Tea Partiers Scramble to Keep Up With Obama Health Care Blitz

President Obama has set an aggressive schedule for completing work on the bulk of the year-in-the-making health care package and may be getting the jump on the raft of Tea Party events set for the coming weeks. 

'Tea party' favorite set for rematch in N.Y.

Last year's underdog became this year's front-runner Tuesday when Doug Hoffman - whose 2009 congressional race became a rallying cry for the "tea party" movement - announced he would seek the Republican nomination in New York's 23rd District. Mr. Hoffman's Conservative Party campaign last fall in the upstate district ignited grass-roots supporters, but fell 4,000 votes short of an upset victory in the three-way special election won by Bill Owens, who became the first Democrat to represent the district in decades. "I'm just an average citizen, standing up to say, 'We're fed up. We're not going to take this any ...

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Jersey Dems blast tea party

The state chairman rips their bid to recall Menendez, saying it's because of the senator's ''last name.''
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The dangerous allure of third parties

In an Ideas piece, Gacek marvels at the energy of the tea party movement.
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Inside the Beltway

TEA REPORTERS Town halls are about to erupt in hallowed halls, particularly outside the doors of select Democrats. Prepare for a new wave of "tea party" citizen journalists: The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition - a broad federation of 30 local "tea parties" - has launched a proactive strike against the 50 or so House Democrats who have yet to reveal how they'll vote on health care reform legislation. The group is urging its activists to play reporter and find out what truly lurks in the hearts of undecided lawmakers. "We're finding that responsible, respectable constituents want to personally ask their ...

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TONELSON: Failed trade policies a good focus for tea party

ANALYSIS/OPINION: The battle for the "tea party" movement's hearts and minds hasn't yet extended to trade policy, but how far off can that be? After all, dealing with the world economy has often angrily divided conservatives since the Cold War ended. Future decisions on trade and related policies will surely affect U.S. employment and living standards — for good or ill — in increasingly prominent ways as the economic slump drags on. And clashing sentiments have already appeared in tea party ranks. From FreedomWorks, the advocacy group that's helped propagate the movement, tea party activists have heard, "Trade in goods, ...

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Tea party candidates falling short

So far, success at the ballot box has been elusive for these grass-roots conservative activists.
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Federal Lawmakers Running for Governor Face Anti-Washington Attacks

Washington politics and policy have a fed a populist anger that has fueled the Tea Party Movement and given ammunition to gubernatorial candidates who don't have day jobs in Washington

A Dark Cloud on the GOP Horizon

If Tea Party candidates can get on the ballot in close districts, they can easily siphon votes away from the Republican candidate and throw the district to the Democrat.
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Dems Race to Pass Health Care Bill as Tea Partiers Plan Town Hall Wave

Democrats are racing the clock to pass health care reform ahead of a wave of Tea Party-driven town hall meetings planned for the spring recess -- the kind of gatherings that nearly derailed the package last August. 

Tea partiers' family feud politics

In an Ideas piece, Pipes says tea party movement must be attached to larger conservative majority.
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Perry's Texas win buoys tea-party faithful

Anti-spending Republicans are jubilant over "tea party" darling Texas Gov. Rick Perry's surprise first-ballot defeat of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in Tuesday's fiercely contested Republican gubernatorial primary. They see Mr. Perry's outright win, after a campaign tying his rival to the failings and free-spending ways of Washington, as a good omen for tea-party-backed insurgents challenging establishment or incumbent Republicans in so-called "soul of the party" primaries in California, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere. Mr. Perry now faces a well-financed challenge from Democratic candidate Bill White, the mayor of Houston, but his decisive win Tuesday means he will avoid an expensive and ...

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'Tea party' leaders use survey to strike back at critics

Some members of the "tea party" have struck back at media bias against the grass-roots political movement and critics who derisively dismiss the group as violent "hicks," opportunists, "teabaggers" or worse. "We decided to learn what tea party leaders are up to in the old-fashioned way. We asked them. We met in person with leaders from 38 states, we collected survey data from 49 leaders," said Eric O'Keefe, chairman and CEO of the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance, a nonprofit group that espouses free-market principles. The group on Tuesday released a survey of its findings that revealed that tea party activists ...

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Perry tops Hutchison in Texas primary

AUSTIN, Texas — Riding a wave of growing anti-Washington anger, Texas Gov. Rick Perry easily dispatched Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and a challenger backed by some in the tea party movement Tuesday to once again become the Republican nominee for the state's top office. Speaking shortly after Hutchison called him to concede, Perry continued the attack on the nation's capital that powered him past the state's senior senator, slamming Washington on spending, job losses, the heath care debate and for "trying to impose education standards" on Texas. "From Driftwood, Texas, to Washington, D.C., we are sending you a message tonight: ...

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Tea Party Group Argues for Recall of N.J. Senator

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Tea Party Group Argues for Recall of NJ Senator

Conservative Tea Party activists in New Jersey should have the right to try to throw a Democratic U.S. senator out of office, their lawyer argued in a state appeals court Tuesday, even though he acknowledged it is unlikely their effort would succeed.
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Texans Head to Polls in Rough Gov. Primary

Gov. Rick Perry and rival Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison are vying for the Republican gubernatorial nomination along with party activist Debra Medina. Medina is a favorite of many tea party voters.

Tea Partiers on 'Alert' as Democrats Lay Groundwork for Health Care Passage

Democrats appear to be gambling that a perceived lull in Tea Party activism, combined with an eight-month window to the November midterm election, is going to buy them enough time to muster the simple majorities they need in the Senate and House to give President Obama at least partial victory in his push to remake the nation's health care system.

Inside the Beltway

THE ORIGINAL BREW Damn the torpedos - and the criticism - and full speed ahead. Despite press reports that the "tea party" is rife with divisions, those at the heart of things are crafting a history: 97 stalwarts have been named the "founding mothers and fathers of the tea party" by a committee that identified the names behind a series of 51 grass-roots tax-revolt events of a year ago that led to the now burgeoning political movement. "There are now thousands of local tea party leaders, and it's a positive, vibrant thing, and it's a very big tent," organizer and ...

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Pelosi Claims Tea Party Hijacked by GOP

The House speaker claims the Tea Party movement has been hijacked by the Republican Party despite grassroots sharing common ground with Democrats.

Paul burned by tea party blowback

The Texas Republican finds himself facing opposition from an unexpected corner.
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Tea party seeks recall of Dem. senators

Republicans' chances to retake the Senate are limited by the fact that only a third of the chamber is up for re-election this year, but some conservative activists are pushing to force more Democrats onto the ballot in November by trying to recall them. It's a long-shot approach, the legal hurdles are tremendous - no member of Congress has ever been recalled - and it's limited only to states with recall laws that are broad enough to include federal officeholders. But the first test comes Tuesday, when a judge will hear oral arguments from the Sussex County Tea Party, which ...

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Huckabee's blast exposes rift on the right

In a sign of lingering divisions on the right, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee blasted last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest meeting of conservatives in the nation, saying it was unrepresentative of the Republican Party as a whole. "CPAC has become increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years - one of the reasons I didn't go this year," said the former Southern Baptist minister, who enjoys a devoted following among Christian conservative voters and who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. The rise of the "tea party" movement has taken some of the ...

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DCCC to highlight 'Palin's Primaries'

The committee is launching a website to track contests between GOP and tea party candidates.
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Tea party challenges Olbermann

Group criticizes anchor for suggesting conservative grassroots organizations lack diversity.
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