Sunday
Jun132010
US Politics Analysis: Party Over for the Tea Party? (Haddigan)
Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 11:12 
Lee Haddigan writes for EA:The latest US election results 4, in a series of primaries for Governor's and Congressional contests this autumn, show that the Tea Party is still a significant voice in American politics.
For an extraodrinary example, consider the victory of Sharron Angle in the Nevada primary for the Republican nomination for November's Senate contest. In April she polled at 5% support for the Republican nomination for Senate. She then attracted the support of the Tea Party Express, with $400,000 in advertisements, and won with a vote of plurality of 40% in a campaign featuring controversial measures as gradual abolition of the federal income tax
However, Angle's victory and the remarkable figures mask a slowly emerging and major problem for the Tea Party. The movement is fatigued after 15 months of frenetic activity, and unsettled by internal dissension that threatens enthusiasm.
Some of the more discerning members of the Tea Party argue that this is "The Dip", a natural lull before the movement reenergizes itself for the November elections. The question still remains: can the Tea Party regain its internal vitality in time for the upcoming Congressional and gubernatorial elections?
Recently I hat-tipped the BUYcott campaign in Arizona as an initiative worthy of observation. Well, the results are in and even the most sympathetic commentator cannot regard the two weekends as anything other than a disappointment for the Tea Party. The first event saw a crowd of about 7000 attend a rally, "Stand With Arizona", in Tempe.
That was a respectable amount, if not as many as anticipated, only tempered by the fact that no more than 25 rooms were booked at the local Conference Center hotel. It appears that most who went to the stadium were locals, not the out-of-staters the organisers claimed would participate.
The website of one of the organisers, Dr. Gina Loudon, included a defense for the slightly underwhelming figures, throw into relief because on the same day a rally in Arizona attacking the controversial "anti-immigrant" legislation, SB 1070, drew a crowd of 20 000:
When the news media asked Phillip Dennis from the Dallas Tea Party --- before the event --- why the Tea Party might not draw its projected 20,000, he replied, “We are the productive people. We have jobs. No union paid for us to come here. I took two vacation days and paid my way. The other side is all astroturfed by the leftist operatives and union bosses.”
If the first meeting was discouraging, the second, held in Phoenix on 4 June, was no less than a failure. The local CBS TV channel reported that the crowd numbered in the hundreds, not the 50,000 anticipated to encourage "Buy Arizona! Now." A worrying shortfall in numbers, only partly explained by the inconvenience of a 105-degree (46 degrees Celsius) day.
As the Phoenix rally under-gathered, The Washington Post and ABC television conducted their latest poll. The outcome was an alarming drop in support for the Tea Party over the last 10 weeks. Respondents who regarded the Tea Party unfavorably increased from 39% to 50%, and those who backed the movement dropped from 41% to 36%. The most surprising revelation of the poll, however, was that it was the 18 to 29 age group who drove those changes, with a swing from 48-38 in favour to 27-60 against the Tea Party. These numbers were backed by the drop in support by white southerners from 45% to 30.
Critical reports of the Arizona rallies had been quick to point out the crowds were composed almost exclusively of middle-aged and "old" white participants. Whether the average young conservative white southerner is deserting the Tea Party because of the movement’s support for SB 1070 is unclear as yet. The raw numbers suggest, however, that Democrat strategists have a prime opportunity to exploit the age and race issue in the November elections.
As the Democrats have done this before. Back in the early 1960s, when the John Birch Society was as popular, if not more so, than the modern Tea Party, the California Senate Fact Finding Committee published a report on the Society. They dismissed charges that the JBS was fascist or anti-Semitic but damaged its effectivenessby concluding: "The cadre of the John Birch Society seems to be formed of wealthy businessmen, retired military officers and little old ladies in tennis shoes."
The JBS never really recovered from its constant association in the liberal press from those tennis-shoe clad little old ladies. (The media have not, so far, come up with such a memorable turn of phrase to describe the Tea Party, although Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has compared the conservative resurgence to the JBS's "little old ladies" phenomenon.)
If the current Democrat leaders learn from their predecessors of the early 1960s, and take the poll numbers to heart, the lesson will be that they do not need to attack the Tea Party as "racist’. The dismissal of the movement as merely a "paranoid" section of an old America --- suffering from "status anxiety" --- will damage the Tea Party beyond recognition.
Before and after the poll and primary results, some members of the Tea Party recognised the movement has reached a critical juncture. The St. Louis Tea Party is one of the more active and reflective local organisations, and two of its co-founders have commented on the decline in support. Bill Hennessy, arguing the Tea Party movement is in "The Dip", recognized that fatigue has set in:
And a lot of people are exhausted. Our houses need work—all the work we didn’t do last year or over the winter or this spring. We’re tired of the commitments, of the arguments with spouses, of missing kids’ graduations and ball games, of turning down job opportunities.
