Tea Party politics are boiling over across the nation, and even here in New York the movement has emerged as a wild-card player: Will its energy propel the Republicans in an electoral sweep, or has it actually complicated efforts to take back the Congressional majority?
Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Kate Zernike's "Boiling Mad" is the first definitive account of this "vastly misunderstood movement". Don't miss this chance to hear from Kate, a trailblazing journalist who has covered the Tea Party movement from its beginning.
We'll be joined by Politico's Ben Smith, who will moderate the discussion. We'll also have Pat Miles in the audience. Pat is a Democratic Congressional candidate from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who is running against a prominent Michigan Tea Party movement candidate.
See you on the 28th!
To learn more about the book, click:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129865403
Books will be available for purchase and signing on-site
Doors open at 7pm for book signing
Discussion begins at 7:30pm sharp
Free for DL21C members and book-buyers
$7/everyone else
About the book:
BOILING MAD: Inside Tea Party America is the first and only definitive account of who the Tea Partiers are, where they came from, what they stand for, and what they mean for the future of American politics.
More than anyone else writing about the movement, Zernike tells us the stories of the often unlikely activists behind the Tea Party so that we can fully understand their motivations. She introduces us to the first Tea Partier, a young teacher with a pierced nose who lives in Seattle with her fiancé, an Obama supporter. The new mother who stumbled on the Tea Party by accident and soon set about trying to take over her local Republican Party in a swing district outside of Philadelphia—prompting the party to take legal action against her. And the sixty-seven-year-old clerk at Macy’s who quits her job despite deep debt to more fully embrace her new mission as a Tea Party activist.
We watch as the Tea Partiers learn about the Constitution, which they embrace as the backbone of their political philosophy, with interpretations that would raise eyebrows among many legal scholars. We see how young conservatives, who model their organization on the Grateful Dead, rally a new set of activists twice their age. We go behind the scenes to understand how the Tea Party mobilized to win its first victory in the election of Scott Brown, a Republican, to replace a scion of the nation’s most storied Democratic dynasty as the new United States senator from Massachusetts. And we learn close-up how Rand Paul used the Tea Party energy to become the movement’s new tribune. We see how the near-religious fervor of the Tea Party activists made the battle over health-care reform so pitched. And we understand the complicated role of race in the debate over the Tea Party.
While the Tea Party sprang from anger over far-reaching government intervention that followed the economic crisis of 2008–2009, it is only the latest manifestation of a long history of conservative discontent in America, a distrust of government that is older than the nation itself. Within a year, it has changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration’s ability to get things done. Whether you agree with the Tea Party or not, a working knowledge of this movement is vital to understanding American politics in 2010 and beyond.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
KATE ZERNIKE is a national correspondent for The New York Times and was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. She has covered education, Congress, and four national elections for the Times and was previously a reporter for The Boston Globe. She lives with her family outside of New York City.