Evaluating the Tea Party

After leaving the Navy in 1963, Chuck Holdeman said, he came to IU, got married and settled down in Bloomington. He was at the Tax Day Tea Party protest at Showers Plaza on Thursday.

Standing in front of City Hall, Holdeman said he didn’t usually attend political events. But he did say he kept up with national issues and was a fan of Sean Hannity.

He made a comment about being too old to learn Chinese but noted China had a lot to lose by trying to use the American debt it owns as leverage.

“There are always two sides of the coin. I try not to be too extreme about things,” Holdeman said.

He said that, on the whole, most of the Tea Party protestors are just good, down-to-earth Americans. He thinks a lot of people are just fed up with everything.

What “everything” includes depends on who you ask. Most people at the rally mentioned high taxes and ballooning debt. They said they were worried about health care reform and bailouts.

Tax Day set off some of the first Tea Party protests last year, and the Bloomington protest drew hundreds. This year’s drew far less, and it is still unclear what impact this movement will have.

The protesters are not the dangerous loons most critics imagine them to be. But their message is far from coherent — and significantly reducing the size of government will be a painful process.

The rally started off with a few speeches on the City Hall steps, including one by IU junior Sam Spaiser, the president of Young Americans for Liberty at IU. He warned against politicians co-opting the Tea Party movement.

After the speeches, the protestors marched to the Monroe County Courthouse led by a man carrying giant yellow flag depicting a snake and bearing the slogan, “Don’t tread on me.” A younger girl had a sign that read “Foolish spending is ruining my future,” and one sign had pictures of a donkey and an elephant, both crossed out. “America, America” was playing from the speakers of a parked motorcycle.

Most of the protesters were friendly and affable.

Shelby Sego lives in Bloomington and goes to Ivy Tech.

“I just wanted to express that we need lower taxes,” Sego said.

She talked about health care and how she doubts many people will get the benefits they are promised. She said she identifies as conservative but can see the need for programs like Medicare if they are cleaned up.

Republicans haven’t shown much of a willingness to tackle entitlement programs with looming fiscal problems, like Social Security, from which many of the older protestors are collecting benefits. But the GOP will probably benefit from the movement.

The rally was across the street from the office of Rep. Baron Hill, a Democrat who represents Bloomington and much of southern Indiana. One sign read “He was called a blue dog but now he is (U.S. Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi’s lap dog” and had a picture of Hill’s head on a poodle.

Another sign simply had the word “Vote” with “2010” written around it.


E-mail: nrdixon@indiana.edu