Tea Party Movement Will angry conservatives reshape the Republican Party? T he Tea Party movement seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, citizens angry over the multi- billion-dollar economic stimulus and the Obama ad- ministration’s health-care plan were leading rallies, confronting lawmakers and holding forth on radio and TV. Closely tied to the Republican Party — though also critical of the GOP — the movement proved essential to the surprise victory of Republi- can Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tea partiers say Brown’s election proves the movement runs strong outside of “red states.” But some political experts voice skepticism, arguing that the Tea Party’s fiscal hawkishness won’t appeal to most Democrats and many independents. Meanwhile, some dissension has appeared among tea partiers, with many preferring to sidestep social issues, such as immigration, and others emphasizing them. Still, the move- ment exerts strong appeal for citizens fearful of growing govern- ment debt and distrustful of the administration. I N S I D E THE I SSUES ....................243 BACKGROUND ................249 CHRONOLOGY ................251 CURRENT SITUATION ........256 AT I SSUE ........................257 OUTLOOK ......................259 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................262 THE NEXT STEP ..............263 T HIS R EPORT Tea kettle held high, a Tea Party activist dressed like a Revolutionary War soldier rallies tax protesters in Atlanta on April 15, 2009. It was among several protests held in cities around the nation. CQ R esearcher Published by CQ Press, a Division of SAGE www.cqresearcher.com CQ Researcher • March 19, 2010 • www.cqresearcher.com Volume 20, Number 11 • Pages 241-264 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS A WARD FOR EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL A WARD
Transcript
Tea Party MovementWill angry conservatives reshape the Republican Party?
The Tea Party movement seemed to come out of
nowhere. Suddenly, citizens angry over the multi-
billion-dollar economic stimulus and the Obama ad-
ministration’s health-care plan were leading rallies,
confronting lawmakers and holding forth on radio and TV. Closely
tied to the Republican Party — though also critical of the GOP —
the movement proved essential to the surprise victory of Republi-
can Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tea partiers say Brown’s
election proves the movement runs strong outside of “red states.”
But some political experts voice skepticism, arguing that the Tea
Party’s fiscal hawkishness won’t appeal to most Democrats and
many independents. Meanwhile, some dissension has appeared
among tea partiers, with many preferring to sidestep social issues,
such as immigration, and others emphasizing them. Still, the move-
ment exerts strong appeal for citizens fearful of growing govern-
ment debt and distrustful of the administration.
I
N
S
I
D
E
THE ISSUES ....................243
BACKGROUND ................249
CHRONOLOGY ................251
CURRENT SITUATION ........256
AT ISSUE........................257
OUTLOOK ......................259
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................262
THE NEXT STEP ..............263
THISREPORT
Tea kettle held high, a Tea Party activist dressed like aRevolutionary War soldier rallies tax protesters inAtlanta on April 15, 2009. It was among several
protests held in cities around the nation.
CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, a Division of SAGE
www.cqresearcher.com
CQ Researcher • March 19, 2010 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 20, Number 11 • Pages 241-264
RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR
EXCELLENCE � AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD
242 CQ Researcher
THE ISSUES
243 • Does the Tea Party rep-resent only a narrow seg-ment of the population?• Will the movement reshape the GOP?• Does the movement attract conspiracy theorists?
BACKGROUND
249 The Original PopulistsPresident Andrew Jacksonfeared financial elites’ power.
250 Right TurnPopulists’ handling of raceplaced them on the politi-cal right.
250 The ‘Silent Majority’President Nixon courtedthe “great silent majority.”
253 Enduring AppealPopulist themes remainedpopular following Nixon’sresignation.
CURRENT SITUATION
256 The Election TestTea Party candidates seek58 seats.
258 Political RealitiesMassachusetts Sen. ScottBrown is a Tea Party herobut also a pragmatist.
259 Third-Party OptionTea partiers aren’t likely tostart a new party.
OUTLOOK
259 Short Life?Some observers see ashort life for Tea Party.
SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS
244 Tea Partiers Running in25 StatesMost are Republicans runningfor House seats.
245 Most Tea Partiers Have ‘Unfavorable’ View ofObamaMany also think Obama hasraised taxes.
248 Tenets of the Tea PartyExcessive government spendingand taxation are motivations.
251 ChronologyKey events since 1892.
252 Tea Partiers Take Aim atHealth ReformMovement plans more townhall meetings.
254 Sarah Palin Shines at Tea Party ConventionSome see her as a potentialparty leader.
256 New Coffee Party DrawingSupportersEffort to confront tea partiersgathers strength.
257 At IssueDoes the Tea Party move-ment represent another Great Awakening?
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Tea Party Movement
THE ISSUESI t’s lock and load time, a
pumped up Dana Loeschtold several thousand at-
tendees at the ConservativePolitical Action Conference(CPAC) in Washington lastmonth. “We’re in the middleof a war. We’re fighting forthe hearts, minds and soulsof the American people.”
Forget politeness, the St.Louis-based radio host and TeaParty activist told the equallyenergized crowd. “It’s allabout amplifying your voice.”Conservatives, she said, shoulddeclare often and loudly, “ ‘Idon’t like Barack Obama.’ ”
And as for the president’ssupporters, said the 31-year-old homeschooling mother,“Make them uncomfortable.. . . Attack, attack, attack.Never defend.”
Many tea partiers may favora softer approach, but Loesch’stake-no-prisoners intensityreflects the dynamic and tri-umphant spirit emanatingfrom the country’s newest political trend,which arose in early 2009 in reactionto economic stimulus legislation, cor-porate bailouts and the Democrats’health insurance reform effort.
Indeed, as CPAC’s enthusiastic em-brace of Loesch and other tea partiersmakes clear, the Tea Party movementis on the cutting edge of a conserva-tive surge that aims to undercut, oreven defeat, the Obama administrationand what foes call its big-government,socialist agenda. Tea partiers are also try-ing to push the national Republican Partyto the right, with Tea Party-affiliatedcandidates this year running in GOPprimaries for at least 58 congressionaland state offices, including three gover-norships. (See map, p. 244.)
A major wing of the movement, TeaParty Patriots, has helped set up afundraising arm, Liberty Central, in theWashington suburb of Burke, Va. Itspresident and CEO is Virginia Thomas,wife of Supreme Court JusticeClarence Thomas. She appeared onthe same CPAC platform with Loeschand two other movement members.Obama’s “hope and change agendacertainly became a leftist agenda pret-ty fast,” she said. “We saw what theywere doing, and it was just a big ol’power grab.” 1
The movement proved itself a po-litical force to be reckoned with in thespecial Senate election in January ofRepublican Scott Brown for the Mass-achusetts Senate seat held by the late
liberal Democratic lion, Ed-ward M. Kennedy. 2
“The Tea Party movementhad a lot to do with that elec-tion,” says John Hawkins, pub-lisher of the online Right WingNews. “[Brown] had millionsand millions of dollars flood-ing in from the Internet, whichshowed people getting ener-gized and excited.” And someon the left acknowledge thatthe Tea Party campaign forBrown could have stirred sup-port among Republican andGOP-leaning independents.
“At a time of heavy reces-sion and joblessness, givingbanks a bailout rankles peo-ple across the spectrum,” saysJoseph Lowndes, a Universityof Oregon political scientist.“A lot of Brown supportersmight have been in that camp.”
But a vote for Browndoesn’t equate to Tea Partymembership, he adds, becausethe movement’s sharply de-fined conservative political per-spective doesn’t travel wellacross the left-right divide. “Alot of people who are inde-
pendents and disenchanted with Obamaaren’t going to be tea partiers,” he says.
The decentralized and loosely de-fined Tea Party movement takes itsname from the Boston Tea Party —the 1773 protest against British taxa-tion. Tea Party Patriots is a nationalgrassroots organization that claims tosupport more than 1,000 community-based Tea Party groups around thecountry. The Patriots-organized Tax Dayprotests last year drew 1.2 million peo-ple, says Tea Party activist Jenny BethMartin of Woodstock, Ga., a founderof the group. She and her husbandlost their home and filed for bank-ruptcy in August 2008 after their busi-ness failed. They owed $510,000 to theInternal Revenue Service (IRS). “We’ve
BY PETER KATEL
Getty Images/Robert Spencer
Republican Scott Brown celebrates in Boston on Jan. 19,2010, after winning a special election to fill the seat ofthe late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Tea Party activitytypically occurs in Republican territory — “red states”— in the South, West and Midwest. But Tea Party
activists also cite Brown’s upset election inMassachusetts, considered among the bluest of blue states, as indicative of their broad appeal.
244 CQ Researcher
been hit by the financial crisis and therecession,” Martin told Fox News, justlike other “everyday Americans.” 3
Martin was especially angered bythe federal bailouts of ailing banks andfinancial institutions by the outgoingBush administration just before the2008 presidential election and then ofthe auto companies in 2009 by the in-coming Obama administration. Afterher husband’s temp firm failed, “Westarted cleaning houses and repairingcomputers to make ends meet,” shetold Fox News, while big corporationsthat were struggling got billions in aidfrom the federal government. “Wewere saying, these businesses they werebailing out, there’s already a [bank-ruptcy] process in place,” she said.“We’ve gone through it. It sucks andit’s not fun, but its part of how thesystem works.”
Grassroots anger at political andbusiness elites has fueled politicalmovements on both the right and leftthroughout history. A prolific right-leaning blogger, University of Ten-nessee law professor Glenn HarlanReynolds, even views the Tea Partyas continuing another tradition — theGreat Awakening evangelical religiousmovements that have emerged peri-odically throughout American history.“It’s a symptom of dissatisfaction withpolitics as usual,” he says.
But Republican Indiana Gov. MitchDaniels is more cautious. “I wouldn’toverestimate the number of people in-volved,” he told The New York Times,also offering faint praise to tea partiers’“net positive” effects on the party. 4
Indeed, doctrines supported bysome Tea Party followers would givepause to many politicians. Featured
speakers at a Nashville Tea Partyconvention in February included, asidefrom former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin,Web news entrepreneur Joseph Farah,who said Obama may not qualify forthe presidency because of his possi-ble foreign birth. Another speaker,ex-Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo ofColorado — known for his anti-immigrant stance — urged voter liter-acy tests, a discriminatory practicerooted in the Jim Crow South. “Be-cause we don’t have a civics literacytest to vote,” Tancredo said, “peoplewho couldn’t even spell ‘vote’ — orsay it in English — put a committedsocialist ideologue in the White Housenamed Barack Hussein Obama.” 5
For some on the left, the Tancre-do and Farah appearances — alongwith xenophobic and racist signs andslogans that have popped up at otherTea Party events — represent the coreidentity of the movement. “Tea Partiershave unjustly and unfairly targeted theLatino community to further theirpolitical agenda,” say the organizers ofa new Facebook community calledCuéntame (“tell me about it”). 6
Others insist that anti-immigrant xeno-phobia represents only a fringe. “I wasconcerned that the anti-immigrant peo-ple would try to hijack the Tea Partymovement, and they have tried,” saidGrover Norquist, president of Ameri-cans for Tax Reform and a longtimeWashington-based conservative whofavors liberalized immigration policies.“Not succeeded to date.” 7
In any event, most Tea Party ac-tivists stayed away from the $549-per-person Nashville event, organized bythe group Tea Party Nation, a social-networking site focusing on social is-sues that some other Tea Party ac-tivists discourage; among Tea PartyNation’s “strategic partners” is Farah’sWorldNetDaily. “It wasn’t the kind ofgrassroots organization that we are,so we declined to participate,” saidMark Meckler, a cofounder of TeaParty Patriots (TPP). 8
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Candidates by Party
Republican 38 Democrat 1 Libertarian 5 Other third party 6 Independent 8
House
Senate
Governor
House and Senate
House and Governor
Tea Partiers Running in 25 States
At least 58 candidates — mostly Republican — in 25 states in the upcoming election say their beliefs align with those of the Tea Party movement. Most are running for House seats, but three candidates are in contention for governorships.
N.Y.
Ohio
Texas
Va.
Minn.
Iowa
Mo.Calif.
Nev.
Ore.
Colo.
Wash.
Idaho
Mont.
Utah
Ariz. N.M.
Wyo.
N.D.
S.D.
Alaska
Okla. Ark.
La.
Ill.
Miss.
Tenn.
Ga.
Conn.
Mass.R.I.
MaineVt.
W.Va. N.J.
Del.Md.
Ala.
Fla.
Wis.
Mich.
Ind.
N.C.
S.C.
N.H.
Kan. Ky.
Hawaii
D.C.
Sources: CQ Weekly, Politics1
Neb.Pa.
States with Tea Party-aligned Candidates inUpcoming Elections
March 19, 2010 245www.cqresearcher.com
The TPP network, which representsthe movement’s mainstream, steersaway from social issues and insteadhas forged a consensus largely on eco-nomic matters: Government spendingshould be cut, government should belimited and the free-market systemshould prevail. (See box, p. 248.) Specif-ically, members argue, the federal gov-ernment shouldn’t expand its role ina health-care system that they say al-ready provides adequate care to thepoor and the elderly.
“Even if this bill were to have meinsured tomorrow, it’s still not the rightthing to do for America,” says GeorgiaTPP activist Martin. Although she andher husband lost their health cover-age when his business failed, they op-pose pending health-care legislationon the grounds it would add to thefederal budget. “There are a lot ofpeople in this movement who are un-employed. They don’t want to burdenfuture generations.”
