Posted on 03/05/2014 7:11:33 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As the Tea Party celebrates its five-year anniversary, many commentators are asking whether the grassroots anti–Big Government movement is still relevant.
In some ways, this seems a silly question. The Tea Party has been enormously successful in changing the terms of the national debate on issues such as debt and spending. And, while its favored candidates have suffered some high-profile defeats, it has also won important victories. The Republican midterm sweep of 2010 would not have been possible without its energy and enthusiasm.
Yet it’s also true that the Tea Party’s clout is waning. According to the most recent Gallup poll, just 30 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the movement, the lowest level in its history. This seems particularly unsettling when polls also show that the public still overwhelmingly supports the Tea Party objective of limited government. In fact, a recent Gallup poll shows a record 72 percent of Americans feels that big government is the greatest threat to the future of the country. Voters who feel that way should be flocking to the Tea Party in droves.
They are not.
Some of it might be a question of tactics. Americans tend to dislike confrontation from their political leaders. Certainly, things like the government shutdown tended to turn off some voters, especially when misrepresented by a biased media. The overheated rhetoric of some tea-party leaders may also drive away otherwise sympathetic voters. Calling every dissenting Republican a RINO or inferring that President Obama is some sort of crypto-Muslim Communist is not going to win friends or influence people. Some tea-party activists definitely come across as a bit over-caffeinated.
But there is also a more fundamental issue at play here: Is the Tea Party still the Tea Party?
Sparked by outrage over the Wall Street bailouts, the original Tea Party was motivated by an opposition to Big Government. The motto of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest and most influential groups, was “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.” The Tea Party’s core issues were the skyrocketing national debt and opposition to Obamacare.
Social issues were not part of the platform. In fact, Jenny Beth Martin, leader of the Tea Party Patriots told the New York Times, “When people ask about [social issues], we say, ‘Go get involved in other organizations that already deal with social issues very well.’ We have to be diligent and stay on message.”
In an April 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll, barely 14 percent of Tea Party supporters said social issues were more important to them than economic issues.
As a result, the group was able to build a broad coalition of economic conservatives — traditional Republicans, of course, but also libertarians, and fiscally conservative socially tolerant suburbanites who had drifted away from the GOP in recent years. In national surveys, roughly 40 percent of Tea Party supporters once described themselves as libertarian or libertarian-leaning.
These disparate groups might have disagreed about whether Adam and Steve should be able to get married, but they agreed that both Adam and Steve were overtaxed and being spent into bankruptcy by an out-of-control federal government.
But the Tea Party has drifted away from its strict economic-conservative origins. Yes, opposition to Obamacare and government spending remain priorities. But increasingly issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration have become the tail that wags the dog.
Thus you now hear Judson Phillips, the head of Tea Party Nation, a group that once said social issues were “just not something that is on our radar,” denouncing gay marriage as “a freak show, involving 3 men, 5 women, 2 dogs, and a Bengal tiger.” Or Scottie Neil Hughes, of the Tea Party News Network, suggesting that women who have abortions should be jailed. And, during last summer’s congressional town-hall season, Tea Party Patriots was organizing not against Obamacare or raising the debt ceiling, but against immigration reform.
According to the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Tea Party members are now farther to the right on social issues than Americans as a whole or even the Republican party. For example, while the public now narrowly approves of gay marriage, Tea Party members disapprove by nearly two to one. The public is largely split on abortion, but 60 percent of tea partiers believe it should be illegal in all or most cases. Tea Party members are roughly 20 percentage points more likely than the general public to oppose a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. A majority of Tea Party supporters now say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on issues.
As a result, economic conservatives, libertarians, and anti-tax moderates are leaving the movement. Fewer than a quarter of tea partiers now describe themselves as libertarian-leaning. In last fall’s Virginia gubernatorial election, socially moderate suburbanites overwhelmingly backed Democrat Terry McAuliffe over tea-party favorite and arch-social-conservative Ken Cuccinelli.
