My recent post ” For the Tea Party, Another Election, Another Defeat” has some disputing what I consider the established fact, that the Tea Party is in decline both in terms of overall popularity as well as in the numbers of people who identify as members of the movement. Simply put all one need do is Google “tea party identification” and there are more than ample references, including several from the right wing leaning Rasmussen Reports and Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze”, of what I pointed out is a now established fact. That said, here ya go:
“Tea party identification nationwide. Now 22%, was 32% at time of the 2010 election”.; http://t.co/oDThWeYIEC”
Rasmussen Report of 1/7/13: “Only eight percent (8%) now say they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010″
“Just 8% Now Say They Are Tea Party Members”; http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/january_2013/just_8_now_say_they_are_tea_party_members
“While polls show Tea Party identification dropping from 24 percent in 2010 to just 8 percent today, there have been key wins.” – “Tea Party Says ‘Don’t Write Our Obit Just Yet”; http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/February/Tea-Party-Says-Dont-Write-Our-Obit-Just-Yet/
Glenn Beck’s The Blaze: “while the Tea Party had once enjoyed 24% popularity, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, only 8% of Americans now identify themselves as members of the Tea Party…While that is the lowest it has been in the three years” – “Why Are Some Conservatives Targeting the Tea Party as a ‘Cancer’; http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/06/why-are-some-conservatives-targeting-the-tea-party-as-a-cancer/
“Tea Party Identification In Texas” (February 2010 – October 2013); http://laits.utexas.edu/txp_media/html/poll/features/tea_party_id/slide1.html
Does anyone have any evidence that the Tea Party isn’t in decline either in popularity or membership?
As far as to whether or not the Tea Party has declined where the numbers make them count, that will be answered definitively in the 2014 elections. Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report has already predicted that 14 congressional seats that were leaning Republican are now leaning Democrat and 80 races are now more competitive for Republicans as a result of the Tea Party backed shutdown disaster. However, from what we can discern more recently, based on last weeks results one would ask the question as to why the Tea Party backed candidate in southern Alabama lost in a district where a Tea Party victory should be a lay up? Could it be that the numbers there that make them count where they once did no longer exist? Thus citing the quote which was shown to me so as to prove that the Tea Party isn’t in decline: ” Political power is constituted of getting people elected, getting people unelected and being able to reward or punish people for doing or not doing what you want. If you can’t do any of those things, you have no power.”; one can only conclude that the Tea Party movement’s power seems to be on the wane. If it were otherwise the movement would have more than a school board victory in Colorado to boast about. The fact that this Colorado issue was their only victory speaks volumes as to their declining power as it is during off year elections that the politically active are supposed to have outsized effects on results. The fact that the Tea Party has produced yet another miserable showing at the polls is proof positive of their declining real power both inside and outside of the GOP.
And as far as citing a post from Tea Party Patriots, or any other movement related organ for that matter, as to why they lost in Virginia, well that’s not exactly an objective source or a good place to look for an explanation. Again in Virginia, as in Alabama the operative question would be: “If the Tea Party is so popular and robust and they exist in numbers that make them count, then why did a clear backed Tea Party favorite fail to win?” Surely all of those who identify with the Tea Party movement know the ill affects of spending on political races, as well as the motives of the GOP Establishment, and they should have been unswayed by the lack of commercials for Cuccinelli and firm in their support for him yet he still lost. If members of the Tea Party don’t exist in sufficient numbers to make them count in Virginia, and most certainly, in Alabama where do they exist in sufficient numbers to make a political difference?
I’ll state again what I said in my last post “Ever since the high water mark of the Tea Party movement in 2010 the path forward nationally has been nothing if not downhill.” Till someone can prove me wrong either by showing me a turn around in the numbers of people who identify with the movement or the movement’s winning more elections than it’s losing I will not be convinced of this rather hallow argument to the contrary. As coach Bill Parcells said of football teams: You are what your record says you are.” That’s true in politics too and any counter argument to the contrary is just so much pap.
As for the Tea Party members holding on in districts where they in fact have a foothold I would say that that is simply a function of gerrymandering and amounts to nothing more than artificial political life support. In the long run, due to demographics and the need of the Republican Party to win elections so as to remain competitive, this is nothing but a fleeting moment politically for the Tea Party movement. It can not be sustained over the long haul, especially in a public that is sick of political gridlock and demands answers to the myriad set of problems now facing the nation.