Martin shares a background in Re-publican politics with many other TeaParty activists — and a critical attitudetoward the party. “There’s no questionthe GOP has lost the mantle of fiscalresponsibility and small government,”writes John M. O’Hara, a former LaborDepartment staffer in the George W.Bush administration. But, he adds, “TheGOP is the most likely breeding groundfor the fiscally responsible constitu-tionalists the Tea Party movement —and America — craves.” 9
A rally O’Hara helped to organizelast year in Washington was part of aseries of protests that launched the move-ment. A cable TV moment provided themobilizing spark: On Feb. 19, 2009,CNBC business reporter Rick Santellilaunched a tirade against a plan bythe new Obama administration to helphomeowners facing foreclosure.
“How about this, President andnew administration?” Santelli yelledfrom the floor of the Chicago Boardof Trade. “Why don’t you put up aWeb site to have people vote on the
Tea Partiers Have ‘Unfavorable’ View of Obama
More than three-quarters of Tea Party supporters have unfavorable views of President Obama, compared with a third of all Americans. Forty-four percent of tea partiers think erroneously that the adminis-tration has raised taxes, compared with 24 percent of all Americans.
* Percentages may not add up to 100 due to roundingor respondents who didn’t answer
Source: CBS News/NY Times Poll, Feb. 11, 2010
Views of President Obama
010203040506070
80%
Undecided/haven’t heard
UnfavorableFavorable
Feelings toward government in Washington
Think the Obamaadministration has already:
Think the Obamaadministration favors . . . :
Does the Tea Party reflect most Americans?
(Among those who’veheard of Tea Party):
Tea Party identificationby region:
0
10
20
30
40
50
60%
AngryDissatisfiedEnthusiastic/satisfied
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35%
Treats allequal
The richThemiddleclass
The poor
0
10
20
30
40
50
60%
Kept taxesthe same
Loweredtaxes
Raisedtaxes
05
101520253035
40%
WestMidwestSouthNortheast
All Americans
Tea Partiers
39%
11%
34%
80%
25%
9%
24%
44%
12%
2%
53%46%
17%
45%
53%46%
29%
9%
23%
16%
32%37%
22%19%
24%29%
18%
33%
24%
10%
22%24% 25%
17%
33%Yes
42%No
21%
Don’t know
246 CQ Researcher
Internet as a referendum to see if wereally want to subsidize the losers’mortgages.” 10
Santelli went on: “We’re thinking ofhaving a Chicago Tea Party in July. Allyou capitalists that want to show upto Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start or-ganizing.” Within four days, Santelli’srant had been viewed 1.7 million timeson the CNBC Web site. 11
O’Hara and others used Twitter andother social-network links to find com-patriots and launched their rallies onFeb. 27. Protesters showed up in morethan a dozen cities — including At-lanta, Fort Worth, Nashville, NewYork, St. Louis, San Diego Omaha andTampa. 12 Later events included a Sept.12 march on Washington promoted byconservative Fox News commentatorGlenn Beck.
But fledgling activist Keli Carender— who blogs as “Liberty Belle” —beat them all to the punch. The 30-year-old Republican convert organizeda Feb. 16 rally in her hometown, lib-eral Seattle, against the Obama ad-ministration’s economic stimulus bill,which she dubbed “porkulus.” 13
Carender’s playful approach — shedistributed pulled pork at the event— seems distant from Loesch’s mili-tancy at the CPAC convention. So dis-tant, in fact, that the conservative Wash-ington Examiner issued a warning thatechoed the remarks of some in theRepublican establishment. “The ap-proach [Loesch] suggests . . . couldeasily be mistaken for a rallying cryfor angry yelling,” the paper said. “Shemust realize that when it comes tomaking change, it’s not about whoyells loudest but who actually makespeople want to listen. Claiming thatthe tea parties and conservative ac-tivists have declared war on the leftonly serves to marginalize the right.”
As the tea partiers gear up to chal-lenge politics as usual in the 2010 con-gressional elections later this year, hereare some of the questions being raisedabout the movement:
Does the Tea Party representonly a narrow segment of thepopulation?
Some Tea Party activists are quitecandid about what they see as themovement’s base. “They’ve been lis-tening to Rush Limbaugh for years,they’ve been railing against the main-stream media for years, they’ve beenvoting Republican for years,” J. P. Freire,a Washington Examiner editor and TeaParty activist, said at a Washington paneldiscussion in February organized bythe America’s Future Foundation,which trains young conservatives ineconomics. “I’m talking about mom-and-pop suburban dwellers.”
Indeed, some key Tea Party issuesdo coincide with key Republican po-sitions: The federal budget deficit isout of control; the administration’shealth-care proposal is unnecessaryand fiscally risky; the $787 billion stim-ulus represented a grave threat to thenation’s economic health.
Only three Republican senatorsvoted for the stimulus. And party lead-ers have been arguing ever since thatthe stimulus didn’t fulfill Obama’spromise to jumpstart the economy andcreate and save jobs. Celebrating Re-publican gubernatorial victories in NewJersey and Virginia last November, GOPChairman Michael Steele condemned“an incredibly arrogant government inWashington that has put our country,our freedoms and our economy at riskwith unprecedented spending.” 14
Tea partiers insist they don’t justblame Obama and the Democrats forexcessive spending. “There was a lossof enthusiasm for Republicans” trig-gered by deficit spending, says blog-ger and law professor Reynolds, whoco-founded Porkbusters, a political ini-tiative that attacked Republicans as wellas Democrats for allegedly wastefulspending. “It was one of the thingsthat cost them Congress, and cost themthe whole 2008 election.”
Tea Party activity typically occurs inRepublican territory —“red states” — in
the South and Midwest. Like the GOPitself, Tea Party event attendees are over-whelmingly white. But Tea Party ac-tivists also cite Brown’s upset electionin Massachusetts, considered among thebluest of blue states, as indicative oftheir broad appeal.
“A lot of Democrats voted for ScottBrown,” says Reynolds. “And he hadmassive Tea Party support. That is atleast an indicator we’re moving be-yond the red state-blue state thing.”
While labeling the Tea Party a red-state trend “isn’t entirely false,” he says,the number of “disaffected Democrats”is growing. “I actually think you’ll seethis spread to an insurgency in theDemocratic Party.” The theory is thatthe Tea Party appeals to a bipartisansense that Congress and the WhiteHouse are listening only to powerfullobbyists and not looking out for theinterests of the average American.
But non-tea partiers view the move-ment as fitting comfortably within theRepublican fold. “Given the pretty fer-vent conservatism that exists in thisgroup, it is unlikely that there are asignificant number of Democrats in it,”says John Sides, a political scientist atGeorge Washington University who stud-ies political polarization. “You may beable to find people who say they votedfor Obama, but I don’t think that isthe central tendency of the movement.”
In fact, he argues, the concentra-tion of conservatism in suburbs andsmaller cities will make it difficult forthe Tea Party to build strength in bigurban centers. But the movement couldplay a big role in areas that are upfor grabs. “You can imagine that ac-tivism by the Tea Party could have ameasurable impact on ‘blue dog’ [con-servative, usually Southern] Democratsin close races,” he says.
Indeed, a cofounder of the TPPpoints to the movement’s popularityoutside of red-state America. “Threeof the five coordinators in New YorkCity are Democrats,” says Georgia ac-tivist Martin. And she says she’s ready
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
March 19, 2010 247www.cqresearcher.com
for the emergence of a New Yorkpolitician of either party who sup-ports Tea Party principles but who istoo socially liberal to win an electionin her state.
Martin spent years as a RepublicanParty volunteer, heading Sen. SaxbeChambliss’ reelection campaign in hercounty. But she deplored his vote forthe TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Pro-gram) bill — the emergency “bankbailout” legislation enacted in October2008, signed into law by George W.Bush a month before Obama was elect-ed. She has renounced completely par-tisan activity and doesn’t exempt theGOP from criticism on big spending.But she acknowledges, “I think theRepublican Party is probably the onemost Tea Party people more closelyalign with.”
Georgetown University historianMichael Kazin says the movement’s es-pousal of strict market principles de-termines the Tea Party’s political make-up. “It’s hard to think of too manypeople who voted for Barack Obamawho really care about the budget deficit.”
Kazin, who specializes in populismand other social movements, draws adistinction between the Tea Party andother grassroots upsurges. “Social move-ments aren’t as connected to one ofthe main parties as this one seems tobe. I know that leaders of the Re-publican Party are trying to appearmore moderate, but clearly if you havetens or hundreds of thousands of peo-ple whose views you would like touse, you don’t push them out.”
Will the Tea Party movement re-shape the Republican Party?
It remains to be seen whether the TeaParty can foment national political change.But some political observers think themovement is well-placed to drive theGOP rightward, especially on economicpolicy issues. Others say it’s a fringe fac-tion that ultimately will lose steam.
One outcome is fairly certain: TheTea Party movement would be seri-
ously undercut if it evolved into a thirdpolitical party — historically the routetaken by new movements that wantto broaden the national debate. MostTea Party activists argue against sucha move. “If you create a third partyyou guarantee that it’s going to splitRepublican votes and guarantee so-cialist Democrat victories,” says RightWing News publisher Hawkins. Hepredicts that the Tea Party instead willeffectively take over the GOP.
To be sure, the prevailing view inliberal circles is that the RepublicanParty has already moved far to the right.Even some senior Republicans are de-livering much the same message.
“To those people who are pursuingpurity, you’ll become a club not aparty,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Grahamof South Carolina told Politico, aWashington-based online newspaper,last November. He spoke following thefailed attempt by Conservative Partycandidate Doug Hoffman to win a con-gressional seat in upstate New York,replacing the Republican incumbent,who was judged by the party estab-lishment as too liberal. (Democrat BillOwens won the seat.)
“Those people who are trying toembrace conservatism in a thoughtfulway that fits the region and the stateand the district are going to do well,”Graham said. “Conservatism is an asset.Blind ideology is not.” 15
Some Washington-based conserva-tives question the possibility that anymovement based on political principlescan exert deep and lasting influence onthe political process, where fulltime par-ticipants tend to act as much — or more— from self-interest as from ideology.
A movement that channels itself intoa party inevitably suffers the dilution ofits ideas, a conservative writer arguedduring the February panel discussionin Washington organized by the Amer-ica’s Future Foundation. “Politics is aprofession, and the temptation, oncewe’re in charge, is to say, ‘We’re goingto fix everything, we’re going to solve
everything,’ not realizing that people in-volved in these parties are human be-ings and susceptible to compromise,”said Kelly Jane Torrance, literary editorof the Washington-based AmericanConservative magazine.
The absence of a Tea Party insti-tutional presence makes its absorptionby professional politicians inevitable,she added. “People seem to need acharismatic leader or organizer or aninstitution, which is why I think themovement is basically being eaten upby the Republican Party,” she said.
But some Tea Party activists arguethat promoting their ideas within theGOP is essential if the movement is toavoid being marginalized. “There’s gotto be communication with the politicalparty establishment,” says Karin Hoff-man, a veteran Republican activist fromLighthouse Point, Fla. “The DemocraticParty has done everything to ridiculethe movement,” she says, while theGOP platform “matches what the grass-roots movement feels.”
Hoffman orchestrated a Washingtonmeeting this February between 50 TeaParty-affiliated activists and RepublicanChairman Steele. Hoffman says she’son guard against the danger of TeaParty activists becoming nothing morethan Republican auxiliaries.
“I’ve not been happy with howRepublicans have behaved,” she says,citing the reduced-price system forprescription drugs under Medicarethat President Bush pushed throughin 2003. “We don’t need an increasein government.”
Disillusionment with Bush is com-monplace among tea partiers, whotend to have been Bush voters in 2000and 2004. The shift in their support— or, alternatively, their view that heabandoned principles they thought heshared with them — underscores thepotential obstacles to reshaping na-tional parties. “Even with a relativelydiffuse organization, they can have in-fluence just because of visibility, andcan pull conventions and rallies,” says
248 CQ Researcher
Sides of George Washington Universi-ty. “But that’s not a recipe for trans-formational change.”
Sides cites the history of the Clubfor Growth, an organization of eco-nomic conservatives that rates law-makers on their votes on taxes, spend-ing and related issues. “No one wouldsay that the Club for Growth has beenable to remake the Republican Party,”Sides says, “but it has exerted influ-ence in certain races.”
Republican consultant and bloggerSoren Dayton disputes that view. “If youlook at the electoral and policy suc-cesses of the conservative movement— look at the Republican Party,” Dayton
said at the America’s Future Founda-tion event. “Abortion, guns and taxesare settled issues. If you’re an activiston these issues, the point is actuallychanging the minds of Democrats.”
The reason for that ideological vic-tory is easy to identify, Soren said.“We’re winning these [electoral] fightson the ground because the Republi-can Party is solid — because it’s beentaken over in certain significant waysby conservatives.”
Does the Tea Party attract con-spiracy theorists?
Advocates of ideas and policies fromfar outside the mainstream are the bane
of grassroots movements of any stripe.A classic case is the takeover in the1960s of the New Left by self-styledrevolutionaries, who cited CommunistVietnam and China as economic andpolitical models.
Conservative movements, for theirpart, have always faced the danger ofidentification with far-right defendersof segregation and, more recently, withthose who question President Obama’slegitimacy on the grounds of his sup-posed foreign birth — a notion thathas been laid to rest.