The tea party has begun to look not like a broad-based coalition of economic conservatives but simply the most conservative wing of the Republican Party. The tent is getting smaller. As Steve Billet, professor of political management at George Washington University, noted, “The polls suggest that where the Tea Party has failed is when they tried to expand their agenda beyond the explicit budgetary issues, and got much more involved in some other social issues.”
It’s not as though the issues that first sparked the Tea Party have gone away: TARP itself may have been largely repaid, but the culture of crony capitalism behind it still thrives. Deficits are in temporary decline, but the national debt continues to grow and the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare continue to mount. Obamacare, if anything, is proving to be an even bigger disaster than anticipated. The need for a strong voice in opposition to Big Government is as great now as it has ever been.
And the Tea Party is far from powerless. It continues to tap into grassroots mistrust of the Washington establishment. Its ability to mount primary challenges will keep Republicans from straying too far from its agenda. But if it hopes to regain the power it once had to reshape the American political landscape, it should remember why it started in the first place.
— Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
Good news, the Dems will lose the USA Senate, that is a given.
Midterm elections this year will make 2010 look like a day at the beach.
Second, even the GOP has derided the TEA party as anything from marginal in influence to inconsequential--to the point many TEA party supported candidates have abandoned the principles that got them TEA party backing in the first place. (When you win and still can't make headway, a lot of people will wonder why put out the effort.)
The TEA party concept has been trashed by opponents and grabbed by those who would 'lead' a grassroots movement. While a grassroots movement might follow some natural leaders from within, the top-down arrangement doesn't work (except to funnel donations) to the people who would deem themselves leaders. That can be a turn-off, just another plea in an overstuffed inbox already full of donation requests.
Whether Adam and Steve were together or not wasn't a serious issue four years ago, so it came on the radar since then, along with court decisions forcing Christian Businesses to act against their beliefs to serve such arrangements or close shop.
I really doubt, despite the saturation campaign of the homos to get some sort of 'acceptance' that the polls accurately reflect the beliefs of the American people, but would wager that there are numerous biases inherent in the populations polled, the way the questions are asked, and the means of response.
Claiming social issues are the dividing factor only marginalizes the impact of the TEA party because it divides, at least in theory, people who realize that government waste is government waste, largesse is largesse, and failure to have a budget, much less balance one, is part of the problem.
Similarly, I'm not so sure the Abortion issue is such a split as the polls allegedly claim.
While those of us who disagree with the homosexual agenda or abortion find ourselves constantly under attack in the media, and in some instances people may be cowed against speaking up the homonazis, that would not cause people to stop pushing against spending more than the country can afford, especially wastefully.
There is no way to separate all the social issues from the fiscal ones, simply because the fiscal issues are related to the social ones. You can't spend public money supporting the abortion infrastructure or giving grants to organizations which funnel money into Planned Parenthood or require people to buy state approved insurance which funds abortions--and subsidize it with public dollars without entangling the issues.
While things have become more complex, it is difficult to avoid the fact that the IRS has been used to disfavor organizations which should have been nonprofit, and that the use of the IRS in that way also deters people from putting their name on the rolls for fear of being audited--a process which can be expensive and disruptive even if no wrong is ever found.
That disruption can kill a small business, wreck relations with vendors, and cost a family dearly.
So with the lawless regime in Washington, with every communication snooped, is it any wonder people are more quiet about their doings and beliefs?
Is it any wonder that there would be an appearance of lagging support?
It is there, just fewer people are talking loudly less the neogestapo are listening in.
Of course it was not.
It was started about bailouts, the deficit and taxation. That's what the focus should remain.
I consider myself to be a constitutional conservative. And I consider all of those who would enable invaders staying in the US to be traitors.
That clearly is not true.
Bloviating under a false pretense. Wait until the masses see there tax returns this year and the next. Lets see how weak us Tea Party people are when obama death care starts denying care and those costs skyrocket int the stratosphere.
I think that the IRS has a different take on the Tea Party than the author of this pathetic article.
