page_title: Tea Party movement
section_title: First national protests and birth of national movement
hierarchical_section_title: Tea Party movement / History / First national protests and birth of national movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Tea Party Protest in Dallas, Texas - April, 2009
context_page_description: The Tea Party movement is an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party. Members of the movement have called for lower taxes, and for a reduction of the national debt of the United States and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. The movement supports small-government principles and opposes government-sponsored universal healthcare. The Tea Party movement has been described as a popular constitutional movement composed of a mixture of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activism. It has sponsored multiple protests and supported various political candidates since 2009. According to the American Enterprise Institute, various polls in 2013 estimated that slightly over 10 percent of Americans identified as part of the movement.
  The Tea Party movement was launched following a February 19, 2009, call by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a "tea party", several conservative activists agreed by conference call to coalesce against President Barack Obama's agenda and scheduled a series of protests.
context_section_description: On February 18, 2009, the one-month old Obama administration announced the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, an economic recovery plan to help home owners avoid foreclosure by refinancing mortgages in the wake of the Great Recession. The next day, CNBC business news editor Rick Santelli criticized the Plan in a live broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He said that those plans were "promoting bad behavior" by "subsidizing losers' mortgages". He suggested holding a tea party for traders to gather and dump the derivatives in the Chicago River on July 1. "President Obama, are you listening?" he asked. A number of the floor traders around him cheered on his proposal, to the amusement of the hosts in the studio. Santelli's "rant" became a viral video after being featured on the Drudge Report.
  According to The New Yorker writer Ben McGrath and New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, this is where the movement was first inspired to coalesce under the collective banner of "Tea Party." Santelli's remarks "set the fuse to the modern anti-Obama Tea Party movement," according to journalist Lee Fang. About 10 hours after Santelli's remarks, reTeaParty.com was bought to coordinate Tea Parties scheduled for Independence Day and, as of March 4, was reported to be receiving 11,000 visitors a day. Within hours, the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity registered the domain name "TaxDayTeaParty.com," and launched a website calling for protests against Obama. Overnight, websites such as "ChicagoTeaParty.com" (registered in August 2008 by Chicagoan Zack Christenson, radio producer for conservative talk show host Milt Rosenberg) were live within 12 hours. By the next day, guests on Fox News had already begun to mention this new "Tea Party." As reported by The Huffington Post, a Facebook page was developed on February 20 calling for Tea Party protests across the country.
  A "Nationwide Chicago Tea Party" protest was coordinated across more than 40 different cities for February 27, 2009, thus establishing the first national modern Tea Party protest. The movement has been supported nationally by at least 12 prominent individuals and their associated organizations. Fox News called many of the protests in 2009 "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties" which it promoted on air and sent speakers to. This was to include then-host Glenn Beck, though Fox came to discourage him from attending later events.
caption: Tea Party Protest in Dallas, Texas, April 2009
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "COOLPIX P5100", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 9.2 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2020:03:26 10:47:08", "Image Artist": "Matthew T Rader", "Image Copyright": "Matthew T Rader", "Image ExifOffset": "272", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "844", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "25846", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0231", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:04:15 17:48:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:04:15 17:48:54", "EXIF OffsetTime": "-05:00", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1120723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "86797/20000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "29/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "17/2", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "40", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}