Chris Graham: Can the Tea Party really upset the political applecart?
The short answer: No, not really
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Can the Tea Party movement succeed in becoming a sustainable, viable force in U.S. politics? From an organizational perspective, it could be a challenge.
“They’re going to have to become a little more specific about their broader ideology, that they are not just some right-wingers, that these are some of the things that they stand for, these are some of the things that they rally around. And it’s not just, We hate this type of person, but, This is what we stand for. It wouldn’t be negative-based politics. It would be, What do they actually stand for?” said David McCleary, the author of Leaving Prisons: Releasing Your Trapped Value and a leadership and organizational consultant, in an interview with The AFP Show news podcast last week.
“Do that, collect some data, have some meetings, and really try to forge a collective sense of where this very divergent group of people, where their minds, where they would tend to collide on issues. That’s where their strength would lie,” McCleary said.
It is easier said than it can be done. Sure, the movement is trying to present itself, as McCleary recommends, as being broad-based in terms of its ideological makeup, but in truth the Tea Party set is by and large not just conservative but stridently ultraconservative in outlook, and its backbone is made up of people who would probably prefer that their efforts go to building the Republican Party and more specifically the far right wing of the Republican Party than building a fledgling third-party effort.
Which isn’t to say that the disillusionment being best expressed right now by the Tea Party movement isn’t felt somewhat across the political spectrum, or that there might not be potential for the development of a third party that could have some viability.
Frustration on the left and particularly in the center of the political spectrum seems to be pushing a pending redistribution of political power, though how far that goes beyond throwing the current bums (in the form of Democrats) out in the favor of the bums that we just threw out not that long ago (in the form of the Republicans) remains to be seen.
McCleary offers an algebraic equation to explain where he sees things going: “Spurious leaders plus furious followers equal power redistribution.”
I would argue that the furious followers, being divided amongst themselves in the camps of the right, the center and the left, could have a hard time achieving true power redistribution from the current crop of spurious leaders. The best we’re going to get is power recycling, with more to come as our frustrations will no doubt be there with the new new bums replacing the old new bums in our collective crosshairs.
Chris, I don’t think that most Tea Partiers are interested in the “far right-wing” of the Republican party. The ones I know–and I count myself among them–are best described as “constitutionalists.” I would say, however, that some right wing Republicans would like to use the Tea Party to bolster their standing.
Interesting perspective. The Tea Party folks I’ve talked with at length are Republicans using the Tea Party as cover.
It’s going to be an interesting 10 months until Election Day. Lots of Tea vs. Republican and Progressive vs. Democratic battles ahead in the election runup.
Well stated. I’d love to see a viable third party emerge from this period of change.
I think the Tea Party’s primary role will be one of spoiler. This kind of thing crops up periodically in American politics, but it’s rare for it to turn into a viable third party. Think Ralph Nader rather than Ross Perot. It’s a role that can be crucial, especially in tight elections. but unlikely to result in a third-party candidate actually winning. The exception is in local elections, where the number of voters involved is small, and a handful of votes can swing the results.
The big question for this election is not the Tea Party, but where do progressives go? Do they vote for Democrats or stay at home? You’ll still have tight elections if Democratic turnout is way down, even if there’s a third-party challenge from the right.
Good points, Jim. I did my fourth-year thesis in college on third parties in American politics. To say that they are even rarely successful would be to overstate their role. At best, third parties are successful to the point of one of the two major parties co-opting their message. I wrote this paper in the fall of 1993, at the height of Perot’s popularity. That’s what I was predicting after his 19 percent showing in the 1992 election. He got 8 percent of the vote in 1996. Bill Clinton was able to co-opt Perot’s fiscal-discipline message.
The good news for America in the 1990s was that Clinton by co-opting Perot was able to run budget surpluses at the end of his term.
The impact of the Tea Party movement could be similar. Take away the hysterics of those on the fringe who are using the Tea Party to question Obama’s citizenship and do arts and crafts projects to portray him with a Hitler mustache, of course.
The amateur economist in me worries that the impact could be more substantial than is good for us. Cutting government spending in a recovery following a deep recession is to me a certain recipe for economic disaster. It was easier for Clinton to cut spending and balance budgets in the 1990s because the George H.W. Bush recession wasn’t as deep, and the recovery was relatively swift and strong. Even Clinton would have a hard time with the recession-recovery cycle we’re in now.
I yield to the member who did his fourth-year thesis on the subject.
Good info, Chris. It’s easy to forget history when we get wrapped up in the events of the day, thinking that they’re somehow unique. We need to remind ourselves occasionally that they’re not.
The Tea Party movement has the choice of being an impetus for the good, as Perot’s fact-based campaigns tended to be. Or, they can just be a bunch of rabble-rousers, with no coherent message. Time will tell.
Aren’t Tea Partiers just a certain conservative and populist part of the Republican Party, with some libertarian influences? I don’t see how their message is terribly distinct from that of the Republican Party generally. Won’t they just rally around Romney, or Palin, or whoever the Republican nominee is in 2012?
The Republicans were the only truly successful third party. Perhaps someone should restart the Whigs. We could use some internal improvements and canal building ….
From Ed Ayers’ history class, I remember that we had panics every 20 years, and the way we worked through them was internal improvements and canals. Those Whigs were onto something …