Tensions over ideas tinged withdiscredited notions about race andconspiracies surfaced publicly at thecontroversial Tea Party convention inNashville. Speechmakers includedTancredo, the former RepublicanHouse member from Colorado. Headvocated voter-literacy tests — anow-illegal procedure that was partof segregation law in the Deep Southdesigned to deny black citizens theright to vote. And WorldNetDaily’sFarah insisted that Obama’s birthplaceremains an unsettled issue. “The pres-ident refuses to produce documentsproving he meets the Constitution’snatural-born citizen requirement,”WorldNetDaily said in paraphrasinghis argument. 16
The publication reported that “thecrowd cheered wildly, whistled andapplauded” when Farah made his claim.But observers from both right and leftreported a different impression.
Jonathan Raban, writing in the left-leaning New York Review of Books, saidthe favorable response was not uni-versal: “I saw as many glum and un-responsive faces in the crowd as peo-ple standing up to cheer.” 17 Andconservative blogger, columnist andprofessor Reynolds says, “I did nothear a single person say a good thingabout Farah or the ‘birther’ issue.”
In fact, the dispute went public.After his speech, Farah engaged in aheated argument outside the conven-tion hall with Andrew Breitbart, pub-
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Tenets of the Tea Party
The Tea Party Patriots organization says its impetus comes from “excessive government spending and taxation,” according to the TPP’s Web site. Here are the group’s three core values:
Source: Tea Party Patriots, www.teapartypatriots.org
“Fiscal Responsibility — Fiscal Responsibility by govern-ment honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. . . . Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington, D.C., compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.
Constitutionally Limited Government: We, the members of the Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. . . . Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.
Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government’s inter-ference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free-market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.”
March 19, 2010 249www.cqresearcher.com
lisher of the conservative Breitbart.comnews and commentary sites. 18 Breit-bart called Farah’s focus on Obama’scitizenship “a fundamentally contro-versial issue that forces a unified groupof people to have to break into dif-ferent parts.” 19
The surfacing of the tensionsamong the tea partiers did lend sub-stance to press reports of fringe con-stituencies attaching themselves to themovement, whose primary concernspublicly center on economic policy.
Les Phillip, a Tea Party candidatefor the Republican nomination fora House seat in Alabama, blamesthe mainstream media for charac-terizing the Tea Party constituencyas “white, racist old men.” To besure, he says, “You do have somefolks on the far right.” But, he adds,“Most are in the center.”
Himself a black immigrant fromBarbados, Phillip calls Farah’s insis-tence on the Obama birth issue a di-version. But he voices sympathy forTancredo’s call for voter-literacy tests,despite their unsavory history. “I knowmore about the country than manypeople who were born here,” he says.“If you’re going to be a voter, youneed to understand the history andgoverning documents and how thegovernment should work.”
Nevertheless, Lowndes of the Uni-versity of Oregon argues that racialfears and xenophobia do play a rolein some Tea Party movements,whose agendas may vary widelyfrom place to place. “Certainly onedoes get the sense that the move-ment is made up mostly of olderfolks, 50 and older,” he says. “I thinkthese are people who are most like-ly to be uncomfortable with cultur-al differences and certainly withracial differences.”
Racial and cultural concerns mayoutweigh suspicion of the businessestablishment, which used to pre-dominate among many of today’s TeaParty supporters. They also de-
nounce excessive government intru-sion in citizens’ lives, though typi-cally with little reference to the Pa-triot Act, the Bush-era law thatexpanded government’s surveillanceand monitoring authority over e-mailand other communications. “If thesefolks are concerned about over-weening executive power, then whydid the movement not arise duringthe Bush years?” Lowndes asks.
Hawkins of Right Wing News coun-ters that the same kind of inconsis-tency shadows the liberal activistworld. Antiwar marches and protestsof all kinds marked the Bush presi-dency, he observes. Yet, with tens ofthousands of U.S. troops fightinghard in Afghanistan and still presentin Iraq, “Where’s the antiwar move-ment?” he asks.
Similarly, he argues, the presenceof fringe activists who attach them-selves to a broader cause is no lessa problem on the left than on theright. “There’s a very tiny percentageof people who generally are not wel-come at tea parties,” Hawkins says,adding that he distinguishes mem-bers or sympathizers of the militiamovement from those who questionObama’s presidential eligibility. “I guar-antee you that, percentage-wise, thereare as many Democrats who thinkBush stole the election in 2004 aspeople who think Barack Obama isnot a citizen. I would put those ascomplete equivalents.”
Sides, of George Washington Uni-versity argues, however, that the TeaPartys’ big tent may limit the move-ment’s effectiveness for reasons that gobeyond issues of political respectability.The presence of the “birthers” andsome militia members, along with peo-ple concerned about taxes and spend-ing, likely will add to what he sees asa fundamental weakness. “There is anextraordinarily diffuse organizationalstructure with a lot of internecine con-flict,” he says. “That makes coalescingextremely difficult.”
BACKGROUNDPeople’s Party
H istorians trace the origins of pop-ulism to the early years of the
new republic. President Andrew Jack-son, who served two terms (1829-1837),helped formulate the fear that a fi-nancial elite threatened popular con-trol of national institutions. 20
Jackson’s distrust of “money power”led him to veto a bill to extend thecharter of a privately owned nationalbank that served the federal govern-ment as well as private interests. “It isto be regretted that the rich and pow-erful too often bend the acts of gov-ernment to their selfish purposes,” hisveto message said. 21
Jackson’s admonition resounded forgenerations. But it wasn’t until the late19th century that a national politicalmovement was organized to wrest con-trol of the country from intertwinedpolitical and business classes. ThePeople’s Party of America, formed in1892 in St. Louis, united an array ofactivists that included small farmersfrom the South and Great Plains whowere overwhelmed by debt; theWoman’s Christian Temperance Union,which advocated alcohol prohibition;two early union organizations, theKnights of Labor and the AmericanFederation of Labor; and evangelicalChristians with socialist politics.
All saw themselves as oppressed bybig business and its political allies. Theprohibitionists viewed big business asprofiting from the vice of alcoholism.But the Populists — as they weredubbed — dodged the issue of racebecause they counted on Southernsupporters of segregation.
Still, the Populist alliance generatedenough enthusiasm to drive a presi-dential campaign in the 1892 election.The Populist candidate, former Union
250 CQ Researcher
Army officer James B. Weaver, garnered8.5 percent of the national vote, animpressive showing for a third-partycandidate.
Realizing that their party stood nochance of winning the presidency onits own, the Populists forged an elec-toral alliance in 1896 with the Demo-cratic Party (founded by Jackson). TheDemocrats’ nominee was William Jen-nings Bryan, who had worked closelywith the Populists as a House memberfrom Nebraska.
Known for his spellbinding oratory,Bryan wanted the U.S. currency basedon both gold and silver, not just gold.That would lower the value of debt-ridden farmers’ obligations by loweringthe value of the dollar.
“Having behind us the commercialinterests and the laboring interests andall the toiling masses,” Bryan said in hiselectrifying speech to the DemocraticConvention that nominated him, “weshall answer their demands for a goldstandard by saying to them, you shallnot press down upon the brow of laborthis crown of thorns. You shall not cru-cify mankind upon a cross of gold.” 22
However, the Democrat-Populist al-liance proved no match for the Re-publicans. Populists’ weaknesses includedtheir strong ties to the Farm Belt andsupport of strict Protestant moral codes— turn-offs to big-city voters, many ofthem Catholic immigrants.
Republican William McKinley wonthe election, which marked the highpoint of the People’s Party’s fortunes.By 1908 it had dissolved.
Right Turn
P opulist leaders spoke eloquentlyof corporate oppression, a classic
issue of the left. But their handling ofrace would seem to place them onthe political right. While Tom Watson,a Georgia Populist leader, made jointspeaking appearances with black pop-ulists (who had their own organiza-
tion), he defended Jim Crow laws, asdid party rank and file. (After the partyceased to exist, Watson incited andthen defended the lynching of Jewishfactory manager Leo Frank of Atlanta,wrongly accused of the rape and mur-der of a 13-year-old girl.) 23
In other respects, the Populists’ at-tacks on big business, as well as tiesto the early labor movement, markedthem as left-liberal. President FranklinD. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies of1933-1940 drew on the Populists’ doc-trines. They influenced his campaignsto impose regulatory controls — suchas creation of the Securities and Ex-change Commission — on the “economicroyalists” of Wall Street. And his admin-istration’s agricultural policies, whichsought to stabilize prices by subsidizingfarmers for not overproducing, also grewout of the Populists’ search for solutionsto farmers’ financial woes. 24
Nevertheless, Watson’s career hadshown that populism can whip uphatred as well as inspire ordinary cit-izens to demand that government servetheir interests, as was exemplifiedduring the Roosevelt era by the ca-reer of the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin,a figure of far greater influence thanWatson. The Catholic priest from RoyalOak, Mich., went from being a NewDeal supporter to a furious critic,whose weekly radio speeches becamewildly popular. He then took a sharpright turn into anti-Semitism in 1938,attempting to link Jews to commu-nism — a longtime target of his wrath— and financial manipulation. 25
Dislike of Jews was commonplacein pre-World War II America, but Cough-lin’s calls for action against Jews foundlittle support outside the ranks of hishardcore supporters. He raised enoughconcern in the Catholic hierarchy, how-ever, to lead the archbishop of Detroitto order Coughlin to end his radiobroadcasts in 1941. And in 1942, at theU.S. Justice Department’s request, thechurch ordered him to stop publishinghis weekly newspaper.
Although the infamous “radiopriest” never returned to the publicarena, he left his mark. In depictingcommunism as a menace to ordinaryAmericans, Coughlin anticipated theearly-1950s career of Sen. Joseph R.McCarthy, R-Wis., and his supporters.To be sure, some of McCarthy’s fol-lowers abhorred anti-Semitism; NationalReview founder William F. Buckley Jr.,a leading defender of McCarthy, wascredited with purging that prejudicefrom mainstream conservatism. 26 Eth-nic hatred aside, McCarthy owed anintellectual debt to Coughlin with hisportrayal of working people preyedupon by communist-inspired elites oroutright communist agents.
McCarthy himself saw his career godown in flames in 1954 after a con-flict with the U.S. Army in which thesenator accused the military of har-boring communists. But McCarthyismleft a foundation upon which laterconservative politicians built, writesGeorgetown historian Kazin.
By stirring up distrust of the high-ly educated graduates of eliteschools who predominated in thetop reaches of public life — espe-cially the foreign policy establish-ment — McCarthy and his alliescaused serious alarm among liberalacademics. McCarthyism “succeededin frightening many liberals into mis-trusting the very kinds of white Amer-icans — Catholic workers, militaryveterans, discontented families in themiddle of the social structure — whohad once been foot soldiers of caus-es such as industrial unionism, SocialSecurity and the GI Bill.” 27
The ‘Silent Majority’
T he tensions fanned by McCarthyburst into flame in the mid-1960s.
Some of the most active and visibleleaders of the civil rights movement— such as Stokely Carmichael of the
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Continued on p. 252
March 19, 2010 251www.cqresearcher.com
Chronology1830s-1900sMovements expressing citizenoutrage at government andbusiness elites begin.
1832President Andrew Jackson vetoesa bill to expand the nationalbank, calling it a tool of the “richand powerful.”
1892People’s Party of America (populists)formed in St. Louis by small farmers,evangelical Christians, labor unionsand alcohol prohibition advocates.
1896Populists unite with Democratic Partybehind presidential candidate WilliamJennings Bryan, who is defeated.
1908People’s Party dissolves, unable todevelop an urban base to matchits rural constituency.
•
1930s-1950sPopulist politicians begin direct-ing anger toward government,and sometimes ethnic minorities,and away from big business.
1938The Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, aCatholic priest with a large radiofollowing, switches from support ofPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt’sNew Deal to virulent opposition.
1954After leaping to prominence byaccusing the State Departmentand other agencies of harboringSoviet loyalists, Sen. Joseph R.McCarthy wrecks his career bycharging the U.S. Army is alsoprotecting communists.
1955Liberal academics alarmed by McCarthyism argue that far-righttendencies lurk within all populist-oriented movements.
•
1960s-1970sCivil rights and antiwar move-ments prompt middle-classwhites to become Republicans.
1966Activists in Oakland, Calif., formBlack Panther Party, embodying theworst fears of many middle-classwhites about surging left-wing radi-calism and “black power.”
1968Violence at Democratic NationalConvention in Chicago deepens di-vide between pro- and anti-VietnamWar Democrats and further alienatesmiddle-class whites from protestmovements. . . . Alabama Gov.George C. Wallace wins 13 percentof ballots for his third-party candida-cy, built on anti-Washington message.
1969Referring to Americans turned offby protesters, President Richard M.Nixon calls on “great silent majority”to support his plan to end the war.
1972Sen. George S. McGovern, D-S.D.,the Democratic presidential candi-date, wins only one state as in-cumbent Nixon successfully tiesDemocrats to privileged, unpatrioticelites who look down on “good,decent people.”
1979Former Gov. Ronald Reagan, R-Calif.,wins the presidency, largely by ap-pealing to the “silent majority” con-stituency identified by Nixon.
1990s-2000sPopulism returns as a third-partymovement, and then as a groupwith strong political party ties.
1992Texas billionaire H. Ross Perotlaunches himself as a third-partypresidential candidate, attacking deficitspending and outsourcing of jobsabroad. . . . Perot wins 19 percent ofthe vote, drawing votes from bothwinning candidate Bill Clinton andthe defeated George H. W. Bush.
