There has been an interesting alignment which has slowly happened over the past year, between two groups not normally in agreement -- inside-the-Beltway mainstream media types, and the bloggy Left. This alignment has occurred not in favor of some issue or another, but rather against a certain movement: the Tea Parties. Both the Serious Persons in the media, and pretty much the entire Left, have agreed that the proper thing to do with the Tea Partiers is to mock them, in the hopes that they'll go away soon. This, I fear, is a mistake, and it could be a costly one indeed for the Democratic Party.
Allow me to explain, because I'm about to stake out a position here that may not make me many friends. The Tea Party movement is currently hard to define and hard to pin down on the issues, but last month there was an extraordinary Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll which showed the Tea Party was seen more favorably than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Meaning that the sentiments driving the Tea Party movement are a lot broader than anyone in Washington may fully realize.
Excepting perhaps the national Republican Party, who is downright terrified of the Tea Partiers. But the Democrats should realize that, when the hotheaded rhetoric is stripped aside, there are some natural similarities between what Democrats (should) stand for, and what the Tea Party folks are upset about. Meaning it would be possible to co-opt some of their key issues in this year's election campaign, in the hopes of siphoning off some of them by election day.
The Tea Party movement is a loose collection of some very disparate causes, who have banded together politically for now, but who also risk being torn apart at any moment by disagreements between factions.
Anyone who laughs at this description really shouldn't -- because it could just as well be applied to the Democratic Party on any given day.
Dissecting the makeup of the Tea Partiers is hard to do, given their nascent status as an emerging political movement -- one that may well coalesce into an actual third political party, if its factions don't self-immolate and descend into fratricidal squabbling.
First, there are the screaming lunatics. These are the folks who get on television, and these are the target of ridicule and scorn from the mainstream media and the Left (here's a good example of such ridicule). These are the folks for whom someone should really invent posterboard with a built-in spell-checker. People who wave signs (even with correct spelling) saying ridiculous things like: "Government -- hands off my Medicare." Added to this mix are the haters. There are some Obama-haters in this group, some flat-out racists, and then there are outside haters who merely show up at Tea Party rallies because they know they'll get on television (the most prominent of whom are followers of Lyndon LaRouche, who actually calls himself a Democrat).
These are the most visible of the Tea Partiers, because, as I said, television loves them. But what many on the Left fail to realize is that these are not the entire movement. Sure, it's easy (and fun) to mock someone with an idiotic sign, but that ignores the non-idiotic folks standing next to them.
But while the Left loves to mock the loudmouths, the media's mockery is of a more knee-jerk quality: they mock any sort of third-party movement, on general principles.
Then there is the corporate/fake-grassroots slice of the Tea Partiers. These are the deep-pocket folks who pony up the seed money for the bus tours and rallies, and their corporate news outlets who follow along for the ride. But even these guys aren't really the core of the movement, and already there are signs of strain between the fake grassroots and the real grassroots in the movement. This may come to a head next month, during the "Tea Party Convention," since the event itself is causing a lot of mixed emotions (it may even wind up being two competing events).
This is an inherent danger to any newborn political movement -- factionalism. The Tea Party folks have not yet adequately defined what they stand for (they are much better defining what they are against, at least so far). But, if you look very closely (and strip away all of the idiocy from some of the rallies), the Tea Party movement resembles a faction of the Republican Party which has been all but forced out -- what used to be called "fiscal conservatives." Fiscal conservatives, as opposed to social conservatives, used to be quite common in the Republican Party. They usually (but not always) hailed from New England. And they really didn't care about making America a theocracy, or what folks did in their bedrooms. Add to these Northeasterners the Libertarian strain from the Mountain West, whose members also cared more about the government's bottom line than any hot-button social issue.
This may be why the Tea Party did so well in the poll I cited earlier. In "favorable/unfavorable" terms, here is how each party ranked: Republicans -- 28 percent favorable / 43 percent unfavorable; Democrats -- 35 / 45; Tea Party -- 41 / 24. That should make it clear why the Tea Partiers are nothing to laugh at. They rank six points above Democrats, and thirteen points above Republicans in favorability. On unfavorable numbers, they rank roughly half of the disapproval of the two major parties.
