No Sarah Palin, but DC Tea Party gets crowd by targeting "gangster government"

Tea party protesters marked tax day Thursday with exhortations against "gangster government" and appeals from Republicans seeking their grass-roots clout in November elections, a prospect both tempting and troubling to those in the loose movement.

Several thousand rallied in a plaza near the white House, capping a national protest tour launched in the dust of Nevada and finishing in the U.S. capital that inspires tea party discontent like no other place.

Allied activists demonstrated from Maine to Hawaii in smaller groups, all joined in disdain for government spending and — on the April 15 federal tax filing deadline — what they see as the Washington tax grab.

People in the movement believe that government spending and influence should be limited. The movement's name is taken from the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 protest in which activists in the then-British colonies in America boarded ships and threw their cargo of English tea into Boston Harbor in a symbolic act of protest against taxes.

The rally in Washington in brilliant sunshine was spirited but modest in size, lacking the star power of tea party favorite Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, who roused the masses at earlier stops of the Tea Party Express in its cross-country bus tour.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann won roars of affirmation as she accused President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats of trying to take over health care, energy, financial services and other broad swaths of the economy.

"We're on to this gangster government," she declared. "I say it's time for these little piggies to go home."

She appealed directly for tea partiers to swing behind "constitutional conservatives" in congressional campaigns, just as they contributed to Scott Brown's upset in the Massachusetts Senate race in an early test of their potency. "I am the No. 1 target for one more extremist group to defeat this November," she said. "We need to have your help for candidates like me. We need you to take out some of these bad guys."

Brown won the seat that had been held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, for decades.

Although Republicans are ideological allies of many tea partiers — and Republican operatives are involved in some of the organizations — they are also part of the establishment that many in the movement want to upend. No members of the Republican congressional leadership were featured at the capital rally.

Obama, speaking Thursday night at a Democratic fundraiser in Miami, Florida, told supporters he is amused by the protesters' complaints about taxes because, contrary to their claims, he has cut taxes. "You would think they'd be saying thank you," the president said.

In the Midwestern state of Wisconsin, a half dozen tea party groups from around the state said they would boycott Thursday's rally in Madison because former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson was among the speakers.

"We do feel it's important that people know this is not who we would ever align ourselves with," said Kirsten Lombard, organizer of the Madison-based tea party group. "That is potentially damaging to our reputation." Tim Dake, organizer of the Milwaukee-based GrandSons of Liberty, said: "Tommy is representative of the old boy network way of doing things."

A similar sentiment was seen on a sign carried by a tea party member in Washington: "Reelect No One."

Even so, anger at the capital rally was directly firmly at Obama and Democratic congressional leaders. The crowd chanted, "There's a communist in the White House" at the urging of the ukelele-playing Victoria Jackson, a former television actress.

The slogans on signs and T-shirts were biting, sometimes raw: "We Want Regime Change," ''Save a Seal, Club a Liberal," ''Down with the Gov't Takeover," ''End the Fed" and "Waterboard Bernanke." Some American flags waved upside down in the breeze.

The tax code was the villain of the day. "We have got to take the country back by taking back the money they take from us," Jim Tomasik of Fairfax Nation told the crowd.

Lost in the rhetoric was that taxes have gone down under Obama. Congress has cut individuals' federal taxes for this year by about $173 billion, leaving Americans with a lighter load despite nearly $29 billion in increases by states. Obama plans to increase taxes on the wealthy to help pay for his health care overhaul and other programs.