Steven J. Gulitti
11/11/13
Sources:
For the Tea Party, Another Election, Another Defeat
Cook Report Moves 14 House Races Toward Dems; http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/17/1248429/-Conservative-Cook-Report-Moves-14-House-Races-Toward-Dems
Cook Political Report: Damage Assessment; http://cookpolitical.com/story/6435
It isn’t.
Republicans love the Tea Party.
It governs the House, it will remake the Senate Minority in its image, and its a parasite that will soon have full control over a political party. It’s truly quite impressive and shows what a committed group of people can do when they force their principles on a reluctant party. If Occupy didnt waste time banging drums and instead registered people to vote, candidates to challenge entrenched incumbents in primaries, and issue strict litmus tests and hold incumbents accountable to follow them the Democratic Party would be in much better shape.
Occupy was different, though. It was a warning shot.
The very successful Moral Monday movement in North Carolina is an offshoot of Occupy and there are a lot of spin off groups working on foreclosure resistance and activism more locally. OWS and the Tea Party are really different beasts, but I think a grassroots populist and progressive movement could mimic some of the tactics of the Tea Party and register new voters, recruit primary challengers, and win some seats. Making it a no Wall Street money movement could also help it attract independents and swing voters.
Just Curious.
If the Tea Party maintains control of the House it will be purely a function of gerrymandering, not popular appeal. Rememeber in 2012 one million more voters cast ballots for Democrats running for Congress than Republicans and that was prior to the now ill fated shutdown. As for the Senate, they’ve blown two chances to take that chamber already, third time a charm? Don’t hold your breath on that one, unless you’re looking to self suffocate.
I agree fully on what you say about the Occupy Wall Street operation.
It will remake the Senate Minority in it’s image. There will be fewer GOP Senators but more of them will be Tea Partier than not. Their influence at winning majorities will continue to get worse, but their role as kingmakers within the GOP will only get stronger.
There used to be three or four Tea Party Meetups in the Boston area. Now there’s barely one.
Just for shites and giggles go enter “Tea Party” on Twitter search and then go and click on “All Tea Party” that shows up on the bottom of the drop down. Noddle through the entries, clicking on each one and see how many have been dormant for a year or more, it’s amazing!!!
In 2010, the top songs apparently were TiK ToK, Need You Now, and Hey, Soul Sister. The Tea Party likewise represents a passing cultural taste.
The Tea Party after all never formed a unified political organization. It had no defined leadership. One couldn’t say one was or was not a member of Tea Party. It’s also open to getting old fast: How long does anyone want to play colonial dress-up and pretend to be Patrick Henry, or George Washington, or whoever the hell they thought sympathized with them across the gap of centuries? Pretending to be Thomas Jefferson can get tiring.
Instead, we should ask things like how large a part of the electorate and of the Republican Party are:
* people who think Obama is not a legitimate President
* people who think Democrats aim to enslave the population through dependence on social programs
* people who think compromise with Democrats, being a compromise with evil, is necessarily immoral
* people who think climate change is some kind of plot so climate scientists can rake in the dough and liberals can get license to do social engineering?
I bet the proportion of such people is still sizable and will continue to have an enormous influence on the Republican caucus in the House — a caucus which is likely to retain the majority next cycle and likely the cycle after that too. House districts being what they are, the Tea Party (or those sharing its ideology) have a lot of shrinking to do before Eisenhower Republicans wrest the Speaker’s gavel from Mr Boehner.
* people who think deficit spending in a recession is bad, and that slashing government spending will improve the economy.
They don’t regard themselves as inverse Keynsians. The view is more like: excessive government spending with its promise of soon-to-come, steep tax hikes, fills business with uncertainty, depresses investment, and loses jobs.
(That they hold this view represents a refusal to learn from history — or from Japan.)