What this means, in blunt terms, is that there are a lot of people out there who have never attended an actual Tea Party rally, but are still sympathetic to the movement's goals. More sympathetic than they are to either major party.
Robert Reich recently wrote a piece that comes a lot closer to taking things more seriously than anything else I've read. He identifies not only the Tea Party movement, but also the Progressives angry at the performance of the Democrats, and lumps them together as the "I'm-Mad-As-Hell" Party.
Now, as I said, the Tea Party is a very recent phenomenon, meaning it is almost impossible to make sweeping statements about them, their goals, and their sympathizers. But I would bet there are quite a few of what used to be called "Reagan Democrats" in the group (today, they'd be more likely called "Independents"). Whatever you call it, it's a fact that moving this demographic can win national elections.
The danger for the Tea Party movement itself, even without their factionalist problems, is going to become clear during their convention. Because, at heart, it's basically a one-issue movement right now. But that doesn't mean other groups aren't eyeing it for possible hijacking. It will be interesting to see, for instance, whether the Tea Party takes any sort of stand on issues like abortion, gay rights, or gun rights. If they're smart, they won't, because they'll have a wider appeal by refusing to take positions on all the favorite Republican social issues. A little-commented-on fact from Massachusetts was that the winner of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat is actually a pro-choice Republican, for instance.
This is another truth that not many have seen yet: many of the Tea Partiers are as disgusted with the Republicans as they are with the Democrats. The Republican Party itself -- the national apparatus, and the politicians currently in office -- are quaking in fear at the power the Tea Party represents. They will be kowtowing to them all year long, in an effort to co-opt the entire movement, and absorb them into the Republican Party itself. But the Tea Partiers are actually countering this with their own low-level movement to take over all the Republican precinct spots -- meaning who co-opts who (and who winds up being absorbed by the other) is still a very open question.
This is where the Democrats should sense an opportunity. Not to co-opt the movement itself (which would likely be next-to-impossible), or to co-opt the loudest and angriest of the people in the movement (who are pretty clearly anti-Obama, on general principle). But rather to co-opt the core issues that sympathizers of the movement do care about.
President Obama is about to attempt something very like this. Because the Tea Party movement has more than a hint of Populism about it. And, traditionally, Populism has been against Big Business and Wall Street more than they've been against Big Government. To be fair, Populism has also been anti-immigrant as well, but until that issue is raised by Congress it will likely remain dormant in the Tea Partiers' priority list.
This is the opportunity, and this is why it could be a very beneficial thing for Obama and Democrats -- if the Democrats start tilting at the windmill of Wall Street, the Republicans are going to show their true colors as defenders of unfettered capitalism. Which, I'm guessing, would not go down all that well with the Tea Party's members.
Republicans will counter with "abolish all taxes forever" (or some flavor of this theme), and try to turn the anger towards Big Government and away from Big Business. But the real issue this time around is going to be jobs, and not taxes. That's my guess, anyway. And Big Banking is seen by many as the real culprit, meaning Republicans are going to be defending the banks if Democrats truly do try to pass some Populist legislation. Putting them at odds with the Tea Partiers' objectives.
Now, I'm not suggesting that all (or even a major part) of the Tea Party folks are going to vote Democratic this fall. I think the mood of the country right now is a lot closer to "anti-incumbent" than anything else, meaning there are a lot of folks in both parties who may be surprised by how deep this feeling goes come election day. I think the most accurate portrayal of what American voters are feeling right now is "throw the bums out!"
Democrats, though, do have an advantage -- they're supposed to be the party of "the little guy." If Democrats return to these roots (and quickly) and start fighting some battles for Main Street, it will pit such stances against a solid wall of Republican obstructionism. Which would clarify, to many, the differences between the two major parties. Anyone who thinks these differences don't need clarifying should read this truly sobering letter from an unnamed Democratic Senate staffer, which ends on a seriously dismal note:
I simply can't answer the fundamental question: "what do Democrats stand for?" Voters don't know, and we can't make the case, so they're reacting exactly as you'd expect (just as they did in 1994, 2000, and 2004). We either find the voice to answer that question and exercise the strongest majority and voter mandate we've had since Watergate, or we suffer a bloodbath in November. History shows we're likely to choose the latter.
