Abstract
Media pundits, political figures, and scholars have sought to explain the Tea Party’s motivations, political goals, and organizational configurations since it burst onto the American political scene in 2009. A much needed analysis of this sort, though, has proved challenging given the Tea Party’s relatively neophyte status. Scholars, thus far, have relied on surveys as their primary source for datasets. Enter Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson. They attended Tea Party meetings, events and rallies, and conducted one-on-one interviews with group members. This approach, which informs their text, enriches the reader’s understanding of what the Tea Party is and, more importantly, illuminates the socio-economic and political dimensions of its members.
Skocpol and Williamson pose three basic questions to explicate the modern Tea Party phenomenon: what is the Tea Party and who is a Tea Partier; how did the Tea Party reinvigorate and remake right-wing conservatism in the lead-up to the 2010 election cycle; what are the consequences of the Tea Party for the Republican Party (p. 10)?
What is the Tea Party and who is a Tea Partier? Depending on whom you ask, you will get different answers. Opponents of the Tea Party see the movement as a prototypical reactionary movement, and its members as ultra right-wing, racist, conspiracy theorist, survivalist types bent on derailing the agenda of America’s first black president. Tea Partiers, however, see their advocacy of lower taxes, a smaller government, and the promulgation of so-called traditional values in the face of a progressive transformation of ‘their America’ as a patriotic calling. They truly see themselves as patriots: their duty is to ‘take back’ the country they inherited from the ‘fathers of the revolution’ (p. 7).
Rallying cries of ‘taking back’ America – i.e. roll back each and every hard fought socially progressive policy that squeaked through Congress since 2009 – continue to spout from the mouths of Tea Party members and the politicians courting their votes in the run-up to the GOP primaries. Indeed, top GOP contenders including Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush attended Heritage Action’s ‘Take Back America’ forum in September 2015. This rhetoric, it’s fair to say, acts as political shorthand for a much larger and nefarious political purpose, namely, to redeem America from her eight year stewardship by the first black president. Reclaiming a perceived ‘golden age,’ it should be noted, cuts across any number of reactionary groups from Europe (the Counter-Enlightenment and the Restoration) to the Middle East (al-Qaeda and ISIS). In each instance, lost privilege – whether real or imagined – at the hands of an ethereal ‘Other’ provides the rationale wherein theory and practice merge.
The authors make a clear distinction between the social and political dispositions of the ideal Tea Partier. Socially speaking, the Tea Party is predominantly made up of white, middle aged, married men (p. 23). As a political entity, however, there are gradations within the right-wing fold of the Tea Party. Although the Tea Party is located ‘beyond the right edge of the [Grand Old Party] GOP’ (p. 28), they are comprised of conservatives and libertarians; while the former bring social conservatism (e.g. pro-life, traditional marriage, and a Christian religiosity) to bear with their fiscal agenda, the latter remain concerned solely with economic issues (p. 35). The unifying element between the two camps can thus be seen in FreedomWorks’ motto of ‘Lower Taxes, Less Government, More Freedom’ (p. 9).
Although Bush initiated legislation, such as TARP, that ruffled the feathers of what would become the Tea Party constituency, the election of a Democratic president provided the spark that would ignite the Tea Party movement. Obama’s stimulus package of 2009 and the following year’s Affordable Care Act threatened segments of the older middle class who, as a result of the financial meltdown of 2008, faced depreciated equity in their homes and pension losses in the stock market (p. 30).
How did the Tea Party reinvigorate and remake right-wing conservatism in the lead-up to the 2010 election cycle? The 2008 general election left the GOP politically impotent: they not only lost the White House, but also eight Senate seats and 18 seats in the House. Two years later though, the Republicans – with the aid of the Tea Party – came back from the edge of political oblivion, picking up six seats in the Senate and 63 in the House (p. 158). Electoral victory came by mobilizing an effective base that turned out in droves on Election Day.
The Tea Party was successful in establishing an effective grassroots operation that included an on-the—ground type of mobilization that was sorely lacking on the political right. Beyond the local level, third-party groups – national organizations, advocacy groups, and policy institutes, along with sympathetic acolytes in the media (TV, radio, and Internet based forums) – gave the Tea Party a national platform to spread its message. The entry of these third-party groups, however, served to marginalize the Tea Party’s authenticity to a point. FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity (two groups that grew out of the breakup of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a 30-year-old research institute that was heavily infused with financing from the Koch brothers) quickly entered the Tea Party fray and were seen by some as co-opting the ‘spontaneous’ movement (p. 104).
Skocpol and Williamson concede that the Republican wins at the 2010 midterm elections need not be reduced to the Tea Party’s involvement. Historically, of course, the party in power usually loses seats during the midterm election cycle. The quantitative extent to which the GOP gained seats, however, was incumbent on the Tea Party’s reinvigoration of the Republican Party after its massive defeat just two years earlier (p. 160).
What are the consequences of the Tea Party for the Republican Party? Electoral victories via the Tea Party influence in the 2010 midterm elections proved to be a double-edged sword for the GOP. While the Republican Party gained large numbers in both houses of Congress, it came at a price. Indeed, the Tea Party did not rest on their laurels in the post-2010 trouncing. They transitioned into a watch dog organization, whose ultra-conservative political program did not differentiate a Democrat from what they saw as wayward Republicans (p. 178). This intraparty realignment portends difficulty for the GOP in brokering deals within the House and Senate. As Skocpol and Williamson point out, the Tea Party has a ‘self-centered understanding of democracy … government by and for the Tea Party’ standing as their creed (p. 183). This egotistical conception of governance does not parlay into the political process which relies on logrolling to avoid legislative deadlock.
What is the future of the Tea Party? In closing their work, authors Skocpol and Williamson characterize the Tea Party as a ‘generationally bounded variant of long-standing forms of conservative populism in America’ (p. 205). If this is indeed the case, asking whether the Tea Party will remain a vital force in American politics may miss the point. The Tea Party, as a link in a conservative populist continuum, is here to stay. 1 This will surely become more evident in our ever-increasingly diversified American landscape. As such, this volume serves as both a much-needed primer as well as a thoughtful reminder, in light of the upcoming elections, to understanding the Tea Party phenomenon not only in theory but also in practice.