Breitbart News has learned that the Tea Party movement will celebrate its five-year anniversary with a blockbuster event on February 27 in Washington, D.C. that will bring together Tea Party conservatives in Congress with local activists and movement leaders from across the nation.
The Tea Party Patriots will organize the event that will reflect on why the movement formed, the significant victories it has achieved, and the road ahead as it comes under assault by the institutional left and even the Republican establishment that wants to preserve the status quo.
“It’s amazing to think of all the things we have accomplished in the last five years, but there is much more work ahead,” Tea Party Patriots co-founder and National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News. “This event will be a great opportunity for assessment but more importantly to map out a strategy for the next five years and beyond.”
Speakers will include unwavering conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who knocked off incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett in 2010 to show the strength of the Tea Party, D.C; Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), who led the fight against Obamacare in the House; Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who has been a fierce opponent of amnesty; and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), and Matt Salmon (R-AZ).
Other speakers will include Tea Party activists like True the Vote’s Catherine Englebrecht, who was targeted by the IRS after she was involved in the movement; Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin, who has relentlessly organized on behalf of Tea Party conservatives across the nation; Tea Party Patriots’ Keli Carender, who organized the first protest just 72 hours after Rick Santelli’s rant that galvanized the formation of the movement; Breitbart contributor Michael Patrick Leahy, who organized the first call to coordinate efforts among various Tea Party leaders; and local Tea Party leaders like Mark Herr.
The Tea Party movement officially formed in 2009 in response to the reckless and profligate bailouts and stimulus and immediately organized to fight against the government takeover of health care. Though Obamacare ultimately passed, much of what the Tea Party movement predicted would happen if the monstrous bill were adopted is coming to fruition.
The Tea Party is often described as a “vibrant movement of liberty loving Americans determined to protect their freedoms from an ever growing federal government” that seeks to “educate Americans about the importance of having a constitutionally limited, fiscally responsible government that preserves an environment for free markets to thrive.”
While the IRS decided to target Tea Party groups as they were gaining strength, the Republican establishment initially dismissed the movement and thought it would dissipate even after the Tea Party dragged Republicans back to power in the House in the historic 2010 midterm elections.
That soon changed, though, as the Republican establishment–like Karl Rove’s Crossroads groups and former Rep. Steve LaTourette’s Main Street Partnership (a group that is funded by union money)–and groups frustrated by the Tea Party, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, became threatened by the movement’s success. Instead of embracing the movement like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the Republican establishment decided to devote millions to wage war against the Tea Party.
Despite being attacked by Republicans, the movement continues to thrive and frustrate the ambitions of the political class in Washington, D.C.’s “Boomtown” despite the GOP establishment. Last week, the White House conceded that President Barack Obama was damaged in 2013 because of his legislative failures, particularly on amnesty, gun control, and excessive government spending on the Farm Bill and food stamps. The Tea Party movement fiercely opposed all of those initiatives while many in the Republican establishment did not.
Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow reflected on the importance of the Tea Party movement, saying that the mainstream press can be defeated and Americans can put the country back on the right track if the Tea Party movement is energized to combat the institutional advantages Democrats currently have in the media, academia, and pop culture.
The movement, which also despised the big-government domestic policies of the Bush administration, congealed after CNBC’s Rick Santelli went on his rant on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on February 19, 2009 against a federal government that he said promotes bad behavior with bailouts for its cronies while leaving taxpayers holding the bag.
The event will be held at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM EST on February 27.
Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, said that Tea Party activists will not want to “miss this and I have no doubt that you will be inspired by the activists who are set to speak at the event.”
“What is so great about our movement is that we have the greatest activists in the country,” she told Breitbart News. “I just wish there was more time so that we could highlight all of them.”
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