2009Seattle woman outraged by Obamaadministration-proposed economicstimulus holds protest against“porkulus.” . . . CNBC reporter RickSantelli calls for a “tea party” whiledenouncing administration’s rescueplan for homeowners facing foreclo-sure. . . . Dozens of activists net-work to plan “tea party” demonstra-tions on Feb. 27. . . . Tea Partyactivists take part in town hallmeetings with lawmakers, denounc-ing administration’s health-care pro-posal. . . . Fox News commentatorGlenn Beck promotes a “9/12” rallyin Washington, which draws heavycrowd of Tea Party supporters.
2010Tea Party activists contribute tosurprise election victory of Repub-lican Sen. Scott Brown in Massa-chusetts. . . . “Tea Party Nation”convention in Nashville sparks dis-sension in movement due to highticket price and presence of anti-immigration and “birther” speakers.. . . Tea Party opponents beginorganizing Coffee Party alternative.
252 CQ Researcher
Student Non-Violent CoordinatingCommittee — adopted the “blackpower” slogan. The term was elastic— covering everything from affirma-tive action to armed self-defense —but many whites heard a threat.
Adding to the tension, the BlackPanther Party, formed in 1966 in Oak-land, Calif., paraded with firearms toillustrate its goal of “self-defense” againstpolice officers and soon embraced theCuban and North Korean versions ofcommunist doctrines. 28
The anti-Vietnam War movementalso was gathering strength on collegecampuses, where potential male footsoldiers benefited from draft defer-ments, unlike working-class high schoolgraduates who weren’t going on to
college. Antiwar activists also beganopenly advocating draft-dodging anddraft resistance, some even burningtheir draft cards in protest — stirringoutrage among many among theWorld War II-Korean War generations.
Political and social tensions explod-ed in 1968. First, the April 4 assassina-tion of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. led to rioting inblack communities across the country,notably in Washington, D.C., where theNational Guard was called out to quellthe violence. Also that spring, tensionsover the Vietnam War within the De-mocratic Party — and within the coun-try as a whole — came to a head dur-ing the Democratic Convention inChicago, marked by large antiwar demon-strations and violent police repression.
Although Vice President Hubert H.Humphrey won the nomination, his cam-paign against Republican Richard M.Nixon was hobbled by the escalationof the war under outgoing PresidentLyndon B. Johnson.
Nixon’s victory enabled him to in-dulge a deep grudge against the EastCoast-based Democratic political elite.In 1969, soon after taking office, heused a term that echoed old-schoolpopulist rhetoric, urging the “great silentmajority” to support his peace plan. 29
In effect, Nixon was effectively tellingordinary Americans repelled by the civildisorder and protests that they were thebackbone of the nation, despite all thenoise generated by the demonstrators.
But another high-profile politiciantapped even deeper into the vein of out-
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Continued from p. 250
J oblessness hovers near 10 percent. Yet in a countrywhere most Americans get health insurance throughtheir employers, opposing health insurance reforms proposed by congressional Democrats at the urging of
President Barack Obama has been a driving force in theTea Party movement.
“The Tea Party . . . did help destroy health reform,” KellyJane Torrance, literary editor of the American Conservative,claimed at a Washington panel discussion in February. “I thinkthat’s an amazing accomplishment.”
Torrance’s remarks at the America’s Future Foundation eventmay have been premature. Since the event, prospects for pas-sage of the legislation seem to have improved.
With a congressional recess starting on March 29, tea partiersare aiming for a replay of last summer’s fractious “town hall”meetings with legislators, when the movement’s opposition tohealth reform — especially its added cost to the deficit — firsterupted. “We’re gonna hit ‘em when we know they’re back in[the] district, and we’re gonna hit ‘em hard,” Tom Gaitens, aTampa Tea Party organizer, told Fox News.
Final passage of the legislation before the recess wouldshort-circuit that plan. But the prospects are uncertain.
In any event, plans to destroy the health-care plan, a long-time centerpiece of the Democratic agenda, might seem counter-intuitive, given that the Tea Party hopes to grow — in a coun-try with up to 45 million uninsured residents. 1
Among them is Tea Party organizer Jenny Beth Martin of
Woodstock, Ga. Martin’s family lost health coverage when herhusband’s business failed more than two years ago. Whenone of the Martins’ children gets sick, “We tell the doctor wedon’t have insurance, and make arrangements to pay cash,”Martin says.
The hardships brought on by the Great Recession hit even deep-er for Martin’s family. She and her husband lost their home, andfor a while the couple was cleaning houses to make ends meet.
Nevertheless, she opposes the Obama plan. “I think that wedo need health insurance reform,” she says. “I just don’t thinkthis bill is a good idea.”
Her political response, even in the face of personal hard-ship, illustrates a major facet of the movement, and of Amer-ican conservatism in general. “People don’t connect the eco-nomic crisis to the need for any kind of governmentintervention,” says Joseph Lowndes, a political scientist at GeorgeWashington University. “People come to this movement with apretty strong level of conservatism in place already. So thereis that irony: to some extent these movements are facilitatedby a poor economy, but their reaction . . . does not embracethe government’s effort to fix things.”
John Hawkins, publisher of the Right Wing News Web site,suggests another reason for conservative distrust of the health-reform plan. “I think people fear there is going to be a mas-sive decrease in the quality of care,” he said. “The idea thatyou’ll cover more people, but the quality won’t drop and itwon’t cost more — people don’t believe that.”
Tea Partiers Take Aim at Health ReformMovement plans a replay of last summer’s town hall meetings.
March 19, 2010 253www.cqresearcher.com
rage that ran through blue-collar Amer-ica. Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabamahad propelled himself into the nationalspotlight by dint of his fervent resistanceto the civil rights movement. As the pres-idential candidate of the American In-dependent Party, he tried to expand hissegregationist appeal (he later repudiat-ed Jim Crow) to cast himself as the voiceof the common American. He demon-strated his familiarity with his con-stituency by ticking off its members’ oc-cupations: “The bus driver, the truck driver,the beautician, the fireman, the police-man and the steelworker, the plumberand the communications worker and theoil worker and the little businessman.”They knew more about the nation’sproblems, he said, than snobbish politi-cians, academics and journalists. 30
As a third-party candidate, Wallacehad no chance of winning, but hegarnered nearly 10 million votes —13 percent of ballots — showing thathis appeal ran strong. 31 Many of thoseWallace votes would have gone to Nixonif the Alabama governor hadn’t launchedhis third-party bid, and Nixon con-cluded that he didn’t want to face thatchallenge again. 32
Enduring Appeal
I n 1972 Wallace had plans for an-other presidential run. But the out-
sider candidate apparently wasn’t abovemaking insider deals. In a book onNixon’s presidential campaigns, au-thor Rick Perlstein reports that Nixon
made moves to benefit Wallace in ex-change for the Alabaman droppinghis third-party strategy and running in-stead in the Democratic presidentialprimary. As a Democratic candidate,Wallace wouldn’t siphon off Republi-can votes in the general election, ashe had in 1968. 33
In the summer of 1971, Wallace metwith Nixon during a flight to Alabamafrom the president’s vacation home inKey Biscayne, Fla. Three months later,a federal grand jury investigating allegedtax fraud by Wallace’s brother dissolvedwithout issuing indictments. Shortly there-after, the Justice Department announced— “suddenly and improbably,” in Perl-stein’s words — that Alabama’s civil rightsenforcement plan was superior to otherstates’ plans.
And, Hawkins says, conservativesunderstand another deep-seated el-ement of American political culture.“People don’t, with good reason, trustthe competence of government.”
Martin opposes health reformers’plans to penalize businesses thatdon’t provide health insurance foremployees and to raise taxes to helpsubsidize mandatory coverage forthose who couldn’t afford it. Althoughthe legislation hasn’t been finalized,proposals so far would pay for theexpanded insurance coverage by rais-ing taxes on high-end health insur-ance plans or on wealthy Americans(those earning more than $250,000 ayear). Martin also does not like theproposal to delay implementation ofbenefits until 2014, after some high-er taxes take effect (though a prohi-bition would be immediate on in-surance companies refusing clientswith pre-existing conditions). 2
Martin does favor making coverage “portable,” not depen-dent on employment — which would be compatible with theObama plan, in principle. And she agrees that individuals who
can’t qualify for insurance could benefitfrom high-risk insurance pools, whichsome states have set up. Tea Party or-ganizer John M. O’Hara laid out theseand other proposals in a book on themovement. 3
The book doesn’t propose dismantlingMedicare, the massive health-care subsidyprogram for the elderly, and neither doesMartin. “It’s there now, and we need todeal with it as it is.”
And, she adds, “I don’t think there isanything wrong with government pro-viding safety nets. I understand that some-times things happen to people.”
— Peter Katel
1 Carl Bialik, “The Unhealthy Accounting of Unin-sured Americans,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24,2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124579852347944191.html#articleTabs%3Darticle. Some ques-tion that U.S. Census Bureau estimate, in part be-cause it includes illegal aliens who wouldn’t becovered under a new law.
2 Alec MacGillis and Amy Goldstein, “Obama offers a new proposal onhealth care,” The Washington Post, Feb. 23, 2010, p. A1.3 John M. O’Hara, A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution AgainstBailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes (2010), pp. 175-201.
A tea partier protests President Obama’shealth-care reform plans before hisarrival at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., on March 8, 2010.
AP Photo/M
ark Stehle
254 CQ Researcher
In January 1972 Wallace announcedhe would run for the Democratic pres-idential nomination. In Florida, the firstprimary, he won first place in a five-man race, with 42 percent of the vote.
In the end, Wallace (who was shotand paralyzed midway through thecampaign) won only two primariesoutside the Old Confederacy, in Michi-gan and Maryland. The Democraticnomination went to Sen. George S.McGovern of South Dakota, an anti-Vietnam War candidate.
Unfortunately for McGovern, he cameto symbolize a social gap betweenhard-working, ordinary Americans, andpampered liberals and radicals. In fact,
he had earned a Distinguished FlyingCross as a bomber pilot in World War IIand hardly fit the stereotype. 34
But McGovern’s supporters did in-clude the liberal wing of the Demo-cratic Party, Hollywood stars amongthem. So the “McGovern Democrats”neatly symbolized one side of the so-cial gap that right-wing populists hadidentified, and that Nixon had done hisbest to widen. “It is time that good, de-cent people stop letting themselves bebulldozed by anybody who presumesto be the self-righteous moral judge ofour society,” Nixon said in a radio ad-dress shortly before Election Day. 35
His strategy proved spectacularly
successful. McGovern won only onestate, Massachusetts, and Washington,D.C. But Nixon’s even more spec-tacular political downfall during theWatergate scandal prevented him fromtaking advantage of his victory. Hewas forced to resign in 1974.
Though President Ronald Reagan,another Republican, adopted Nixon’s“silent majority” paradigm, Reagan’soverall optimism effectively sanded offthe doctrine’s sharp edges. And Reagandidn’t have to contend with directingan unpopular war.
During the 1992 reelection campaignof Reagan’s successor (and former vicepresident), President George H. W. Bush,
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
T ea partiers pride themselves on their lack of formal lead-ership, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about whowill emerge to lead the movement. So far, the specula-
tion largely has zeroed in on Sarah Palin. And the former vice-presidential candidate’s insistence that she isn’t seeking a lead-ership role hasn’t squelched the topic.
In fact, Palin has actually fueled the speculation, possiblyinadvertently. After her surprise resignation last year as Alas-ka’s governor and the publication of Going Rogue, her best-selling book, she addressed the Tea Party’s February conven-tion in Nashville — the only speech she’s given this year atan overtly political event. Her political ideas, to the extent shehas spelled them out, seem consistent with the tea partiers’ callfor lower taxes and smaller government.
In the eyes of Tea Party activists who skipped Nashville — inpart because they objected to its $500-plus ticket price — Palinmade a mistake in going. That view was even more prevalentafter the influential online political newspaper Politico reportedshe had received $100,000 for the speech. “This has nothing todo with the grassroots movement — nothing,” said Robin Stublen,who helped organize a Tea Party group in Punta Gorda, Fla. 1
Palin didn’t deny that account, but she wrote in USA Today that“any compensation for my appearance will go right back to thecause.” 2 She didn’t specify the precise destination for the money.
Some tea partiers saluted her presence in Nashville and itseffects on the movement. “I think the Tea Party is gaining re-spect when we’re able to attract some of the quality repre-sentation . . . a caliber of person such as this,” said Bob Porto,an attendee from Little Rock. 3
Palin’s star power certainly generated media attention for theconvention, even though a relatively modest 600 people attended,and the convention was controversial within the movement. Herspeech, in fact, was carried live on C-SPAN, CNN and Fox News.
Palin made a point of waving off the idea that she wantsto take the helm. “I caution against allowing this movement tobe defined by any one leader or politician,” she said. “The TeaParty movement is not a top-down operation. It’s a ground-upcall to action that is forcing both parties to change the waythey’re doing business, and that’s beautiful.” 4
For all of her attention-getting capabilities, Palin comes withbaggage. A new book by Steve Schmidt, top strategist for theMcCain-Palin campaign, described her as dishonest. And anotherbook, by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reportedthat she was ignorant of even basic national and internationalmatters. “[S]he still didn’t really understand why there was a NorthKorea and a South Korea,” Heilemann said on CNN. 5
Even a friendlier figure, Stephen F. Hayward of the conser-vative American Enterprise Institute, warned Palin that she’snowhere near as ready for a national position as Ronald Rea-gan was. “Palin has as much as admitted that she needs to ac-quire more depth, especially on foreign policy,” he wrote inThe Washington Post. “One thing above all is required: Do yourhomework. Reagan did his.” 6
But in Nashville, the crowd loved her, wrote Jonathan Rabanin the liberal New York Review of Books. Many had been coolnot only to the anti-immigrant talk of Tom Tancredo, the formerColorado congressman and 2008 GOP presidential candidate, butalso the Obama-birthplace suspicions of Web news entrepreneur
Sarah Palin Shines at Tea Party ConventionSome see her as a potential party leader.