Doris Kearns Goodwin was on full press on the Daily Show and Charlie Rose last night, and mentioned that prior to the Progressive Era the country had a religious faith that the market-operating under sound Calvinist principles-would give us good times when we were righteous and bad times when we sinned collectively. Look at the rhetoric on the right about debt, they are blaming working people for their ‘sins’ of getting bad faith credit on faulty mortages (Rick Santilli complaining about bailing about ‘losers’ in bad mortgages), blaming working people for the outsourced jobs (‘they shoulda learned a new skill set’), for Katrina (‘they shoulda left in their cars’)-this irrational heretical Christian belief is still the ideological drug of choice governing their economic policy.
Tip O’Neil called it on Reagan over 30 years ago
“I think he actually believes that giving more to rich people will make them work harder, whereas the only way to make poor people work is to tax their unemployment benefits.”
Hasn’t changed since.
I think it’s much simpler.
Think of our party: every campaign splits into one (more) liberal candidate and one (more) conservative candidate. If the candidates are really close, like Hillary and Obama in 2008, we’ take the small differences and turn them into Holy Wars.
Republicans are frustrated. They can’t figure out how to cut spending while still delivering pork to their districts. So spending keeps increasing. The Tea Party represents a vehicle for that frustration. Put another way, they’re as divided as we are.
Dennis Haskert was on NPR last month, and he discussed the Tea Party as a problem, but he wasn’t mad at them. He kept saying “a lot of people feel that way” or things like it. So the Tea Party will endure, unless they formally split from the GOP, in which case they would probably wither.
The Occupy movement was aimed directly at the real issue. Sadly, as jconway noted above, that movement so far refuses to engage the political reality that must be overcome.
The underlying divide that is seen in both the GOP and the Democratic Party is the growing split between the very wealthy and everyone else. I agree with Christopher that some of the wealthy strive to do the right thing. We need to embrace and build on that energy.
In my view, the stark disparity in wealth between the one percent and everyone else MUST be eliminated before any real progress can be made on virtually anything else. The economy will not recover for anyone except the one percent without accomplishing that. The prosperity that the rest of us rightfully seek in this wealthiest nation in human history will not be ours unless and until we fight this battle.
The Achilles heel of the one percent is that the wealth they crave comes from us, and therefore depends on us. A political movement that effectively stops the flow of wealth to the very wealthy (whether from the left or from the right) will prevail — real battles must, however, be fought along the way.
In my view, the real question is whether or not those battles can be won without bloodshed. The top one percent has made it very clear that they intend to hold on to their advantage. If we continue to be lured into complacency by crumbs and promises of crumbs, the exploitation and plundering will continue.
We elected an allegedly liberal President who has presided over the imposition of a frightening expansion of government intrusion. The militarization of our police continues at a terrifying pace. In the guise of “security”, we have accepted the presence of heavily-armed uniformed soldiers (calling them “police” is a lie) at virtually every significant public gathering.
Under the guise and rationalization of “those awful Republicans”, this administration in fact has time and again thrown the economic interests of middle America under the bus. The latest betrayal is its willingness to shred Social Security benefits in alleged pursuit of some “grand bargain” with the political soldiers of the one percent. We progressives must stop the betrayals.
The only way to stop this dismantling of the society we say we cherish is to engage the battle, peacefully but forcefully, right now. As crazy and dangerous as they are, elements of the Tea Party can and should be our allies.
Elizabeth Warren understands all this. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama do not.
I strongly disagree with the Axelrod’s that the Obama coalition is sustainable because it is centrist economically. If anything, I would argue it is stable in spite of that. Booker doesn’t inspire anyone my age, and wouldn’t get the same kind of youthful volunteers that fueled Obama’s rise in Iowa. I don’t see Hillary doing it either. Warren definitely can. Not just in MA. Good friends in Occupy Chicago, the CTU, former co-workers from Ohio State- we all know and love her. And those of us that felt burned by Obama are not ready to get burned by Hillary.
I think we can have an even wider and more enduring Democratic majority if we revive, not the Obama coalition but the Roosevelt one. Sherrod Brown out polled Obama in Ohio. We can get progressive in purple states who make populist pitches. Daschle’s former chief of staff, Reich Weiland, is polling even or ahead to replace Tim Johnson since he has been loudly running against ‘big moneyed interests’ and even attracting some cross support from the tea party.