It may wind up being a futile effort to try and coax some Tea Party sympathizers to vote Democratic this fall, but it would go a long way towards rededicating the Democratic Party to what they should have been doing all along: fighting for the little guy. Even with this, though, the anti-incumbent anger may win the day. On the other side of the aisle, the Republicans may successfully co-opt the whole Tea Party, or the Tea Party may successfully take over the whole Republican Party. We're still a long way from election day, meaning nothing is set in stone yet.
But one thing is for certain. Even the possibility of the Tea Partiers taking over a major American political party should show that they are stronger and more numerous than a lot of folks inside the Beltway now realize. So you'll forgive me if I don't join in the jokes and the ridicule directed towards the Tea Partiers by some. I will not be looking for ways to poke fun at them during their convention in a few weeks -- instead, I will be very interested to see what sort of "platform" they agree upon (if they do, that is).
It may be a lonely position to stake out now, but I'm willing to bet that in the very near future a lot of other folks will be taking the Tea Party movement a lot more seriously than they now do.
Chris Weigant blogs at: 
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People can no longer wait around for what the Democrats "should" stand for. The facts are in and they don't stand for those things. In 1968, giving the Democrats the benefit of the doubt had some basis in reality. It no longer does. If the tea partiers get wise, they will not let themselves be co-opted by either party, but instead will join with independents, like myself, who have left the two main parties.
Quoting you: "What this means, in blunt terms, is that there are a lot of people out there who have never attended an actual Tea Party rally, but are still sympathetic to the movement's goals. More sympathetic than they are to either major party."
I'm willing to bet that the numbers of these people are far and away larger than the goofballs the media has seized on to depict a third party alternative; because let's face it, that's really what this comes down to -- discrediting any alternative to the madness that's going on in D.C.
I've noticed in a groundswell of grassroots activism that's shot up overnight following the SCOTUS ruling, that people are doing something new and incredibly smart: not boxing their groups with dumb@ss talking points (like the brainwashed Democratic net forum minions) and remaining steadfastly NON-partisan. Could it be, people are wising up?!!!! Thanks for writing about this subject -- a welcome voice in the wilderness.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantzawadzki/tea-party-express-planned_b_427818.html
I couldn't agree more, which is why my co-author Dawn Teo and I have been writing articles since November warning against the dangers of underestimating the Tea Party Movement.
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/tempest-in-a-teabag-tea-p_b_354649.html
Through http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-brantzawadzki/anatomy-of-the-tea-party_b_380539.html
All The Way To http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/tempest-in-a-teabag-tea-p_b_354649.html
With plenty in between.
Thanks for the links. I've read your (and Dawn's) work on the subject, which has been helpful in untangling the various different threads of the movement.
I got interested in the Tea Party folks sheerly for my respect for the spirit of protesting (irrespective of what was being protested), and wrote up a history of tea parties and taxes last year before their Tax Day rallies, where I even gave advice to the Tea Partiers: "keep the raving conspiracy-theorists off the stage. If the (non-Fox) media decides to use some bit of choice lunacy as their lead soundbite, you will wind up doing your cause more harm than good."
http://www.chrisweigant.com/2009/04/13/tea-and-sympathy/
Just wanted to say: keep up the good work, fellow HuffPosters!
:-)
-CW
I quote: "Of those, the three most prominent are Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity and the American Liberty Alliance. All three claim to be grassroots. All three are primary sponsors of both Tea Party factions (Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express), and all three have been sponsored by organizations supported by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who co-own America's largest privately held company as of 2008, Koch Industries."
I'm wondering about 'sponsored by organizations supported by David and Charles Koch...' What does that mean exactly? You may know that Fred Koch (the senior Koch) was involved in the formation of the John Birch Society in 1940. The Koch's are one of those families -- like the Pritzkers -- who own everything, shape public policy, and nobody knows who they are; which makes them a bit dangerous...if the beleaugered unwashed masses who are seeking redress of their greivances are not fully aware of who is behind the scenes.