March 19, 2010 255www.cqresearcher.com
another populist figure emerged, Texasbillionaire H. Ross Perot. In his briefbut influential third-party campaignfor president, Perot declared, “Amer-ica today is a nation in crisis witha government in gridlock. We aredeeply in debt and spending beyondour means.” 36
A pro-choice, law-and-order con-servative, Perot paid little attentionto social issues. Instead, he empha-sized the need to cut governmentspending and strongly opposed theproposed North American Free TradeAgreement (NAFTA) with Mexico andCanada. Business’ “job is to createand protect jobs in America — not
Mexico,” he said shortly before for-mally announcing. 37
And he decried what he saw as thelavish perks of government service.“We have government turned upsidedown, where the people running it actand live at your expense like royalty,and many of you are working twojobs just to stay even.” 38
Perot’s intolerance for criticism anda strong authoritarian streak (he praisedSingapore, notorious for its rigid en-forcement of laws on personal behav-ior) limited his appeal. Still, he woundup with 19 percent of the vote, including29 percent of all votes by independents.“He showed the nation’s ruling elites,”
wrote The Washington Post’s John Mintz,“that millions of Americans are deeplydisturbed by what they believe is abreakdown in American society.” 39
Political professionals had assumedPerot would draw far more Republicanvotes away from Bush than Democraticones from Bill Clinton. But post-electionsurveys showed that Perot voters — oftencasting what amounted to protest votes— came from both Republican- andDemocratic-oriented voters.
“Those who said they voted forPerot,” The Washington Post reported,“split almost evenly between Bush andClinton when asked their secondchoice.” 40
Joseph Farah, Raban reported.But the crowd embraced Palin. “A
great wave of adoration met thesmall black-suited woman. . . . Theentire ballroom was willing Sarah totransport us to a state of deliriumwith whatever she chose to say.” 7
The speech was something of aletdown, Raban added, because Palin’sdelivery was better suited to the TVcameras than to the live audience.Still, she got a big sendoff. “The hugestanding ovation (‘Run, Sarah, Run!’)was more for the concept of Palin. . . than it was for the lacklusterspeech,” Raban wrote. 8
Palin hasn’t revealed whether she’llrun for president in 2012, but shepointedly avoids denying it. “I won’tclose the door that perhaps couldbe open for me in the future,” shetold Fox News. 9
However, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn HarlanReynolds, who covered the Nashville convention for the Web-basedPajamas TV, warned that Palin’s popularity could exact the sameprice that he argues President Obama has made his political al-lies pay for hero-worshipping him.
“The biggest risk that the Tea Party movement faces is thatit will create its own Obama in the person of Sarah Palin and
get a similar result,” he says. “She madea point of saying she didn’t want to betheir leader, and most people agreed.But the tendency of people to run aftera charismatic leader is probably geneti-cally hardwired.”
— Peter Katel
1 Quoted in Chris Good, “Is Palin’s Tea PartySpeech a Mistake?” The Atlantic, Feb. 4, 2010,www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/is-palins-tea-party-speech-a-mistake-tea-partiers-have-mixed-opinions/35360/.2 Ben Smith and Andy Barr, “Tea partiers shellout big bucks for Sarah Palin,” Politico, Jan. 12,2010, www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31409.html; Sarah Palin, “Why I’m Speaking at Tea PartyConvention,” USA Today, Feb. 3, 2010, http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/column-why-im-speaking-at-tea-party-convention-.html.3 Ibid.4 “Sarah Palin Speaks at Tea Party Convention,”CNN, Feb. 6, 2010, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/06/cnr.09.html.
5 Jonathan Martin, “Steve Schmidt: Sarah Palin has trouble with truth,” Politi-co, Jan. 11, 2010, www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31335.html.6 Steven F. Hayward, “Would Reagan Vote for Sarah Palin?” The WashingtonPost, March 7, 2010, p. B1.7 Jonathan Raban, “At the Tea Party,” New York Review of Books, March 25, 2010,www.nybooks.com/articles/23723.8 Ibid.9 Quoted in “Palin says 2012 presidential bid a possibility,” CNN, Feb. 8,2010, www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/07/palin.presidential.run.tea.party/index.html.
Sarah Palin answered questions fromattendees at the National Tea Party
Convention in Nashville on Feb. 6, 2010.Getty Images for NASC
AR/Jerry M
arkland
256 CQ Researcher
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
CURRENTSITUATIONThe Election Test
A cross the country, Tea Party-affili-ated candidates — or those who
claim the movement’s mantle — arerunning for a range of Republican nom-inations, in races that will test both themovement’s strength and its potentialto influence GOP politics. The raceswill also set the stage for the 2012 Re-publican presidential nomination.
So far, at least one potential Re-publican candidate seems to think theTea Party will have run its course bythen. Former Massachusetts Gov. MittRomney is criticizing populism amongboth Republicans and Democrats. “Pop-ulism sometimes takes the form ofbeing anti-immigrant . . . and that like-
wise is destructive to a nation whichhas built its economy through the in-novation and hard work and creativ-ity of people who have come herefrom foreign shores,” Romney told TheBoston Globe. 41
Some candidates seeking Tea Partyvotes do take an anti-immigrant line.In Arizona, former Rep. J.D. Hayworthis challenging veteran Sen. John McCain,the GOP candidate for president in2008. “In Arizona, you can’t ignore theRepublican animus against Sen. McCainon immigration,” Jason Rose, aspokesman for Hayworth, told Roll Call,a Washington political newspaper. 42
Meanwhile, another Tea Party-backed candidate, Mike Lee, is chal-lenging Republican Sen. Bob Bennett ofUtah, whose backers include the state’ssenior senator, Republican Orrin Hatch.And in Kentucky, Tea Party enthusiastRand Paul (son of libertarian Rep. RonPaul, R-Texas) is competing against aRepublican officeholder, Secretary of StateTrey Grayson, for the GOP nomination
to a Senate seat left open by a Re-publican retirement. Florida’s GOP Gov.Charlie Crist, whom tea partiers con-sider insufficiently conservative, is fight-ing hard for the Senate nomination againstMarco Rubio, a lobbyist and former statelegislator who has become a nationalstar among conservative Republicans.“America already has a Democrat Party,it doesn’t need two Democrat parties,”Rubio told CPAC in February. 43
And Sen. Jim DeMint, the SouthCarolina Republican who has be-come a Senate liaison for the TeaParty, made clear to the CPAC crowdwhere his sympathies lie, tacitly draw-ing a parallel between Crist and Sen.Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. whodefected from the GOP last year tosave his seat. “I would rather have30 Marco Rubios in the Senate than60 Arlen Specters.” 44
In the Deep South, where the TeaParty runs along the same conservativeRepublican tracks, two Tea Party-
Continued on p. 258
An alternative to the Tea Party is taking shape, as citi-zens who oppose its message and tactics are formingtheir own grassroots network — the Coffee Party.
The Tea Party’s nascent rival takes a deliberately toned-downapproach to political conflict. “We’ve got to send a message topeople in Washington that you have to learn how to work to-gether, you have to learn how to talk about these issues with-out acting like you’re in an ultimate fighting session,” founderAnnabel Park, who launched the movement from a Coffee PartyFacebook page, told The New York Times recently. 1
Tea partiers put themselves on the map with rallies, point-ed questions to politicians at town hall meetings and electioncampaign organizing. How the coffee partiers plan to projectthemselves into the national debate isn’t clear yet. But there’sno question that the effort grows out of the liberal, DemocraticParty-oriented part of the political spectrum — a counterpartto the veteran Republicans who launched the Tea Party. Park,a documentary filmmaker in the Washington suburb of SilverSpring, Md., had worked on the Obama campaign.
By mid-March, when enthusiasts nationwide held a coordi-nated series of get-togethers in — of course — coffee shops
across the country, the Coffee Party page had collected morethan 100,000 fans. “Coffee partiers seem to be more in favorof government involvement — as in envisioning a greater rolefor government in the future of health care — but denouncethe “corporatocracy” that holds sway in Washington,” The Chris-tian Science Monitor reported from a Coffee Party meeting inDecatur, Ga. 2
Whether the Coffee Party grows into a full-fledged move-ment, there’s no denying the initial appeal. The organizer of aDallas-area gathering in March had expected 15 people at most.She got 40. “This is snowballing,” Raini Lane said. “People are tiredof the anger, tired of the hate.” 3
— Peter Katel
1 Quoted in Kate Zernike, “Coffee Party, With a Taste for Civic Participa-tion, Is Added to the Menu,” The New York Times, March 2, 2010, p. A12.2 Patrik Jonsson, “‘Coffee party’ movement: Not far from the ‘tea party’ mes-sage?” The Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 2010, www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0313/Coffee-party-movement-Not-far-from-the-tea-party-message.3 Quoted in Cassie Clark, “Coffee Party energizes fans,” Dallas MorningNews, March 14, 2010, p. B2.
New Coffee Party Drawing Supporters“People are tired of the anger.”
no
March 19, 2010 257www.cqresearcher.com
At Issue:Does the Tea Party movement represent another GreatAwakening?yes
yesGLENN HARLAN REYNOLDSPROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OFTENNESSEE
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, MARCH 2010
i n the 18th and 19th centuries, America experienced twoGreat Awakenings, in which mainstream religious institu-tions — grown too stodgy, inbred and self-serving for
many — faced a sudden flowering of new, broad-based religiousfervor. Now we’re experiencing a third Great Awakening, but thistime it’s political, not religious, in nature.
Nonetheless, the problem is the same: The existing institu-tions no longer serve the needs of broad swaths of the pub-lic. The choice between the two parties is increasingly seen asa choice between two gangs of thieves and charlatans. WhileAmericans always joked about corruption and venality in poli-tics, now those jokes don’t seem as funny.
The Tea Party movement is one symptom of this phenome-non: Millions of Americans are aligning themselves with a bottom-up insurgency angered by bailouts, growing deficits and thetreatment of taxpayers as cash cows. Though often treated as ared-state phenomenon, the Tea Party movement is strong evenin deep-blue states like Massachusetts, where Scott Brown waselected to the Senate, or California, where one out of three vot-ers told a recent poll that they identified with the Tea Party.
But the Tea Party movement is a symptom of a muchbroader phenomenon, exemplified by earlier explosions ofsupport for Howard Dean via Meetup and Barack Obama andSarah Palin via Facebook. They were triggered by the growingsense that politics has become a cozy game for insiders, andthat the interests of most Americans are ignored.
Thus, Americans are becoming harder to ignore. Over thepast year they’ve expressed their dissatisfaction at Tea Partyrallies and town hall meetings, and at marches on Washingtonand state capitals. And they’re planning what to do next,using the Internet and talk radio.
Traditional politics is still wedded to 20th-century top-downmodels, where mailing lists, organizations and message controlare key. But in the 21st century, the real energy is at thegrassroots, where organization can take place on the fly.When Tea Party activists decided to support Brown, they senthim money through his Web site, and put together an online“Moneybomb” campaign to bypass the Republican Party,which got behind Brown’s seemingly quixotic campaign onlyafter the momentum was established by the grassroots.
Coupled with widespread dissatisfaction at things as they are,expect a lot more of this grassroots activism, in both parties,over the coming years.no
JOSEPH LOWNDESPROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, MARCH 2010
t he Tea Party movement is indeed revivalist, but it revivesnot the egalitarian impulses of the 1740s or 1830s that fedthe zeal of the Revolution and abolition. Rather it rehashes
a tradition of racial, antigovernment populism that stretches fromGeorge Wallace’s American Independent Party through ReaganDemocrats to Sarah Palin Republicans.
In this tradition’s origins mythology, a virtuous white citi-zenry became squeezed between liberal elites above andblack dependents below as a result of civil rights and John-son’s Great Society. Since then, these Americans have resentedtaxation and social welfare, linking it to those whom they be-lieve are recipients of special rights and government coddling.Thus, for the tea partiers and their immediate forebears thestate is what monopoly capital was for 19th-century populists:a parasitic entity controlling their lives through opaque andmalevolent machinations. It is worth noting that a significantpercentage of tea partiers appear to be in their 60s or older— placing them in the generation that expressed the mostnegative reaction to the advances of the civil rights movement.
Why are we seeing this wave of protest now? The TeaParty movement has emerged out of the confluence of twomomentous events: an enormous economic crisis and the elec-tion of a black president. The dislocations produced by theformer have stoked the latent racial nationalism ignited by thelatter. Obama represents both aspects of modern populist re-sentment — blackness and the state, and his perceived cozi-ness with Wall Street taps into outrage felt toward banks rightnow. Add to this Glenn Beck’s continual attacks on Obamaand progressivism more generally, and you get a demonologythat allows tea partiers to see tyranny wherever they look. (If“demonology” seems too strong a word here, look no furtherthan the grotesque Joker-ized image of Obama over the word“Socialism” that has been omnipresent at Tea Party rallies.)
