To the extent that it is run by anyone, the Tea Party movement is--like all great social movements--largely run by women.
     Many of the movement’s most important political figures, like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann, are women. Many of its important writers, bloggers, and commentators--like S.E. Cupp, Dana Loesch, Kathleen McKinley, and Michelle Moore--are women. And you are more likely than not going to see a woman like Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, Amy Kremer of the Tea Party Express, or FreedomWorks’ Tabitha Hale out front leading rallies, organizing activists, and driving the point home that the American people are fed up with the government in Washington. [See who contributes to Bachmann.]
     In point of fact, the number of women holding visible, important, leading roles in the Tea Party movement are too numerous to list here or anywhere. But they are all part of an important social movement, one that filmmakers David Bossie and Stephen K. Bannon examine closely in their sure-to-be-controversial documentary Fire From the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman.
     Drawing a line from the pioneer women who settled the frontier straight to the modern era, Bossie and Bannon respectfully--one hesitates to use any of the warm words like “lovingly” here--show how they and their contemporaries are changing America, by working to restore that which has been lost and preserve what is still best about America, particularly its grounding in the idea of liberty.
Continue reading...The Tea Party Movement is a Women's Movement