While I agree it is too easy to dismiss them, take note of how the "convention" in Nashville seems to be unraveling: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26teaparty.html Now even Sarah Palin is incurring the wrath of libertarians and right-wingers by campaigning for McCain against a tea party candidate: http://www.redcounty.com/sarah-palin-where-your-loyalty-alaskans-and-conservatives/36108
The "movement" is rudderless, leaderless, and mired in profiteering. Obama's pivot threatens to steal the populist fire away from it. My own sense of things is that the most the tea party can become is a kind of semi-permanent counterculture.
The main players now are the Tea Party Patriots. Groups like American Liberty Alliance, Tax Day Tea Party, Nationwide Tea Party Coalition and others vie for significance but many Tea Party folk also see them as astroturf.
The Tea Party Express has been thoroughly debunked and is no longer a legitimate part of the movement - which should embarrass FOX News, who practically embedded Griff Jenkins on the TPE bus tour.
As the movement sheds itself of the afterbirth of these Kling-on opportunistic Johnny-Come-Latelies they will reveal themselves for what they are - a well-organized yet loosely-knit collection of Americans who have serious, serious with the status quo and are willing to do whatever it takes to change it. Or maintain it. Depending on the issue.
S/he who gets the voters out wins.
Really?
Tea Party movement (proper noun). (1) Folks who are short on formal education and long on hatred of all taxes, all government, all people of color, all intellectuals, all immigrants, all foreigners, all non-Christians, all gays, all pacifists, all lawyers, decaf latte, white wine, all advocates of gun control, women's rights, or social democracy, and especially all residents of Greater New York, Washington D.C., the Bay Area, Europe in general and France in particular. (2) Folks who are strongly in favor of military service (by others) and hate Nancy Pelosi. [See also: Klansmen; Birchers; anarchists; shirts, brown; Beck, Glenn.]
Not decaf lattes! Say it ain't so!
Heh.
-CW
I'm unaware that any element of the beliefs that the Tea Party rank and file evince at their rallies differs substantively from precisely what I stated. They cannot (or, at least, do not) distinguish among democratic soci@lism, Soviet soci@lism, and national soci@lism: clear evidence that they're uneducated in the extreme. Is there evidence that they are, collectively, NOT racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, chauvinistically evangelical, and mindlessly jingoistic? Do they secretly PREFER latte, chablis and tolerant intellectual discourse to gun shows, NASCAR and being gullible political sheep? Was Hubert Humphrey wrong when he stated, "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."?
That said, let me wish you the best of luck at your public interest law school. I hope you learn at least as much there as many of us did at our accredited law schools. : )
I find it difficult to believe that a bunch of the teabaggers would vote Dem when their convention is being held in Nashville with Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Marsha Blackburn as their main speakers. They are all Republicans. This is the far right fringe of the Republican party that doesn't believe government can do anything right and they are trying to get elected to prove it.
In my opinion, the teabaggers and their sponsors, like Freedom Works are doing their share to keep this country divided. With two wars and an economic meltdown, the country needs to come together. But when the teabaggers hold their fake sickness rallies on Capitol Hill, it is making a mockery of the millions of people in this country that need healthcare.
The teabaggers loved to say "I just want my country back" as they disrupted town hall meetings. Well it's not just their country. They don't have a monopoly on it. It is all of our country and we are all REAL Americans despite what Sarah Palin would like for you to believe.
All good points. But also keep your eye on the folks who are aghast at the for-profit convention, and will reportedly be protesting it -- a protest within a protest, as it were.
-CW
What have you heard about a protest? I am in Nashville and it has not made the local news. I have seen some articles about the problem the organizer has with his own "tax" problems and seen the articles about the cost of the tickets. Rooms at Opryland Hotel run $200-300 and believe me, the food there isn't cheap. I think it will be interesting.
That's an interesting point. The Right has demonized the word "Liberal" so effectively that when pollsters ask what (for them) is a traditional "we've asked this question for decades" question -- "how do you see yourself, liberal or conservative?" they get very few "liberals" these days. Conservatives love to boast about these polls, using them to "prove" their point that "we're a center-right country."
But Bush may have done the same thing to the word "Republican," as people who self-identify as such are at a very low level now.
