Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Washington Post
Dick Armey's 'tea party' history is a strange brew
By Dana Milbank
Dick Armey is intellectually versatile: The former leader of House
Republicans went from being a rainmaker for a Washington lobbying
firm to being the unofficial leader of the anti-Washington "tea
party" movement.
But his latest avocation, historian of early America, may be his
most intriguing role yet. As head of FreedomWorks, the group that
helps to fund and coordinate tea party activists, Armey went to the
National Press Club on Monday afternoon in advance of Tuesday's tea
party protest in Washington, to present some of his historical
findings.
<snip>
"The small-government conservative movement, which includes people
who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about
the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the
understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the
Federalist Papers," Armey explained. The problem with Democrats and
other "people here who do not cherish America the way we do," he
explained, is "they did not read the Federalist Papers."
And this oversight makes the tea partiers mad. "Who the heck do
these people think they are to try to sit in this town with their
audacity and second-guess the greatest genius, most creative genius,
in the history of the world?" Armey demanded.
A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who
read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration
for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton,
"was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central
government"?
Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. "Widely
regarded by whom?" he challenged, suspiciously. "Today's modern
ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that
was the case in fact about Hamilton."
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Michael