He concluded that the knowledge of "The Dip" meant the movement could sustain itself in the tough battles to come, and he called for a realistic assessment that allowed for some setbacks along the way to achieving goals.
On 8 June, after the polls had come out, Hennessy returned to the reasons why the Tea Party was suffering a downturn. He gave seven explanations. One was the potentially major threat to the cohesiveness of the Tea Party this November, "In-fighting among tea partyers has left a foul taste in the mouths of many."
Hennessy continued, however, with his realistic approach to beating ‘The Dip’ by insisting that disagreement was to be expected in a movement with no structure and that it should not distract supporters of the Tea Party from the main purpose of influencing elections in the autumn.
The next day, another cofounder of the St. Louis Tea Party, Dana Loesch, continued the cautioning of the movement over problems of internal discord. Appearing on Fox News, she said the Party was experiencing a temporary "burnout" and that "shysters" were infiltrating the grassroots movement for their own gain.
In her blog, Loesch elaborated on her fears that the Tea Party had more to worry about within their own ranks than from without:
If the tea party doesn’t defeat itself and can maintain energy we will succeed all the way until 2012. Yes, if it doesn’t defeat itself. The biggest threat to the tea party isn’t the establishment, it isn’t the left, it’s the shysters, the famewhores, the people who failed in business but saw a gravy train in the tea party and thought they could make a buck even though they displayed no discernible skills pre-movement.
This brings us back to the significance of the Sharron Angle result. Angle was portrayed by the media after the result as "the Tea Party favorite". That is only partly true. She was the preferred candidate of one of the Tea Party groups –-- the Tea Party Express –-- who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads promoting Angle. These ads were financed by hundreds of contributions from individuals nationwide to the TPE website, with the money spent by their political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better.
As an advertisement in The Las Vegas Tribune illustrates, TPE was the only group to officially endorse Angle, probably because it is the only member of the Tea Party coalition with a political action committee. The outcome is also, however, the consequence of the general reluctance of other Tea Party participants to cooperate with TPE.
The dispute in Nevada specifically concerned the TPE’s support for Angle, and the Tea Party Nation’s reminder to voters that TPE did not speak for the movement as a whole. Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, released a statement that, contrary to misrepresentations by other (unnamed) groups, Angle was not the only person for whom Tea Partiers could vote, mentioning another candidate:
Danny Tarkanian has been unjustly maligned as someone who should not be in the race and someone who is unworthy of Tea Party support. Both statements are not supported by the facts.
Judson Phillips has attracted his own share of criticism within the Tea Party, with rumblings that Phillips has used TPN, a for profit organization, for his own personal gain. There is also the criticism of pricing out "grassroots" members. The first Nationa Tea Party Convention in February charged $549 a seat, and another will be held in Las Vegas, July 15 to 17 with tickets at $399 for non-members ($349 for members). Prices that high, without accommodation, are hardly likely to attract less affluent Tea Partiers.
The jury’s verdict on the likelihood of the Tea Party sustaining its influence through the November elections is still out. Angle’s victory in Nevada cannot hide apathy in Arizona, the latest poll results, and the Tea Party’s own admission the movement is experiencing a "burnout".
These are all indicator that the movement has a titanic struggle to regain its impetus for the congressional elections. And even if it can somehow come out of "The Dip" with batteries recharged after a summer of rest, Democrats will be ready to attack the paranoid movement of little old ladies with tennis shoes.
And what better ammunition can the Democrats have hoped for than the adoption by the Tea Party of two ideologues in Sharron Angle and Ron Paul? Quite how those two can avoid self destruction a la Barry Goldwater in 1964, in the face of the coming Democratic and media onslaught, is a political conundrum.
But even more ominous than this scenario is the coming dissolution of the Tea Party movement. As principled as the motives of the Tea Party might be, they could be ripped apart by internal struggles. History tells us that Democrats are the pragmatic party who put aside their differences to capture offices, while Republicans put their principles before political achievement. There is little to suggest the Tea Party will be able to overcome that lesson.
Reader Comments (9)
"And a lot of people are exhausted. Our houses need work—all the work we didn’t do last year or over the winter or this spring. We’re tired of the commitments, of the arguments with spouses, of missing kids’ graduations and ball games, of turning down job opportunities."
Are you kidding me? I really, really, really can't imagine committed activists like Cindy Sheehan or Medea Benjamin ever uttering this garbage. Oh noes, I missed a ball game, politics is sooo hard. How will I ever do all this yard work?!
The Tea Parties have shown their true colors, they are not a political movement, or even anything close to real activism. They are a fan club, a FAD.
I've noticed this strain on the right for a long time. Back in 2008 I attended Ron Paul's "counter-convention" in MN. It was packed with thousands of people and A-list speakers all extolling the virtues of revolution, government by the people, patriots overthrowing oppressive tyrants, blah blah blah. But these people were all sitting comfortably in an air conditioned stadium, munching fast food and eagerly buying up t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other stupid paraphernalia proving they were revolutionary patriots.
