Newtie: the original Tea Partier

Think back to the Tax Day Tea Parties of 2009. It was April 15th and all this was a wild gamble for a party unaccustomed to public protest. He was at the New York City rally held in City Hall Park, blocking off both sides of Broadway, and the only major figure in the conservative movement to dedicate his time and prestige to the new movement. He received a hero’s welcome, flanked by the devoted Callista, speaking as a self-styled historian, reminding the faithful about how the 1773 Tea Party was only a start, while offering a well-timed dig at the New York Times editorial boardas “bigoted.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Newt has always excelled at team building. He was at his best in the road to 1994, recruiting candidates and rallying a populist movement around conservative reform causes.

“Gingrich supported the Tea Party movement in its earliest days and helped it achieve critical mass.”

Newt’s group, AmericanSolutions.com, was among the top-tier groups supporting the early Tea Party rallies in every respect, chief among which was the value of his conservative celebrity and advocacy, offered on Fox News in the days leading up to those initial Tax Day 2009 rallies. In an tub-thumping interview with Greta Van Susteren, he said“My challenge to every member of the House and Senate is have the courage to go to the tea party in your state or district….My prediction is that there will be over 300,000 Americans and I think it’s the beginning of a huge movement of fundamental reform…in all the places where the lobbyists, politicians and the bureaucrats have been running over their citizens.”

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