Let other groups deal with the social issues.
Tea Party is getting a bad rap by going off message.
At the risk of being called ‘anal’ it is NOT the
Tea Party
it is the TEA Party
Even in answers to this particular ‘hit’ piece, very few FReepers refer to it as TEA
Tea Party is Alice and the Mad Hatter sitting down to a spot of tea while RUINING the rest of the country.
Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea?
Alice: Well, I haven’t had any yet, so I can’t very well take more.
March Hare: Ah, you mean you can’t very well take less.
Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing.
See, ‘they’ look at Tea Party as in ref to the above chat.
Which definitely looks like true LIB SPEAK...
 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' |
Socialism is a form of both economic and moralistic control of and by a central government.....
the tea party was created to battle the largest part of the socialist agenda, that is the control of the economy by a central government...
now for the second part, the libs want to control us moralistically through a central government and various laws and regulations....
now for the hard to accept part.....
social conservatives want to control us moralistically through a central government and various laws and regulations...
Any questions?????
Which definitely looks like true LIB SPEAK
= = = = = = = = = = =
Yes...definitely...
Few weeks ago I was eating lunch (out) and oblivious to those around me (other than in a ‘safety’ mode) and sporting my ‘cold’ humorless ‘in the company of complete strangers’ face.
Tube was on the news and I was glancing occasionally (Not CNN but still ‘not interested) and the guy next to me (2 seats down) cleared his throat and said
“that ad says if you have a tax debt over 100 thou, contact them and you will probably only pay 3 or 4 thousand or maybe less”.
“If that is the case, why file at all, let it get up to a several hundred grand or more and call that law firm”.
My ‘ears and eyes’ perked up and I was glad to find a like thinking, completely logical person in the establishment......
He was there when I came in and ‘acting’ like I normally do, he must have seen me smirk or guffaw when certain pols were speaking......
Not about your ignorance of how people vote.
Social liberals are massively, overwhelmingly pro-socialist, democrat voters.
Social conservatives are massively, overwhelmingly, conservative voters, and the tea party has always been made up overwhelmingly of social conservatives.
RiNO droppings.
First they tried to define conservatives out of the GOP. Now they're trying to define conservatives out of the Tea Party, by redefining the Tea Party to be the same thing as the "economic conservatives" that they once said were the real GOP conservatives.
Same bull, different day.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are still pounding social issues like there's no tomorrow -- they aren't afraid someone is going to call them a raciss, because they know the MSM RatMedia have their backs, and if anyone DOES call them, or prove that they are, racists, nobody will ever hear it. (Mark Halperin's boast/promise to Charlie Rose at the GOP National Convention 2012.)
Preclusive security -- the 'Rats have got each others' backs.
Nice job of sidestepping the issue...
and for your information the original tea party (Taxes Enoug Already) was made up of b
BOTH democrats and republicans who had enough of overtaxation..
the social(ist) conservatives came along later and tried to change the agenda....
I didn’t side step any issue, social conservatives are conservative, anti-socialist voters, and the social liberals vote democrat.
That is just the facts.
The fact is that naturally the tea party is made up mostly of social conservatives (and republicans), I didn’t say that was their issue, but as usual, social liberals detest the tea party.
Social conservatives, are the conservatives.
February 23rd, 2011
Tea Party support correlates to religious affiliation, survey finds
The Tea Party hardly claims to be a religious movement - it mostly advocates for smaller government and lower taxes - but feelings about the movement correlate to affiliation with certain religious groups, according to new survey data from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants are roughly five times more likely to agree with the Tea Party movement than to disagree with it, Pew found. American Jews, meanwhile, are nearly three times as likely to disagree with the movement than agree with it.
Tea Party supporters are “much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on ... social issues” like abortion and same-sex marriage, according to the Pew analysis.
“They draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants,” the analysis said of the Tea Party.
Navel gazing bull cookies.
DO YOU NOTICE THE GROUP WHO DESPISES THE TEA PARTY?
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