Will this movement transform the landscape? Third-partymovements have impact when they can drive a wedge intothe two-party system, creating a crisis that reframes the majorpolitical questions of the day. But the stated principles of thevarious Tea Party groups show them to be entirely consistentwith the social conservative wing of the GOP. And there is agreat overlap in leadership ties and funding sources as well,making it likely that the movement will find itself reabsorbedby the party with little independent impact.
258 CQ Researcher
friendly candidates for Congress areopposing each other in north Alaba-ma. “A lot of Tea Party activists aresplit between Les Phillip and Mo Brooks,”says Christie Carden, who organized aTea Party group in Huntsville. So far,at least, she and her fellow membershave not endorsed either candidate.
Complicating matters, a third Re-publican is runningas well. IncumbentParker Griffith waswelcomed into theGOP fold after heswitched from De-mocrat to Republi-can last December.Party-establishmentbacking for Griffithmakes sense, giventhe GOP’s interest inproviding a defectorwith a favorable re-ception, says bloggerand Tennessee lawprofessor Reynolds.But, he adds, “Oneof the Tea Party com-plaints is that there istoo much realpolitik”— or compromising— in the GOP es-tablishment.
Elsewhere, evenwhere Tea Party can-didates might havetraction, Republican organizations won’tnecessarily welcome them with openarms. “The Republican Party in Penn-sylvania is pretty good at controllingits side of the ballot,” says DanHirschorn, editor and publisher of thePhiladelphia-based political news sitepa2010. “When . . . Tea Party candi-dates are in a race where there al-ready are establishment Republicans,the political landscape the Tea Partycandidates face is really formidable.”
Democrats view the tension betweenparty professionals and conservativeinsurgents as a potential advantage.
“You’ve got these very divisive pri-maries,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.,chairman of the House Democraticcampaign organization, told CQ Week-ly. “In many instances it’s driving theprimary way to the right.” 45
In some districts, Van Hollen sug-gested, primary victories by Tea Party-style Republicans could spell victoryfor centrist Democrats.
Political Realities
F resh from his victory in Massachu-setts, Sen. Brown is now a certified
hero to Republicans, especially the TeaParty movement, which worked its heartout for him. Brown’s victory was madeall the sweeter by its location in theheart of blue-state America. But his firstvote on Capitol Hill has conservativestalking about political realities.
Less than three weeks after he for-mally took office on Feb. 4, Brown joinedfour other Republicans in voting for a
$15-billion jobs bill pushed by the Obamaadministration and Democratic Senateleader Harry Reid of Nevada. “I cameto Washington to be an independentvoice, to put politics aside and to doeverything in my power to help createjobs for Massachusetts families,” Brownsaid after the vote. “This Senate jobs billis not perfect. I wish the tax cuts weredeeper and broader, but I voted for it
because it contains mea-sures that will help putpeople back to work.” 46
His words did noth-ing to stem the tide ofrage that poured onto hisFacebook page — 4,200comments in less than 24hours after his Feb. 22vote, the vast majority ofthem furious. As gleeful-ly documented by the lib-eral Huffington Post newssite, the comments in-cluded “LYING LOW LIFESCUM HYPOCRITE!” and“YOU FAILED AT THEFIRST CHANCE” and“You sir, are a sellout.”
But Michael Graham,a radio talk-show host andBoston Herald columnistin the Tea Party fold,mocked the outrage.“This is still Massachusetts,”Graham wrote. “Brownwill have to win a gen-
eral election to keep this seat. . . . Thisone, relatively insignificant vote sent apowerful message to casual, Democrat-leaning voters that Brown isn’t in theGOP bag. . . . It’s brilliant politics.” 47
Graham is a political veteran, unlikemany tea partiers. The movement, infact, prides itself on its many politicalneophytes. “These are not people,” TeaParty activist Freire, the Washington Ex-aminer editor, said at the Washingtonpanel discussion in February, “who areused to getting engaged in the process.”
Although the panel discussion pre-ceded Brown’s vote by about a week,
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Continued from p. 256
Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the influential HouseDemocratic Congressional Campaign Committee, helps guide HouseDemocrats’ fundraising and strategizing. He thinks the Tea Partyactivists may be driving the Republicans to the right and that primary victories by Tea Party-style Republicans could spell
victory for centrist Democrats in November.
Fox New
s Sunday via Getty Images/Freddie Lee
March 19, 2010 259www.cqresearcher.com
it delved into the tension betweenprinciples and pragmatism that sur-faced after Brown’s move. Other con-servative lawmakers also have disap-pointed conservative backers, Freirenoted. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Freiresaid, “is a pretty reliable guy when itcomes to his fiscal conservatism; hestill voted for the bailout.”
Third-Party Option
D emocrats are nourishing the fondif unlikely hope that the Tea
Party will turn into a full-fledged po-litical party. “[That] would have a neg-ative effect on Republicans, as wouldthreatening to do that and influencingRepublican candidates to move furtherto the right,” says Neil Oxman ofPhiladelphia, cofounder of The Cam-paign Group political consulting firm.
For that reason, the third-party ideahas not caught fire among tea partiers.“We don’t need another party,” saysCarden, the Huntsville organizer. “Wejust need to use the vehicles for po-litical change that are already there.”
History points to that course as themost promising. Socialists, conserva-tives, libertarians and other politicalmovements have long used third-partycampaigns to build national supportor at least publicize their ideas. Win-ning the White House isn’t the goal.
In state races, candidates outsidethe two major parties have won, thoughsuch cases at the moment can be count-ed on one hand. Sen. Bernard Sandersof Vermont, a socialist who ran as anindependent, is serving his first Sen-ate term after 16 years in the House.Another senator, lifelong ConnecticutDemocrat Joseph I. Lieberman, is tech-nically an independent, but he droppedthat affiliation after losing a primaryrace to an Iraq War opponent.
The outcome of a bitter politicalfight in upstate New York last Novemberwould seem to confirm the two-partystrategy as best for Republicans. In a
special election to fill a newly vacated“safe” GOP House seat, the choice ofa Republican legislator raised the hack-les of conservatives nationwide, whoviewed her as too liberal on abortionand gay rights. Instead, they backed aConservative Party candidate — whoeventually lost to Democrat Owens. Hisbackers included the onetime Repub-lican candidate Dede Scozzafava, whodenounced what she viewed as be-trayal by the GOP. 48
“This election represents a doubleblow for national Republicans and theirhopes of translating this summer’s TeaParty energy into victories at the bal-lot box,” Van Hollen, the DemocraticCongressional Campaign Committeechairman, said. 49
In New York state, ConservativeParty candidate Hoffman’s backers in-cluded Sarah Palin and former Rep.Dick Armey of Texas, a Tea Party boost-er and former House Republican leaderwho is president of FreedomWorks, aWashington-based activist-training or-ganization whose politics run alongTea Party lines.
The New York debacle was followedby Brown’s triumph in Massachusetts.That Brown ran as a Republican seemedto confirm the wisdom of channelingTea Party activism into GOP campaigns.
Republican strategy guru Karl Rove,the top campaign and White Houseadviser to former President George W.Bush, is warning Tea Party groups tostay in the Republican fold. “There’s adanger from them,” he told USA Todayrecently, “particularly if they’re used bypolitical operators . . . to try and hi-jack” elections. 50
Rove could have had Nevada inmind. There, a candidate from the “TeaParty of Nevada” has filed to opposeSenate Majority Leader Reid in theGOP primary.
Leaders of Nevada’s Tea Partymovement told the conservative Wash-ington Times that they don’t recognizethe names on the Tea Party of Neva-da filing documents. They claimed the
third party was created on Reid’s be-half to siphon Republican votes. Butthe candidate said by mail, “I am notfor Harry Reid. . . .
My candidacy is real.” The Reid cam-paign didn’t return a call to the Times’reporter. 51 Whatever the sincerity of theNevada Tea Party, grassroots conserva-tives elsewhere who are disenchantedwith the GOP argue that the best courseis to fight within the party. “Use the Re-publican Party to your advantage,” Chica-go tea partier Eric Odom wrote on hisblog. “Move in and take it over.” 52
OUTLOOKShort Life?
I n the hyperspeed political environ-ment, evaluating the 10-year prospects
for a newly emerged movement is aniffy proposition. Still, a consensus is emerg-ing that the Tea Party’s ideas will lastlonger than the movement itself.
“These ideas are endemic in Amer-ican political culture,” says Sides ofGeorge Washington University. “Whetherwe will be able to attach them to amovement or an organization we callthe Tea Party is an open question.”
Georgia Tea Party activist Martin ac-knowledges the movement may dissolveover the next decade. “If there isn’t amovement 10 years from now, I hopeit’s faded away because people under-stand what the country’s core values areand don’t need to be reminded.”
Whatever the state of national con-sciousness in the near future, the lifecycle of social movements in their mostinfluential phase arguably has neverbeen very long, even before the paceof modern life quickened to its presentpace. “In their dynamic, growing, in-spirational, ‘we-can-change-the-world’stage, they last five to seven years,” saysKazin of Georgetown University.
260 CQ Researcher
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
The labor union movement’s highpoint ran from 1933 to 1938, Kazin says.And the civil rights movement in itsnationwide, unified phase ran from just1960 to 1965. “And those were move-ments that were more independent ofa political party structure,” he adds.
As a movement closely linked tothe Republican Party, the Tea Party’sfuture will depend greatly on the courseof the 2010 elections, Kazin argues.And which GOP candidates are nom-inated for president in 2012 will offeran even clearer gauge of the move-ment’s influence.
Hawkins of Right Wing News thinkshe knows where the Tea Party willbe in 10 years. “I tend to doubt it willexist,” he says. “It will have been ab-sorbed into the Republican Party.”
But the University of Oregon’s Lown-des argues that beyond the country’sRepublican strongholds, the Tea Partywon’t acquire enough influence to re-configure the entire party. “It willshape politics in certain places, andshape the Republican Party, but it won’ttake it over.”
For now, however, Lowndes cred-its the Tea Party with effectivelypulling together strands of discontent.“With enormous power concentratedin the executive branch and in cor-porations, there is a sense of power-lessness at work that can be pickedup and interpreted different ways bydifferent folks,” he says. “These peo-ple have found a language for it thatthe left has not.”
Jonah Goldberg, high-profile editor ofNational Review Online, urged conserv-atives during the America’s Future Foun-dation panel discussion in February tocome to terms with the nature of thepolitical system. “The American peoplearen’t as conservative as we would likethem to be, and they never will be,” hesaid, despite what seem to be favorableconditions for the right that largely growout of the Tea Party’s success.
“Things are so much better thanthey seemed to be a little while ago,”he continued. “Will Republicans blowit? They have a great history of that.One of the things that movements dois try to keep politicians honest. That’sgoing to be hard work because politi-cians are politicians.”
Reynolds of the University of Ten-nessee Law School acknowledges thatthe Tea Party’s promise may go un-fulfilled. Conservative hopes ran highafter the 1994 Republican takeover ofCongress midway through the first Clin-ton administration, he notes. “But thatdidn’t have long-lasting legs.”
On the other hand, Reynolds says,the Reagan legacy has been long-lasting. “And this is probably bigger,”he says of the Tea Party.
But there are no guarantees, he cau-tions. “A lot of people are involved inpolitics who never were before. In 10years, some will have gone back totheir lives. Of the people who stay in,the odds are that many will becomepoliticians as usual. The question ishow much this will happen.”
Notes1 Kathleen Hennessey, “Justice’s wife launches‘tea party’ group,” Los Angeles Times, March 14,2010, www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-thomas142010mar14,0,3190750,full.story.2 Mark Leibovich, “Discipline Helped CarvePath to Senate,” The New York Times, Jan. 21,2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/us/politics/21brown.html.3 Zachary Ross, “Top Tea Partier, Husband,Owed IRS Half a Million Dollars,” TalkingPoints Memo, Oct. 8, 2009, http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/top_tea_partier_husband_owed_irs_half_a_million_do.php.4 Jeff Zeleny, “Daniels Offers Advice to Repub-licans,” The New York Times, The Caucus (blog),March 9, 2010, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/daniels-offers-advice-to-republicans/.5 “Tom Tancredo’s Feb. 4 Tea party speechin Nashville,” Free Republic, Feb. 5, 2010, http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2445943/posts.6 Cuéntame, www.facebook.com/cuentame?v=app_11007063052.7 John Maggs, “Norquist on Tea and Taxes,”National Journal, Feb. 4, 2010, http://insiderinterviews.nationaljournal.com/2010/02/-nj-were-you-surprised.php.8 Ibid. Also see Tea Party Nation, teapartynation.com; and Kate Zernike, “Seeking a Big Tent,Tea Party Avoids Divisive Social Issues,” TheNew York Times, March 13, 2010, p. A1.9 John M. O’Hara, A New American Tea Party:The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Hand-outs, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes (2010),pp. 256-257.10 “Rick Santelli Rant Transcript,” www.reteaparty.com/2009/02/19/rick-santelli-rant-transcript/.11 Ibid.; Brian Stelter, “CNBC Replays Its Re-porter’s Tirade,” The New York Times, Feb.23,2009, p. B7.12 Mary Lou Pickel, “Tea Party at the Capitol,”Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 28, 2009;Aman Batheja, “Several hundred protest Obamastimulus program in Fort Worth,” Fort WorthStar-Telegram, Feb. 28, 2009; “Tea PartyTime,” New York Post, Feb. 28, 2009, p. 16;Tim O’Neil, “Riverfront tea party protest blastsObama’s stimulus plan,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch,Feb. 28, 2009, p. A7; Christian M. Wade, “TaxProtesters Converge on Federal Courthouse,”Tampa Tribune, Feb. 28, 2009, p. A4; “Protest-ers bemoan stimulus funds at Tenn. Capitol,”The Associated Press, Feb. 28, 2009.13 Kate Zernike, “Unlikely Activist Who Gotto the Tea Party Early,” The New York Times,
About the AuthorPeter Katel is a CQ Researcher staff writer who previ-ously reported on Haiti and Latin America for Time andNewsweek and covered the Southwest for newspapers inNew Mexico. He has received several journalism awards,including the Bartolomé Mitre Award for coverage of drugtrafficking, from the Inter-American Press Association. Heholds an A.B. in university studies from the University ofNew Mexico. His recent reports include “Press Freedom,”“Hate Groups” and “Legalizing Marijuana.”
