Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop praised the tea party movement, saying it has led to a “dramatic reawakening” and urged them to tag along with Governor Jennifer Granholm as she toured the state.

Bishop said Granholm will tour the state trying to raise support for her pledge to continue the fight to find funding for programs cut in the budget she signed Oct. 30.

Bishop spoke to about 45 people Wednesday at an event at the Berkley American Legion put on by the South Oakland Area Republicans. The Republican also spoke of his plans to run for Attorney General in 2010.

He said this month Granholm will go on a tour throughout the state to try to raise taxes.

“Find out where she goes, let’s have a tea party at every stop,” Bishop said.

A member of the audience asked if the Governor’s travel schedule was posted.

Bishop said he didn’t think it was yet.

“Rest assured, when it is posted, I’ll put it up on my Web site,” he said.

Bishop said the Republican Party was back and in a much quicker time than he anticipated. He pointed to Republican Mike Nofs’ big victory over Democrat Martin Griffin in the 19th district senate seat and the GOP winning the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia.

“One year ago, I was told the Republican Party could hold their convention in a phone booth,” he said. “It’s not that way anymore.”

There has been a dramatic reawakening in this country, he said.

“We are back. We are back for one reason. It’s common sense. For a long time, we lost our way. We lost our brand. We have rebranded ourselves.”

There is a “concerted effort” to silence the tea party movement, he said.

“Your voices are being heard,” Bishop said. “Don’t let them shout you down. Don’t let them shut you down. Take back your state.”

Bishop also criticized Governor Granholm as well as the federal stimulus package.

Bishop and Granholm battled throughout the budget process this year. Granholm even made an appeal to school administrators in late October at Rochester Community Schools, the district Bishop’s children attend.

Bishop warned Wednesday’s crowd that the Governor is “as liberal as they get.”

“She was Barack Obama before Barack Obama was Barack Obama,’ Bishop said.

And he portrayed Granholm as driven to find new taxes to replace budget cuts.

The crowd was told he was at an event where he and Granholm were both speakers.

Bishop said she pointed to him and said, “If you don’t raise taxes, people will die.”

“That’s true,” Bishop told the crowd. “She will go to those lengths.”

The federal stimulus package is “the biggest boondoggle in the history of government,” he said.

Bishop said there are so many strings attached to the stimulus dollars that 50 percent of the state budget couldn’t be touched.

“We can’t control our own state budget,” he said.

The Attorney General should file a lawsuit against the federal government for the way they went about handling the stimulus money, Bishop said.

He said 90 percent of the states in the next two years will have a “budget meltdown” because there won’t be “a dime of stimulus dollars left and the states are dependent upon it.”