A look back to the early days of the Obama administration reveals a consistent disdain for the tea party movement from the start:
April 19, 2009: Asked about the nationwide April 15 tea parties on Face the Nation, White House senior advisor David Axelrod said: “I think any time you have severe economic conditions there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that's unhealthy.”
April 29, 2009: Speaking at a town hall meeting in St. Louis, Obama directly addressed tea party attendees: "Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security…But let's not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act."
August 4, 2009: Asked by reporters about the emerging tea party movement, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: “I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astro Turf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying”. Questioned further, Gibbs said: “This is manufactured anger.”
Sept. 13, 2009: During an interview on Face the Nation, when asked what his message was to those at the previous day’s "9/12" rallies, David Axelrod said: “My message to them is they’re wrong.”