March 19, 2010 261www.cqresearcher.com
Feb. 27, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28keli.html.14 Quoted in David M. Halbfinger and IanUrbina, “Republicans Bask in Glow of Vic-tories in N.J. and Va.,” The New York Times,Nov. 5, 2009; Janet Hook, “Stimulus bill battleis only the beginning,” Los Angeles Times,Feb. 15, 2009, p. A1.15 Quoted in Manu Raju, “Lindsey Grahamwarns GOP against going too far right,” Politi-co, Nov. 4, 2009, www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29131.html.16 Chelsea Schilling, “ ‘Government wants tobe your one and only god,’ ” WorldNetDaily,Feb. 6, 2010, www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=124326.17 Jonathan Raban, “At the Tea Party,” NewYork Review of Books, March 25, 2010, www.nybooks.com/articles/23723.18 For background, see Peter Katel, “Press Free-dom,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 5, 2010, pp. 97-120.19 Quoted in David Weigel, “Birther SpeakerTakes Heat at Tea Party Convention,” Wash-ington Independent, Feb. 6, 2010 (includesaudio clip of argument), http://washingtonindependent.com/75949/birther-speaker-takes-heat-at-tea-party-convention.20 Except where otherwise indicated, this sub-section is drawn from Michael Kazin, The Pop-ulist Persuasion: An American History (1998).21 Quoted in Daniel Feller, “King Andrew andthe Bank,” Humanities, National Endowmentfor the Humanities, January-February, 2008, www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2008-01/KingAndrewandtheBank.html.22 “Bryan’s ‘Cross of Gold’ Speech: Mesmer-izing the Masses,” History Matters, undated,http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5354/.23 Steve Oney, “The Leo Frank case isn’tdead,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 30, 2009,http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/30/opinion/oe-oney30. Except where otherwise indicated,this subsection is drawn from Kazin, op. cit.24 William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Rooseveltand the New Deal (1963), pp. 33, 255, 335-336.25 For background, see Peter Katel, “Hate Groups,”CQ Researcher, May 8, 2009, pp. 421-448.26 Douglas Martin, “William F. Buckley Jr., 82,Dies,” The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2008, p. A1.27 Kazin, op. cit., p. 193. For background onthe G.I. Bill, see “Record of 78th Congress(Second Session),” Editorial Research Reports,Dec. 20, 1944, available at CQ Researcher PlusArchive; K. Lee, “War Veterans in Civil Life,”Editorial Research Reports, Vol. II, 1946; andWilliam Triplett, “Treatment of Veterans,” CQResearcher, Nov. 19, 2004, pp. 973-996.
28 Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope,Days of Rage (1993), pp. 348-351.29 Quoted in Kazin, op. cit., p. 252.30 Ibid., pp. 234-235.31 Richard Pearson, “Former Ala. Gov. GeorgeC. Wallace Dies,” The Washington Post, Sept. 14,1998, p. A1, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/sept98/wallace.htm.32 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of aPresident and the Fracturing of America (2008),pp. 631-632.33 Except where otherwise indicated, this sub-section draws from ibid.34 “George McGovern Interview,” The NationalWorld War II Museum, undated, www.nationalww2museum.org/wwii-community/mcgovern.html.35 Quoted in Perlstein, op. cit., pp. 732-733.36 H. Ross Perot, “What Americans Must De-mand,” The Washington Post, March 29, 1992,p. C2.37 Quoted in John Dillin, “Possible PresidentialBid by Perot Is Seen Posing a Threat to Bush,”The Christian Science Monitor, March 24, 1992,p. 1.38 Quoted in ibid.39 John Mintz, “Perot Embodied Dismay ofMillions,” The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 1992,p. A26; Jeffrey Schmalz, “Clinton Carves aWide Path Deep Into Clinton Country,” TheNew York Times, Nov. 4, 1992, p. B1.40 Thomas B. Edsall and E. J. Dionne, “White,Younger, Lower-Income Voters Turn Against G.O.P.,”The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 1992, p. A21.41 Quoted in Sasha Issenberg, “In book, Rom-ney styles himself wonk, not warrior,” BostonGlobe, March, 2, 2010, www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/03/02/mitt_
romneys_no_apology_is_not_light_reading?mode=PF.42 Emily Cadei, “Sands of GOP Discord inArizona,” Roll Call, Jan. 28, 2010.43 Quoted in Liz Sidoti, “Excited GOP: Energyon the right, divisions within,” The AssociatedPress, Feb. 19, 2010. Adam Nagourney and CarlHulse, “Re-energized, G.O.P. Widens MidtermEffort,” The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2010, p. A1;Thomas Burr, “GOP’s Armey backs Lee, scoldsBennett,” Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 18, 2010.44 Quoted in ibid.45 Quoted in Joseph J. Schatz, “Reading theLeaves,” CQ Weekly, March 1, 2010, pp. 480-489.46 Quoted in James Oliphant, “Scott Brown’s‘tea party’ fans feel burned by jobs vote,” LosAngeles Times, Feb. 23, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/23/nation/la-na-scott-brown24-2010feb24.47 Michael Graham, “Still right cup of tea,”Boston Herald, Feb. 25, 2010, www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1235356.48 Jeremy W. Peters, “Conservative Loses Up-state House Race in Blow to Right,” The NewYork Times, Nov. 3, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/nyregion/04district.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=HoffmanScozzafava&st=cse.49 Quoted in ibid.50 Judy Keen, “Rove: ‘Tea Party’ may be riskto GOP,” USA Today, March 10, 2010, p. A1.51 Quoted in Valerie Richardson, “New partybrings its own ‘tea’ to election,” The Wash-ington Times, Feb. 22, 2010, p. A1.52 Quoted in Kate Zernike, “In Power Push,Movement Sees Base in G.O.P.,” The New YorkTimes, Jan. 15, 2010, p. A1.
FOR MORE INFORMATIONCoffee Party, www.coffeepartyusa.com. A new network of Tea Party opponents.
FreedomWorks, 601 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., North Building, Washington, DC 20004;(202) 783-3870; www.freedomworks.org. Created by former House Republican LeaderDick Armey, the conservative organization trains local activists.
Politics1, 409 N.E. 17th Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301; www.politics1.com/index.htm.Comprehensive political site offering a guide to races involving Tea Party candidates.
Right Wing News, rightwingnews.com. Independent Web site covers Tea Partymovement, often critically.
Talkingpointsmemo, www.talkingpointsmemo.com. Democratic-oriented newssite provides critical but fact-based coverage of Tea Party.
Tea Party Patriots, www.teapartypatriots.org. An extensive network of Tea Partygroups around the country offering movement news and views from its Web site.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
262 CQ Researcher
Selected Sources
Bibliography
Books
Continetti, Matthew, The Persecution of Sarah Palin:How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star,Sentinel, 2009.An editor of the conservative Weekly Standard chronicles the
rise of Tea Party-friendly Palin from a sympathetic perspective.
Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion: An AmericanHistory, Cornell University Press, 1998.A Georgetown University historian traces the forms that an
enduring American distrust of elites has taken.
O’Hara, John M., A New American Tea Party: The Counter-revolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spend-ing, and More Taxes, John Wiley & Sons, 2010.A manifesto in book form by one of the first Tea Party
activists tells of the movement’s formation and ideas.
Perlstein, Rick, Nixonland: The Rise of a President andthe Fracturing of America, Scribner, 2008.A non-academic historian adds to the Tea Party story with
this account of Nixon and his appeal to the “silent majority.”
Articles
Barstow, David, “Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion onRight,”The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html.A lengthy, detailed report traces the formation of a Tea Party
undercurrent of conspiracists and militia members.
Continetti, Matthew, “Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, Cont.,”Weekly Standard, Feb. 8, 2010, www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/sarah-palin-and-tea-party-cont.The author of a sympathetic book on Palin argues she made
a powerful case for herself as a 2012 presidential candidate.
Good, Chris, “Some Tea Partiers Question Meeting WithSteele,” The Atlantic, Politics site, Feb. 16, 2010, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/some-tea-partiers-question-meeting-with-steele/36027/.Some Florida tea partiers questioned the movement creden-
tials of a political activist who organized a meeting with MichaelSteele, the controversial Republican national chairman.
Hennessey, Kathleen, “Justice’s wife launches ‘tea party’group,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2010, www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-thomas14-2010mar14,0,3190750,full.story.This is the first report of the Tea Party activism of Virginia
Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Markon, Jerry, “ ‘Wired’ conservatives get the message out,”The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2010, p. A1.Tea Party organizers made extensive use of social net-
working tools and Republican connections in getting themovement up and running, a political correspondent reports.
Naymik, Mark, “GOP stumbles with Tea Party as move-ment gains foothold,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 21,2010, p. A1.A leading newspaper in a key political state reports on am-
bivalent relations between tea partiers and the Republican Party.
Parker, Kathleen, “The GOP’s misguided hunt for heretics,”The Washington Post, Feb. 24, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022303783.html.A conservative columnist warns of a tendency to zealotry
and intolerance among tea partiers.
Rucker, Philip, “GOP woos wary ‘tea party’ activists,”The Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2010, p. A4.Republican officials are courting Tea Party members, Wash-
ington’s leading newspaper reports.
Sidoti, Liz, “Primary time: Let the political family feudsbegin,” The Associated Press, Jan. 30, 2010.The Tea Party movement’s political strength will be tested in
some key primary elections, a political correspondent reports.
Tanenhaus, Sam, “The Crescendo of the Rally Cry,” TheNew York Times, Jan. 24, 2010, Week in Review, p. 1.A Times editor who writes on the history of conservatism ex-
amines the Tea Party movement in light of past populist surges.
Wilkinson, Howard, “Tea Partiers aim to remake localGOP,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 30, 2010.Tea partiers in southwest Ohio are making a concerted effort
to take over Republican precinct organizations.
Zernike, Kate, “Seeking a Big Tent, Tea Party Avoids Di-visive Social Issues,”The New York Times, March 13, 2010,p. A1.Some Tea Party activists deliberately bypass controversial so-
cial issues, a correspondent specializing in the Tea Party reports.
Reports
“AEI Political Report,”American Enterprise Institute forPublic Policy Research, February 2010, www.aei.org/docLib/Political-Report-Feb-2010.pdf.A compilation of survey results from a variety of sources
includes data on public knowledge of the Tea Party.
March 19, 2010 263www.cqresearcher.com
Elections
Fritze, John, “McCain Re-election Bid Faces Hurdle,”USA Today, Feb. 15, 2010, p. 2A.Radio talk-show host J. D. Hayworth plans to challenge
John McCain for his Senate seat, but it is unclear how muchsupport he will have from tea partiers.
Man, Anthony, “ ‘Tea Party’ Faces Big Test in NovemberElections,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 4, 2010, p. A12.The Tea Party movement could become a permanent, game-
changing force in American politics.
Rucker, Philip, “Tea Party Leaders Will Meet With Steele,”The Washington Post, Feb. 16, 2010, p. A2.Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is
courting Tea Party support for the midterm elections.
Zernike, Kate, “Republicans Strain to Ride Tea PartyTiger,” The New York Times, Jan. 23, 2010, p. A1.Republicans want to harness the Tea Party’s energy to make
gains in statehouses and Congress in the next election.
Health Care
Millhollon, Michelle, “Vitter Addresses Tea Party Sessionon Health Care,” The Advocate, Jan. 13, 2010, p. B1.Sen. David Vitter’s, R-La., pledge to back a constitutional
challenge to the national health-care bill has proved popularamong Tea Party activists.
Mobley, Scott, “Rally for the Right,” Record Searchlight(California), Oct. 29, 2009, p. B1.Tea Partiers have urged followers to vote out senators and con-
gressmen who support Obama’s proposed health-care reforms.
Ramati, Phillip, “Hundreds Attend Macon Tea PartyAgainst Obama Health-Care Reform Plan,” Macon(Georgia) Telegraph, Aug. 26, 2009.Tea Party activists in Macon, Ga., argue that health-care
reform is necessary, but not with government control.
Wagman, Jake, “Tea Party Gathers Steam,” St. LouisPost-Dispatch, Aug. 9, 2009, p. A1.Burgeoning public opposition to health-care reform has
given the Tea Party movement a more broad-based appeal.
Protests
Carpenter, Amanda, “Tax-Day Protests Across Nation Setto Send Message,” The Washington Times, April 14, 2009,p. B1.Boston Tea Party-inspired protests of increased federal spend-
ing are cropping up across the country.
