Tea Party Kool-Aid

In 2008, on the strength of Obama's national election and Bush's (in my opinion quite high relative to the devastation he wrought) public opinion, the Republican party took a bashing in its congressional elections. In net total, the they lost 21 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate, giving the Democrats full control of both houses for the first time since 1996. As fits the pattern, the Republicans are expected to repay the favor to their Democratic Congressional Overlords this November, but a rising schism - or what some call "reinvigoration" - of the party's far-right base threatens to either boost, or foil, the coming spoils.

The Tea Party Movement is a misnomer in almost every way. It is not a registered political party. It has nothing to do with Tea except an imagined likeness to Revolutionary protests against taxation without representation - a parallel that is highly flawed given that the US pays relatively low taxes on a contemporary international scale, and every American - including TP supporters - do have exactly the type of representation that the British Colonialists lacked. It's even hard to think of it as a Movement because it lacks certain basic qualities - a clear leadership, defined membership, a stated platform (where, for example, does the Tea Party stand on Abortion? Veterans Welfare? Retirement Assistance? Israel?).

It's no surprise that a recent NY Times/CBS poll found self-described Tea Party supporters come almost exclusively from within the ranks of the Republican party. According to the poll, 48% of Republicans "support" the Tea Party movement, while only 20% of independents - including Libertarians - and a (surprising) 5% of Democrats. Still, if only half of Republicans are Tea Partiers, and most - but not all - Tea Partiers are Republican, how does that make it a "Republican" Movement?

Instead, I like to think of it as a Tea Party Phenomenon - an observable occurrence of ill-defined and intentionally nebulous events involving loosely-associated individuals sharing some, but not many, goals and tactics. This is not to suggest that those goal, tactics, and participants have been ineffective. Despite what I believe to be marginal opinions, the Tea Party has managed several prominent upsets within the Republican primary system. Bob Bennett of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and recently, Mike Castle of Delaware and Rick Lazio of New York were all ousted from their respective races by Tea Party enthusiasm, despite their strong support from the Republican establishment.

Yet all-told, the great "Tea Party Surge" of 2010 has been more hype than substance. They have achieved surprising success - no doubt - but all the hype that has followed, and especially the few case stories in which it revolves, has gotten me thinking about what this Tea Party Phenomenon is, and just how much of an impact it will actually have on the upcoming Midterm elections.

To render my analysis, I created tables of all upcoming Senate, House, and gubernatorial contests that will be on the ballot in November 2010. I specifically wanted to see in which races Tea Party candidates ran, how they fared, and what their chances of victory were in the upcoming general election. You can find my document in .xls form here.

I found a total of 4 Tea Party candidates (Paul Rand, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Connell, and Joe Miller) successfully beat out their Republican competitors in the 34 Republican primaries of 2010. 2 additional high-profile Tea Party candidates, JD Haynesworth of Arizona and Ovide Lamontagne of New Hampshire, were defeated by party favorites John McCain and Kelly Ayotte, respectively. Jim DeMint, who is a Republican incumbent, but hasn't let that stop him from becoming a major figurehead in the anti-establishment Tea Party, makes the 5th TP contender.

Of these 5, only DeMint and Joe Miller are candidates in a state in which the Republicans are expected to win - at least, according to 5 different polling groups from across the political spectrum. Rand Paul is in the category of "Leaning Republican" as he faces Jack Conway, and Sharron Angle is in a dead heat with incumbent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Christine O'Connell, who made a lot of noise in the news following her September 14 victory, was already in a "Leaning Democrat" race when the moderate Mike Castle was the expected winner. Now with O'Connell's extremism to run against, many pollsters have shifted the race into the "Safe Democrat" category for Dem. Christopher Coons.

Consider, for example, this perspective on O'Connell's Delaware victory from today's NY Times:

In Delaware, just over 55,000 people cast ballots in the party’s primary, and Ms. O’Donnell’s margin of victory over Mr. Castle was just over 3,000 votes. The state has about 621,000 registered voters, and of those, about 182,000 are Republicans. (site)

In other words, Republicans make up less than 1/3 of Delaware's registered voters, and of those only 1/3 bothered to vote in the primary (11% of total voters), in which O'Connell won by less than 5%. Put another way, O'Connell received the support of just 1/6 of the registered Republicans in the state of Delaware; a state in which they are the overwhelming minority. The low turnout was likely due to Republican apathy in the face of what most (even conservative) pollsters feel will be a likely Democrat win in November.

In other words, for all the bluster, the Tea Party is only likely to have 2-3 seats in the senate come January 2011, a pick-up of only 1-2 in addition to the sitting DeMint. This seems not only statistically inconsequential, but politically insignificant since neither candidate switched a seat from Dem to Rep, but only retained an existing Rep seat against minuscule competition. I just don't see how finally getting as many seats in the Senate as the Independents is a 'game changer.' The Independents caucus Democrat. The TP caucus Republican - except they're already Republican. If anything, having a TP senate member is a liability to the Republican party, as they may be willing to vote against legislation put forward by the more moderate arms of their own clique.

