Tea Party Movement

Tea party activists outgrabe at brillig.

TEA PARTY, THE, po­lit­i­cal protest move­ment of the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, named for the epony­mous gath­er­ing por­trayed in Lewis Car­roll’s chil­dren’s book, Alice’s Ad­ven­tures in Won­der­land (Macmil­lan, 1865).

The Tea Par­ty’s agen­da is best de­scribed as pop­ulist-con­trar­i­an and cen­ter-ab­sur­dist. It has no for­mal lead­er­ship nor par­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. It is not an of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered po­lit­i­cal par­ty, and there­fore can­not nom­i­nate can­di­dates nor hold seats in gov­ern­ment. Nev­er­the­less, it per­formed far above ex­pec­ta­tions in the 2010 midterm elec­tions, and seems head­ed for even greater suc­cess in the fu­ture.

It holds no po­si­tion re­gard­ing tea.