Tea party activist assails ‘gangster government’

WASHINGTON — 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 Washington’s Freedom Plaza in the shadow of the Ronald Reagan office building, capping a national protest tour launched in the dust of Nevada and finishing in the capital that inspires tea party discontent like no other place. Allied activists demonstrated from Maine to Washington state in hundreds of lively protests, all joined in disdain for government spending and — on the April 15 federal tax filing deadline — what they see as the Washington tax grab.

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

Although Republicans are ideological allies of many tea partiers — and GOP 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.

Thousands of activists flocked to rallies around Washington state Thursday as part of national tax-day protests united under the banner of the tea party movement.

One of the state’s largest rallies was held at the Capitol in Olympia, where people packed the steps to listen to speeches from talk-radio hosts, conservative think-tank organizers and citizen campaigners.

The State Patrol estimated the noontime crowd in Olympia at about 3,000.

Republican candidates and conservative ballot-measure promoters prowled the flag-waving crowd in search of support. Among them was anti-tax activist Tim Eyman, who collected signatures for Initiative 1053, which would make it more difficult for state legislators to raise taxes.

Organizers tried to harness the tea party’s anti-incumbent, anti-establishment mood by repeatedly asking participants to support conservative candidates and causes this November and through the 2012 presidential election cycle.