Years ago I signed up for emails from various Tea Party groups to keep an eye on what they were up to. I unsubscribed to all of them after the 2016 election when it seemed the Tea Party had been largely sent to the dustbin of history. However, in the past week, I’ve been getting multiple daily emails from a […]

The rise of the tea party was, according to their rhetoric, a response rising taxes and a government that had grown too big, too corrupt, and too bloated. Their very “freedom” was at stake, they claimed, because regulations, what the rest of us call “protections”, were strangling our collective American Dream. Donald Trump was never a tea party candidate. That […]

Back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was being debated, all it took was for three or four tea partiers to gather with anti-Obamacare signs on a street corner and they got all sorts of publicity. Now that the tables have turned, that sort of publicity appears hard to come by, at least in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. This […]

There are a lot of recriminations being aimed at the Republican Party these days about allowing a narcissistic, sexist bigot to be their presidential nominee. But there was little they could do once Trump began his march toward the primary. After spending decades laying the groundwork for his faux populist candidacy, demonizing liberals, Democrats, immigrants, women, and all the other […]

The Detroit News recently published an article highlighting two Michigan tea party activists who are working on a “Dump Trump” campaign to deny Donald J. Trump the Republican nomination for president by changing the rules of the Republican convention. One of them is Wendy Day, a Howell-based tea partier who is best known, at least to me, as the woman […]

President Obama now has less than a year left in his final term in office. But that hasn’t stopped the drumbeat of calls for his impeachment among the most fervent haters of the country’s first African American POTUS. This past week, the Michigan 7th Congressional District Republicans passed a resolution asking Congressman Tim Walberg to introduce articles of impeachment. In […]

You have to give the group headed up by rabid tea partier Pasquale Battaglia credit; they are persistent. After having their request to charter their tea party charter school denied by Brighton Public Schools, they have turned their attention now to Whitmore Lake Public Schools. The WLPS voted on October 26th to put out a call soliciting a cyber charter […]

A few days ago I wrote about Stephen Young, the chair of the Allegan County Tea Party. Allegan County is the home base for former State House Rep. (I love saying that) Cindy Gamrat and Young has been Gamrat’s staunchest and most vocal supporter. Young was so outraged at Gamrat being thrown out of the legislature that he went on […]

Cindy Gamrat got elected in Allegan County largely because there is such an active tea party presence there. Her over the top politics are so in-sync with this group that even her lying and philandering weren’t enough for her to lose their support. In fact, the head of the Allegan County Tea Party, Stephen Young, told WZZM, “The question now […]

I wrote the following on my Facebook page yesterday: “This is more than just an outrage. It is more than just two tea party zealots forcing their ill-conceived and obsessive behavior and “ideas” upon the unwashed and uneducated who have followed them with gusto and hearty resolve. This is more than just about hypocrisy and plain stupidity. “What it is […]

For the many of us who watch and participate in democracy on a daily basis, this past week was perhaps the most damaging and disheartening week for Michigan in many, many years. Yes, I said years. It is clear that the Republican agenda – their “in your face” agenda – is clearly working for them, even though their agenda is […]