If we can revive the spirit of William Jennings Bryan’s populism and anti-imperialism (without his repugnant social conservatism) we can do a lot to win back the white working class. We are literally giving up states and voters where we should be far more competitive. In a decade social issues will no longer be useful wedges for either side.
or two, or 27 … then I agree with a lot of it. I think the shot at Obama is unfair, but that’s how BMG rolls.
But Tom — given what you just said, if someone offered you a Democratic Tea Party — that is, no compromise on core issues, no regard for what the press says, no clear leadership as a PERK — wouldn’t you join it? I would seriously consider it, if only for the message it sends to the mainstream party: we take this seriously.
And I think the Republican Tea Party works the same way; some people are making a point. Some others are in open revolt, and they’d split formally but they fear irrelevance.
I think I agree, sort of.
I’m not sure I’m signed up for “no regard for what the press says”, because one thing I think we should do better and louder is call out the lies and disinformation that are so widely published in allegedly mainstream outlets.
For example, our own Boston Globe published yet more climate change denier drivel earlier this month. I’d like to see us do more to make such rubbish unprofitable to print.
I’m also not sure I understand what you mean by “no clear leadership as a PERK”.
At the same time, I think we agree that we progressives need to “act up” more — or at least some of us.
That should be a liability for a political movement, but maybe it’s a plus in this case. No one to rein them in, apologize for them, or throw them under the bus.
One side-effect of the Right’s new-found aversion to earmarks is that it forces all votes to be ideological. That is oddly purer and maybe better, but Congress has never functioned that way: log rolling has always been necessary to push legislation through.
Mike Capuano said earmarks were the currency of Congress — you vote for mine, and I’ll vote for yours. He was lamenting their demise, saying it added to discord.
But shouldn’t funding expenditures stand on their own merits? Congress seems to think the government is an ATM for their districts (in this case, truly both parties).
The balance of payments between the federal government and a particular state should, in my view, reflect the votes cast by that state’s representatives on budget matters — specifically regarding the federal deficit.
A state whose representatives loudly decry the “out of control” federal deficit and vote accordingly should be immediately constrained to act on that concern by raising federal taxes within that state and slashing federal spending in that state so that the balance of payments for that state is — prior to any federal shutdown — a net zero.
Perhaps if the impact of these ill-advised “austerity” measures fell first on the red-state right-wingers who advocate them, the support for them might be less enthusiastic. Saner voices speaking to economic reality might then be easier to hear.
Tip O’Neils memoirs are instructive o this. The most egregious example
Is Tips drinking buddy and Machine Pol extraordinaire Dan “Rosty” Rostenkowski who supported Reagan on the contras in exchange for funding the Orange Line. While I hate the Contras, I’m glad the southwest side finally got public transit and its paid off every time I go to the airport.
Chalk up another Tea Party defeat, in the deep south, no less!
See Duck Dynasty’-backed candidate wins Louisiana congressional election; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/17/louisiana-voters-pick-between-two-republicans-to-fill-open-congressional-seat/
To wit: “Vance McAllister, a political newcomer with the backing of the popular “Duck Dynasty” TV family, was elected as Louisiana’s newest member of Congress Saturday night. According to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website, McAllister led establishment candidate Neil Riser 59.7 percent to 40.3 percent — a difference of over 17,500 votes — with 976 of a possible 981 precincts reporting…”
“Many GOP races since 2010 have in some form been a Tea Party-vs.-establishment candidate showdown. However, Riser doubled as both the establishment candidate and Tea Party favorite, promoting his experience but promising strident opposition to President Obama…McAllister ran as the more measured pragmatist, criticizing Washington gridlock and hyper-partisanship, particularly on Obama’s health care law…”
“He [Riser]was endorsed by the Tea Party of Louisiana and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-aligned national political action group.”
“McAllister says Republicans should show the president respect and that the best course on health care is to work on improving Obama’s signature law since he was re-elected and Democrats still control the Senate.”
Here are just two more related articles that support my point:
Judd Gregg: Impact of shutdown lingers; http://thehill.com/opinion/judd-gregg/190507-judd-gregg-impact-of-shutdown-lingers-on
Decision time for Tea Party movement in U.S. political contests; http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/20/us-usa-politics-teaparty-idUSBRE9AJ08X20131120