Meanwhile, just a mile or two up the freeway, -real- activists fighting for change were being gassed and grenaded and run down by police like dogs in the street. Where were these patriots? Didn't they want to fight big government? Big government was right down the street torturing a 17 year old boy in police custody, where the hell was the 2nd amendment then?
It's all bullshit. They want to buy up and be fans of freedom and patriotism, the same way they buy up NASCAR or Iron Man 2 merchandise. It's not about real political action, it's about wretched anachronistic old white men feeling empowered in the face of overwhelming corporate slavery.
The party isn't over, it was never started in the first place.
The irony is, they are the tools of their corporate masters, and they'll never see it.
This piece by Haddigan is more thoughtful than most. Otherwise, I'm not too keen on giving this small group more attention than they merit.
Also, I know of many Dems were totally rooting for Angle and voted for her to spoil the results.
If anything, I keep welcoming this Neo-Bircherism. Middle America is turned off by extremes left and right.
"They dismissed charges that the JBS was fascist or anti-Semitic but damaged its effectivenessby concluding: 'The cadre of the John Birch Society seems to be formed of wealthy businessmen, retired military officers and little old ladies in tennis shoes.'
Hello Ernie1241,
Yes, the remarks were the personal observation of state AG Mosk (prepared by his assistant Howard H. Jewel incidentally). And the Report continues that: "our own investigation cause us to disagree with the conclusion that the members are primarily formed of the three classes specified above." I should have reread the report instead of relying on the memories of a long-ago study of it, at least before using the word concluded.
But the fact remains that in reporting the Committee findings commentators drew most attention to the 'little old ladies in tennis shoes' quote. That Rachel Maddow has picked up on it 40 years later is evidence of the effectiveness of that criticism of the Society.
And I disagree with you about the role of Hoover in damaging The JBS. He kept, relatively, quiet about his criticisms of Welch. The most influential attack from the Right was led by Buckley in the 'National Reveiw.' And Buckley's condemnation of Welch (not The JBS in general) pale into insignificance compared to to the mainstream media's reports on the Society. After 'Time' revealed to the nation (March 10, 1961, 'The Americanists,' available online) that Welch had called President Eisenhower a 'dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,' the media conducted a nonstop campaign against 'The Birch-Barkers' and the 'Ultra' Right the JBS represented. A campaign that will be repeated against the Tea Party in the months ahead
But that's a lengthy debate for another forum. Thank you for drawing my attention to the mistake
I still have to disagree with you concerning the impact of Hoover's statements as well as the adverse comments about Welch and the JBS which were made by prominent and respected figures within the postwar conservative movement such as Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Eugene Lyons, Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, Herbert Philbrick, Sen. Barry Goldwater, Sen. John Tower, Cong. Walter Judd, Fred Schwarz, and numerous others.
Those comments were much more potent than anything appearing in the mainstream media because they validated the essential premise that the Birch Society was irrational and extremist -- and genuinely representative of, or a part of, the conservative movement.
Incidentally, both publicly and behind the scenes, the FBI worked to discredit the fundamental premises circulated by the Birch Society. For example: various versions of one of Hoover's comments completely undermines the essential predicate of Robert Welch and the JBS. I copy it below:
"The Communist Party in this country has attempted to infiltrate and subvert every segment of our society, but its continuing efforts have not achieved success of any substance. Too many self-styled experts on communism, without valid credentials and without any access whatsoever to classified factual data regarding the inner workings of the conspiracy, have engaged in rumor-mongering and hurling false and wholly unsubstantiated allegations against persons whose views differ from their own. This is dangerous business. It is divisive and unintelligent, and makes more difficult the task of the professional investigator."
Oh -- by the way, the initial publicity regarding Welch's views concerning Eisenhower occurred long before the Time magazine article in March 1961. The first national publicity occurred in July 1960 in two front page articles in the Chicago Daily News (CDN) which were then picked up and published in other midwest newspapers and via wire services. The CDN articles occurred at precisely the time that the GOP convention was in town to nominate their Presidential candidate for 1960 -- and it was sensational news!
conservatives and tea party loves to engage in fear and hate mongering to appeal to the baser instincts of their base. It has been a formula they used as far back as the days of the John Birch Society
Hello again Ernie1241,
Thanks for the posts. I guess we will agree to disagree. Very briefly, the attacks in 'Time' (alone, never mind other mainstream publications) reached a wider audience than all conservatibve critics combined.
And yes, the CDN and Jack Mably were the first to print Welch's accusations against Eisenhower. But those claims did not get "national" attention until the 'Time' article, which was based on an article in the communist paper, 'People's World,' in Februay 1961, and not CDN's earlier revelations. Again, we will have to agree to disagree.
But thank you for making me look again at some material I haven't read for years,
Lee
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