The candidates’ messages, the voters’ anti-government, anti-spending fervor — the Tea Party is taking credit for it all.
“It’s been really, really significant,” TeaParty.net spokesman Kevin Jackson said about the anti-tax group’s influence on the GOP 2012 primary. “Once you take away the media hype and the malicious vitriol, what the people are saying is, ‘We no longer are deferring to government as the master of us,’ and that’s what the Tea Party is all about.”
Greater Boston Tea Party member Christen Varley said the general public won’t witness the conservative group’s political heft for a few more weeks, when she predicts that Tea Party members, many of whom have been highly critical of Mitt Romney, will fall in line behind whoever is the GOP nominee.
“We’ve got to pick our guy, so we can start going after Obama,” she said.
But Bay State Democratic powerbroker Phillip Johnston said the conservative group may have already had its best days. “They haven’t exactly evaporated, but they have declined in influence. Most voters identify as moderates, and they tend to be frightened by people they perceive as being extremists.