ABSTRACT
At 11:18 pm EST on November 8, 2012, CNN projected that Barack Hussein Obama would win re-election. While not totally unexpected, this announcement infuriated many Republicans who had grown obsessed with defeating the forty-fourth president of the United States. There were many losers that night but the defeat was particularly bitter for adherents of the Tea Party Movement (TPM). They, more than anyone else, had become fixated on removing Barack Obama from the Oval Office. As noted by Skocpol and Williamson, “[N]owhere are Tea Party fears more potently symbolized than in the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. The policies and person of the forty-fourth President were the subject of immense suspicion at every Tea Party event or interview we attended. It is no coincidence that Tea Party activism began within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration” (2012: 77).