But Democrats don't use this as effectively as they should. They should point out, in pretty much every sentence, how "Republican obstructionism" is stopping them from doing things. Obama barely ever says the word "Republican" -- which is part of the problem. Stop blaming everything on Bush, start blaming things on the current Republicans in Congress, in other words.
-CW
I think a bigger problem is that they are partners in crime. While the Dems are unable to enlist Republican help for much of anything, the opposite is certainly not true. The best part of the scam is that it's different Dems that aid the GOP on different issues. That way, nobody looks too Republican and the charade can go on.
Party affiliation ought to mean something. A party that includes Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter, Barbara Boxer, and Russ Feingold makes no sense at all, not to mention Sanders and LIEberman. The senate is undemocratic to its core and the Republicans rule it even as a minority because the Dems allow it.
Yeah, you're right, I should have put a disclaimer in there somewhere about "it's just one poll, could have been a really badly-worded question or something..."
-CW
You take Tea Partiers as a separate entity from the Republican. Yes a few may be Reagan Republicans. (Which cancels out the whole Tea Party meme right there - Reagan raised taxes.) You identify a few as Independents. (I'm an Independent - those are no Independents.)
What those are are Republicans. They have always been Republicans. A good many are hired schills by the monied Republicans to create an artificial presence. Some are genuine old fashioned base Republicans - undereducated and mad as the proverbial Mad Hatter at Alice's tea party - at a. losing an election to the Democrats and b.losing an election to a black man.
Tea Partiers are not a separate entity from the Republicans.They were created by the Republicans. (And if you'd argue - look at MA. I'd say they voted for the Republican they were going to vote for anyway. And any Democrats who voted for a tea party candidate didn't suddenly take up tea. They were just mad at their own party and doing that self-defeating Democrat thing.
I know what you're doing.Well meant I'm sure. But I for one am not going to add any airspeed to their artificial momentum. I've no doubt that those Republicans playing tea party can do damage. But they were going to do that anyway. Because they're just plain Republicans.
The real movement was about returning civil rights, ending unconstitutional wars, ending the Federal Reserves reign over the economy, and returning power to the states. Giving the people their Bill of Rights(including the 9nth and 10nth amendments) back . Fox News came in and took it over.
So before passing judgment, look into the End the Fed and libertarian roots. You wont find the hatred of all the stuff mentioned by the first poster.
But at this point the Paul people should just pick a different theme because from this point on it's no longer what they were doing. Tea Party has now become defined by a bunch of hired poseurs and uneducated bigots who are paid by Fox or are twisted by Fox. The Paul people lost their tea party brand.
I am NOT a Republican. I'm a Libertarian, active in my Party, and have held state-level party office once upon a time. I'm likely to vote for "Tea Party candidates" in 2010, as long as they stay away from religious right social issues. It's a big mistake to dismiss them and those likely to vote with them as Republicans.
Well as I was saying to jethrosurfs above - I saw a representative of the original Libertarian Tea Partiers speaking and I felt his pain. I didn't agree with him on many things, but his was a viable position, worthy of debate and had been his position even during the Bush-Cheney years. His posistion was separate from Republican. Just like yours.
Unfortunately, your Tea Party position is no longer separate from not only right wing Republicans in general, but from the definition of Tea Party itself. What I mean is that you may see it at separate, but it is no longer separate in the public imagination or common definition.That was co-opted by Beck and Armey.
More importantly it's most definitely been taken hostage by the people who turn it into a religious right social issue by it's Queens like Palin and Bachmann. Sarah Palin and her ilk make Tea Party all part of the evangelical right movement. Both are speaking at the Tea Party convention.
So if you vote for a Tea Party candidate in 2010 (which is your right) you will be voting for the far right evangelical, social busybusy fringe (which is antithesis to a Libertarian who believes in keeping government out of of pretty much everything but definitely out of things of a personal nature like religion or relationships.) That's who you'll be voting for. Not the Tea Party you remember. That got stolen.
I may have used the term "teabaggers" once or twice last spring, but stopped pretty quickly and have since then always used the more respectful Tea Party and Tea Partier.
You are exactly the person I was talking about in this article -- the one that doesn't fit the lefty stereotype of the Tea Parties. I think there are more of you out there than a lot of people realize.
-CW