Tea Party Rage Dies [View All]

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/25/tea-party-rage-dies-after-2010-victory.html

Tea Party Rage Dies

Aug 25, 2011 9:08 PM EDT

A movement built on anger is simmering down as it confronts the realities of governing. Patricia Murphy on the newer, calmer town halls.

A couple of years back, Lindsey Graham had a bulls-eye on his back, at least among Tea Party types here in South Carolina.

The Charleston branch was so enraged with the senator’s work on climate change legislation in 2009 that it pushed the local GOP to formally censure him for “bipartisanship that continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom.”

Across the state in Greenville, equally livid activists constructed a wing tip-wearing effigy of the senator that they flushed down a fake toilet, mounted on the bed of a pick-up truck of course, as a part of a “RINO hunt” to symbolically eliminate Graham and other “Republicans in Name Only” from the Senate.

But after two years, a hugely successful midterm election, and almost a year of GOP control of the House of Representatives, Tea Party activists here and across the country seem to be losing some of their steam.

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