Jonsson, Patrik, “Tea Party Protests: Could They RallyChange in Government?” The Christian Science Monitor,April 17, 2009, p. 25.Impressive organizing efforts suggest to many political
experts that Tea Parties have the potential for a significanteffect on government.
Slater, Wayne, “Tea Party Tax Protests Help GovernorBuild National Persona,” Dallas Morning News, April 17,2009, p. 3A.Tea Party protests have given Texas Republican Gov. Rick
Perry a platform to rally the party’s conservative base.
Sarah Palin
Hennessey, Kathleen, “Palin: Tea Party Needs No Leader,”Sun-Sentinel (South Florida), Feb. 7, 2010, p. 19A.Sarah Palin says the burgeoning Tea Party movement should
remain leaderless and decentralized, calling the effort “biggerthan any king or queen.”
Rucker, Philip, and Ann Gerhart, “With Speech, PalinBounds Back on the Political Stage,” The Washington Post,Feb. 7, 2010, p. A1.Sarah Palin’s speech before Tea Party activists may have
firmly reestablished her as a politician to be considered fornational office.
Sidoti, Liz, “Palin Tells ‘Tea Party’: It’s Revolution Time,”The Associated Press, Feb. 7, 2010.The Tea Party makes up a seemingly natural constituency
for Sarah Palin if she decides to run for president.
The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals
CITING CQ RESEARCHERSample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography
include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats
vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.
MLA STYLEJost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher
16 Nov. 2001: 945-68.
APA STYLEJost, K. (2001, November 16). Rethinking the death penalty.
CQ Researcher, 11, 945-968.
CHICAGO STYLEJost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher,
November 16, 2001, 945-968.
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Apolitical activist dressed as ahero of the American Revolu-tion joined with a small group
of fellow conservatives in early May todenounce Washington politicians in thename of the Tea Party. Nothing sur-prising in that — except that the politi-cians under attack are Republicans.“Yes, we’ve been deeply disap-
pointed,” said William Temple ofBrunswick, Ga., at a Washington newsconference. He named House Speak-er John Boehner, R-Ohio, as the mainsource of disenchantment. “Mr. Boehn-er has been a ‘surrenderist’ who wavesthe white flag before the first shotsare fired.” Temple, wearing a tricornerhat, boots and other 18th-century garb,leaned his musket against a wall whenhe took to the lectern at the Nation-al Press Club in Washington. 53
The episode was one of manymarking the complicated follow-up toTea Party-driven Republican electionsuccesses in 2010. Temple and hishalf-dozen companions vowed thatBoehner, House Budget CommitteeChairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and otherHouse Republicans would pay a po-litical price if they defied demandsof the loose-knit Tea Party movement.
At the top of their wish list: mas-sive government spending cuts.Instead, House leaders have sig-
naled they’re willing to go along withraising the “debt ceiling,” the limit onhow much government can borrow.“This debt limit . . . provides theperfect opportunity to substantiallyreduce the size and scope of thefederal government,” said Bob VanderPlaats, vice chair of a Tea Party con-vention scheduled for Kansas Cityin October. A loser in last year’s Re-publican gubernatorial primary inIowa, Vander Plaats remains a toppolitical player in a state whoseearly primaries are a critical early testfor presidential candidates. 54
Testing TimeThe Tea Party’s ability to sustain the
support it gathered last November willbe tested as well. Tea Party membersand sympathizers played a major partin helping shift control of the Houseto a 242-193 Republican majority —about 30 of whom had been endorsedby Tea Party groups. That victory, whichfollowed months of demonstrations,marches and frenetic organizing activi-ty by Tea Party members, was limited
to the House. The Senate remains inthe hands of a Democratic majoritythough Republicans gained six seats. 55
Speaker Boehner, who presides overthe House GOP majority, seemed toconfirm the Tea Party activists’ in-creasingly dire view of him in aspeech he gave on the evening fol-lowing their press conference. As theyexpected, he signaled willingness toapprove a debt-ceiling increase. Butin a nod to the Tea Party, he condi-tioned approval on trillions of dollarsof cuts in federal spending. 56
Whether that would satisfy the ac-tivists remains to be seen. Joining with
Tea Party MovementHere are key events, legislation and court rulings since
publication of the CQ Researcher report by Peter Katel,
“Tea Party Movement,” March 19, 2010.
Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., chair of the TeaParty Caucus in the House, reflects the Tea Party’sindependence from mainstream Republicans: She
delivered a response to President Obama’s State of theUnion address separate from the official GOP response.
AFP/Getty Images/Mandel Ngan
their staunchest congressional allies, theyhad previously failed in an effort toconvince Boehner and other leaders torefuse to reach a temporary budgetcompromise with the Senate and WhiteHouse. The move averted a govern-
ment shutdown. But Rep. Mike Pence,R-Ind. had urged holding fast. “It’s timeto pick a fight!” he had told a smallrally outside the Capitol. “If liberals inthe Senate want to play political games. . ., I say shut it down.” 57
‘Unrealistic Expectations’In another show of Tea Party in-
dependence from the Republicans, Rep.Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., chair ofthe Tea Party Caucus in the House,delivered a response to PresidentObama’s State of the Union addressseparate from the official Republicanresponse. 58
Political observers have been argu-ing that politicians who identify withthe Tea Party may have overestimated
their power. “The standards they setfor themselves in terms of budget cut-ting and deficit reduction were veryhigh, and the expectations were un-realistic,” said Robert Bixby, executivedirector of the Concord Coalition, a
nonpartisan organization directed bymembers of the political establishmentthat advocates spending cuts. “Someof the leaders in the House, Boehnerand Ryan, do have a bit of a prob-lem in trying to write a tough and re-alistic budget that can get done, andtamping down some of the unrealis-tic expectations,” Bixby told the LosAngeles Times. 59
And Tea Party strategists may haveoverestimated the movement’s appealoutside its red-state, suburban base.Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., who scoreda stunning victory last year in a specialelection for the seat of the late Sen. Ed-ward M. “Ted” Kennedy, a Democraticicon, has taken pains to distance him-self from the movement. Along with
others more closely identified with themovement, Brown didn’t join the Sen-ate Tea Party Caucus. And, asked ifhe was a Tea Party member, he toldUSA Today, “No, I’m a Republican fromMassachusetts.” 60
Pressure to DeliverFor their part, Tea Party-backed
lawmakers have expressed frustrationat being hemmed in on one side byDemocratic opposition in the Senate,and on the other by political com-mitments to constituents.“If we don’t do a real serious job
with spending these next two years, thenI think that voters in my district will feelthat I didn’t deliver,” Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., a freshman who was part of the TeaParty wave of House members in lastyear’s election, said in January. 61
By early May, Walsh was echoingactivists’ criticisms of Republican Houseleaders. In his case, he took issue withtheir abandonment of a proposal totransform Medicare, the program ofgovernment subsidies of health-carecosts for the elderly. Under a plan thatthe House passed in March, senior citi-zens (starting in 2022) would get vouch-ers to buy private insurance. 62
“I would be very disappointed if wedidn’t follow through,” Walsh said, aftertop Republicans indicated they wouldn’ttry to push the Medicare plan any fur-ther. A fellow Illinois Tea Party Republi-can, Rep. Bobby Schilling, went further.Giving up on the proposal, he said,would amount to surrendering “to liesand deceit told by the other side.” 63
But the Medicare proposal was turn-ing into a rallying cry for Democrats,as well as for some Medicare benefi-ciaries who had voted for Republicansin 2010. Republican lawmakers cameface-to-face with that reality at townhall meetings they held in their dis-tricts during the spring recess. Some ofthose meetings turned into role-reversedversions of constituent meetings in 2009,at which Tea Party opposition to theadministration’s health-care legislation
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
Sporting patriotic red, white and blue, a Tea Party supporter attends a Tax Dayrally in Chicago on April 18, 2011, calling for massive government spending
cuts and tax reform. Tea Party members have been angry at House Republicanleaders for signaling they may support raising the nation’s debt ceiling.
Getty Images/Scott Olson
seized the headlines and spurred themovement’s rapid growth.
Signs of DiscordAt this year’s meetings, however,
crowds turned out to grill and heckleRepublicans who had voted for theMedicare plan. A woman in Racine,Wis., attending a meeting held by Rep.Ryan, the author of the plan, held upa sign that read, “We use up the vouch-er, and then what?” In Orlando, shoutsand arguments over Tea Party Re-publican Rep. Daniel Webster’s sup-port for the plan grew so loud thatWebster at one point quit talking. 64
Not all town meetings turned rau-cous. But the Medicare plan seemedto be turning into a liability. Even aftertop Republicans backed away from theproposal, Democrats vowed to keepexploiting the issue. “The Republicansare slowly realizing their plan to pri-vatize Medicare is a political disaster,”said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.,a spokesman for Senate Democrats.“But until they renounce their vote forit, they are still going to own it.” 65
Yet, as they continue marking a dis-tance between themselves and the Re-publican establishment, Tea Party mem-bers are showing signs of discord withintheir movement.In Arizona, some Tea Party mem-
bers have rallied against the creation ofautomobile license plates emblazonedwith a Revolutionary War slogan they’veadopted — “Don’t Tread on Me.” TeaParty groups can sell the tags to raisemoney. But, Tea Party member Jim Wiseof Surprise, Ariz., isn’t buying one. “Irealize the people behind this had thebest of intentions,” he said, “but it goesagainst what we stand for, which is lim-ited government.” 66
Despite such rifts, there’s littledoubt that Tea Party movement sup-porters do agree on the issue of fed-eral spending. The anti-Boehner pressconference was only one sign of TeaParty members’ determination on thatscore, expressed as resistance to a debt-ceiling increase. The Tea Party Ex-press, one of the movement’s nation-al organizations, was planning a nationalTV ad campaign on that theme.
“The GOP is on probation,” the or-ganization’s chair, Amy Kremer, toldThe Atlantic, “because under PresidentBush they spent a lot of money, andadded $3 trillion to the national debt.”She added, “You will see that the TeaParty will have no problem whatso-ever challenging the very freshmenthey put in.” 67
— Peter Katel
Notes
53 For a video of the press conference, see“Federal Debt Ceiling and Debt,” C-Span,May 9, 2011, www.c-span.org/Events/Tea-Party-Activists-Take-on-GOP-on-Deficit/10737421394-1/.54 Ibid.; Kerry Howley, “The Road to Iowais Paved With Pizza,” The New York Times,March 11, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/magazine/mag-13YouRHere-t.html?scp=1&sq=%22Bob%20vander%20Plaats%22&st=cse; JoshuaGreen, “The Iowa Caucus Kingmaker,” The At-lantic, May 2011, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/05/the-iowa-caucus-kingmaker/8446/.
Chronology2010November — Tea Partyprotests and marches providemomentum to Republicancandidates who win a decisiveHouse majority, though Senateremains majority-Democrat.
•
2011Jan. 5 — Congress convenes withmore than 50 House members in
Tea Party Caucus; only foursenators join Senate counterpart.
Jan. 25 — House Tea PartyCaucus Chair MicheleBachmann, R-Minn., deliversresponse to president’s State ofthe Union speech that isseparate from officialRepublican response.
Feb. 22 — Newly elected Sen.Scott Brown, R-Mass., declines tojoin Tea Party Caucus in Senate.
March 31 — Tea PartyRepublican Mike Pence of
Indiana urges House leadersnegotiating with the Senate andWhite House to maintaindemands for major spendingcuts even at cost of shuttingdown government.
April 28 — Arizona Legislatureauthorizes Tea Party license plates,but some movement membersoppose the move as governmentintrusion.
May 9 — Group of Tea Partyleaders attacks House Republicanleaders for willingness to acceptraising the national debt limit.
55 Rick Rojas, “Last midterm House, gover-nor races end,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9,2010, p. A24.56 Carl Hulse, “Boehner Outlines Demandson Debt Limit Fight,” The New York Times,May 9, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/us/politics/10boehner.html?_r=1&ref=politics.57 Quoted in Doyle McManus, “No party forJohn Boehner,” Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2011,p. A28.58 David A. Farenthold, “Republicans decrydebt, offer few detailed fixes,” The Washing-ton Post, Jan. 26, 2011, p. A9.59 Quoted in Lisa Mascaro, “Cracks show asGOP tackles budget,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25,
2011, p. A1.60 Quoted in Susan Page, “Sen. Brown keeps‘an open mind,’ ” USA Today, Feb. 21, 2011,p. A4.61 Quoted in ibid.62 Noam N. Levey, “Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicareprivatization plan increases costs, budget officesays,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2011, http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/07/nation/la-na-gop-budget-20110408.63 Quoted in Carl Hulse and Jackie Calmes,“G.O.P. Rethinking Bid to Overhaul MedicareRules,” The New York Times, May 5, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/us/politics/06fiscal.html?ref=politics.
64 Mike Schneider and Dinesh Ramde, “Con-gressional Republicans go home to mixed re-views,” The Associated Press, April 26, 2011.65 Quoted in Hulse and Calmes, op. cit.66 Quoted in Marc Lacey, “In Arizona, Tea PartyLicense Plate Draws Opposition From its Hon-orees,” The New York Times, May 4, 2011,www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/us/05plates.html.67 Eliza Newlin Carney, “Tea Party Puts theScrews to House Republicans Over Debt Ceil-ing,” The Atlantic.com, May 9, 2011, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/tea-party-puts-the-screws-to-house-republicans-over-debt-ceiling/238640/.
