“Tea party” on The Daily Caller

From 2000 to 2008, I was politically homeless. As a conservative I would’ve liked to have been a part of the Republican Party, but there was simply no conservatism in the GOP at the time. It was the Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, war, torture and executive orders, and it was anti-Constitution and anti-civil liberties. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were nowhere to be found. No Child Left Behind and Medicare Plan D were front and center. The traditional conservatism of the Founding Fathers, Robert Taft and Russell Kirk didn’t exist beyond my bookshelf. The world-police and nation-building policies of Woodrow Wilson and the New Deal socialism of Franklin Roosevelt had become “conservative.” For constitutionalists and limited-government advocates, it sucked. Bad. (more)

In the 2010 mid-term elections, Ron Johnson sent three-term liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold packing. (more)

The Club for Growth, a conservative group known for funding primary challenges against incumbent Republicans, released a report today unloading on GOP House freshmen for straying from the “tea party” ideals on which they campaigned. (more)

Talking Points Memo is hardly a fan of the tea party movement, but that didn’t stop a domain broker from making an odd inquiry into whether the left-leaning news organization would be interested in purchasing TeaParty.com. (more)

The tea party seems to be on its last legs in a state where two years ago the movement was as energized as anywhere in the country. (more)

Reflecting on President Barack Obama’s first term, former Obama administration advisor Van Jones said the president “let his opponents,” specifically the tea party, “set him up” by being “so bipartisan.” (more)

At a recent tea party gathering outside Portland, a high-ranking Multnomah County Republican official asked for a show of hands from people who were satisfied with Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee. About 75 hands went up among the 400 or so in attendance, including mine. (more)

Though the tea party wasn’t particularly enthused about Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy during the primary, one tea party leader who was present at the inception of the movement says the tea party will get behind the former Massachusetts governor going into the general election. (more)

Former Obama administration adviser Van Jones said the country should re-elect President Barack Obama to “stop the tea party” because former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would “govern as a tea party president.” (more)

“I despise these people,” Orrin Hatch told NPR last week, “and I’m not the guy you come in and dump on without getting punched in the mouth.” What would make the powerful 36-year incumbent senator from Utah say such a hostile thing? Who does he “despise”? What did they do? Who, exactly, does he want to punch “in the mouth”? (more)

Wishful liberals and Chicken Little conservatives who watch the weekly fluctuations in the presidential polls have concluded that President Obama is a shoo-in for re-election. They point out that Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, can’t connect with women, has a large likability gap and is slightly behind Obama in most national polls as well as in the key swing states of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. (more)

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch told a crowd of 500 tea party activists on Monday that under the leadership of Gov. Scott Walker, the Badger State has shifted from deficits to surpluses and from job losses to job gains. (more)

The leader of the Tea Party Nation organization has a blunt message for likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: Tea partiers will likely vote for you, but don’t expect them to get energized and campaign for you. (more)

During a 2009 commencement address at Arizona State University, President Obama joked that he’d send the IRS after those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with him. For over 100 tea party groups, his comments are not amusing; they are a reality. (more)

A conservative group is giving away free high-tech campaign management software to tea party groups across the country to help mobilize voters ahead of the 2012 election. (more)

After tea party candidates like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul defeated establishment Republicans during the 2010 “wave election,” many conservatives had high hopes it was a harbinger of things to come. (more)

A Utah college professor helped create and cultivate a fake identity as a tea party activist for nearly two years, using a fictional Facebook account to deceive thousands of conservatives as part of an elaborate “performance art” project, The Daily Caller has learned. (more)

Since its inception in 2009, the tea party movement has been working tirelessly to downsize big government. While the movement’s central theme has been bringing a semblance of fiscal sanity to government at the national and state levels, it also seeks to make the Constitution the guide for presidential, congressional and judicial decisions. (more)

The tea party-aligned organization FreedomWorks is not ready to coalesce behind Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney yet, an official told The Daily Caller. (more)

Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love, a Republican candidate for Utah’s 4th Congressional District, is getting lots of attention in the conservative blogosphere as a future conservative and tea party leader. But does her record actually match the hype? (more)