I therefore assume, given the media storm over this Tea Party Tsunami, that they must be making huge gains in the House or Governor races.

But not so!

In my review of 52 open house seats, I found only one instance of a possible Tea Party victory - Jesse Kelly, an Iraq war vet who defeated the establishment-preferred Jonathan Patton, but for whom I could find little affiliation with the Tea Party itself. There was a Tea Partier defeated for Indiana's 8th district. But that's all. Another big headline recently was the defeat of Rick Lazio by raving crumudgeon Carl Paladino - an avowed Tea Partier, as well as a big fan of racial jokes and pornographic chain e-mails - for the chance to run against Andrew Cuomo for the Governorship of New York. It was assumed that party-favorite Lazio would have a slim chance if he put up a tough fight, appealed to moderates, and managed to get out the upstate vote. Instead, Paladino, a wealthy 64 year old from Buffalo, has appealed to the raving lunatic demographic and a throw-the-bums-out attitude that doesn't shy from threats of violence or analogies with Hitler or the Antichrist. Cuomo has been accused of being over-confident in the run-up to the primaries, but if anything, Paladino serves only to rest him more at ease - and keep his campaign ad video editors busy to the point of exhaustion. A fuller view from a closer source: here.

Closer to (my) home was the DC Mayoral election, in which veteran City Council member Vincent Gray defeated the 1-term incumbent Adrian Fenty by a sizeable (6%) margin. Fenty did good things since taking over as Mayor, and it is universally acknowledged that DC is in better shape after 4 years of his leadership - despite half that time being under a nation-wide recession. Still, he alienated the wrong groups and played hard-ball to push through the education reforms he promised to make in his earlier campaign. The resulting backlash sweeps Gray into office as the generic 'everyman' - but with no faint whisper of 'grassroots' or 'Tea Party' attached to it. Imagine that - a group of people, upset with an incumbent, and looking for a strong 'values-based' candidate managed to win an upset over a sitting Democrat without the help of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party Express. I'm just saying there may be a degree of coincidence in the "Tea Party Phenomenon."

In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement were just that - social movements organized at a grassroots level to pursue clear goals in unorthodox, or unofficial methods. The Tea Party exhibits none of these traits - at least, not yet. For many unknown politicians, it provides a spring board to immense out-of-state fund raising and the opportunity for a national spotlight. For others, notably the tragically unemployed Sarah Palin and the tragically over-employed Glenn Beck, it offers the opportunity to cash in on their media connections for the benefit of their personal fame and bank accounts. The Tea Party is not a grassroots organization, it is a confederacy of conservative PR firms manipulating the fringe masses of our country through clever marketing, unrealistic promises, and blantantly disengunous claims.

However, this phenomenon is not without its benefits. As much as it frustrates Democrats, the exercise of democracy has never been purely for the benefit of one political party. Just like the 18th amendment - which guaranteed the right of all US-born citizens, including slaves, to vote - and which ironically the Tea Party has advocated to repeal - any growth in voter participation, free speech and non-violent citizen-to-government communication is a fundamentally good thing. It is crucial that the leaders in Washington, Wisconsin and Wasilla know that the incumbency bias isn't guaranteed, and that if they act like the proverbial "bums," they will get what's coming to them. As for those of us, like myself, who are horrified at the long-term prospect of a Tea Party dominated legislature, 2010 serves as a clear reminder that when we choose not to exercise our voice - when we neglect to vote ourselves - we are allowing others to have undue influence on our shared country. There are a lot of conservatives spread throughout our great land, and also a few liberals. Both are captive to the overwhelming majority of moderates who recognize the importance of compromise, the need for basic social services, and the expectation that a world without government is a world of chaos. Like any other insecure or frightened animal, the Tea Party makes a lot of noise as a means to compensate for its lack of actual power. The 2010 Republican Primary has shown that, indeed, the ideas of the Tea Party Phenomenon do carry some weight among the populace, but as any rational survey will show, that weight is actually quite small. Probably measured in grams, or to satisfy the reactionary Tea Partiers, in a pennyweight or apothecary's dram.

And that's the grain to take away from all of this. Even if the extremist fundamentalism and cloaked xenophobia espoused by some Tea Party activists is Arsenic to our national health, the one drop in our caldron of diverse political ideologies isn't enough to spoil the brew. It will certainly be enough to turn the Republicans' smaller goblet bitter, and much of the fate of our national pendulum rests on whether or not the Modern Right is content to play lackey to revisionist reactionaries.

Weber

::(lame)Texpatriot