. Keywords: The Tea Party Movement, The Republican Party, racism, same-sex marriage Introduction: The Emergence of the Tea party and its relationship with the Republican Party The Tea Party Movement emerged as an important player on the American political and social stage at the end of the frst decade of the 21st century. Although a new movement, it gained political, social and media attention. The Tea Party Movement is an antigovernment, grass-roots movement which started in 2009 by ordinary Americans who were concerned with the direction of their local and national government and the politicians running the government. (National Coalition of Tea Party Affliates, 2013) The frst big and well-organized “Tea Party” protest took place in February 2009 as a response to the bailout bill known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and the stimulus bill known as the American Recovery and Investment Act (ARRA). (Sutton, 2009) However, the bailout and stimulus bills were not the only, and I would say the main reason of the emergence of such a wide scaled protest and movement. One of the main discon- tents of those people who gathered under the Tea Party was the election of the Barack Obama as the president of the United States. Nancy Pelosy, former speaker of the house, for example, refers to the Tea Party not as a grass-root party, but as “As- troturf”, an appendage of the Republican Party and its well- fnanced conservative interest groups, opposed to President Obama and his policies. (Arceneaux, Nicholson, 2012) Though Nancy Pelosy is not the only person highlighting the tight rela- tionship of the Tea party with the Republicans, the main failed opponents of president Obama, other scholars, such as David Kirby and Emily Ekins, also mentioned the Tea Party’s rela- tionship with the Republicans. As they argue in their work “Tea Party is a functionally libertarian infuence on the Republican Party” and they refer to the Tea Party supporters as the repre- sentatives of more than half of all Republican primary voters. (Kirby, Ekins, 2012) As for Williamson, Skocpol and Coggin, in their work they name the Tea Party nothing more than a re- branding of the conservative Republicanism. (Arceneaux, Ni- cholson, 2012) Moreover, The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 71 % of Republicans describe themselves as Tea Party sup- porters, announcing they had a favorable image of the move- ment. (Wallsten & Yadron, 2010) The result of the election of 2010 was that out of the Tea Party endorsed 129 candidates for the US House of Representatives and 9 candidates for the Sen- ate, 39 won in the House and fve in the Senate. (Moe, 2010) 1. Main supporters of the Tea Party Movement When talking about the Tea Party, it is important to men- tion what the tea party stands for and who represent the main supporters of the movement on both the local and national lev- el. Before directly discussing the supporters it should be men- tioned that the Tea Party represents a movement without any dominant central leadership, which they consider to be: “one of the strong points of the Tea Party movement en- suring its grass-roots nature that is built from the bottom up by regular citizens becoming civically involved in maintaining their quality of life in a fair and equitable manner free from overly oppressive government interference. “ (National Coali- tion of Tea Party Affliates 2013) As for the supporters of the Tea Party Movement, ac- cording to the New York Times/ NBC News Poll, as well as Gallup, they tend to be Republican(60-65), white (80-90%), male (55-60), married and older than 45 (70-75). The Tea Party supporters also tend to be more educated and wealthier than the general public and mainly full-time employed. (Zernike, Thee- Brenan, 2010) However, the support of ordinary Americans is not * Ph.D. student, Faculty of Humanities, International Black Sea University, Tbilisi, Georgia. E-mail: salomegog@yahoo.com