Wednesday, March 05, 2014 9:11:33 AM · by SeekAndFind · 88 replies
National Review ^ | 03/05/2014 | Michael Tanner
Lest we forget.
Posted on 03/06/2014 1:52:35 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Yesterday, Cato Institute senior fellow Michael Tanner made the case at National Review Online that the Tea Party is waning. He identified what he sees as the main problem: the Tea Party is getting mixed up in social issues, which is not only hurting their brand but also driving away libertarians.
It is true that on Capitol Hill, the Tea Party has lost a great deal of influence. Since September, the Tea Party has seen the government reopen without slowing – never mind stopping – the Affordable Care Act. The debt ceiling has been dissolved and raised, respectively, and a budget deal that neutered sequester got bipartisan support.
But I have my doubts that it’s due to a sudden upswell of social conservatism among Tea Party activists. Tanner cites socially conservative comments from Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation and Scottie Neil Hughes of Tea Party News Network, but then ties my former employer Tea Party Patriots (TPP) into his assessment by noting that “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.”
However, immigration reform is certainly an economic and spending issue as well as a social issue. Furthermore, when the immigration debate started a senior Capitol Hill press staffer asked me about TPP’s possible involvement in the discussions. I was told in no uncertain way by my boss that we were not going to get involved at the time, and we did not – until the costs started coming to light, and constitutional questions were raised.
So why is the Tea Party losing influence in Washington? While Monday Morning-quarterbacking is admittedly easier than being in the trenches during tough times – punditry is a field that does not seem to punish wrong conclusions – I see two major causes.
The first is by far the most important: the leaders in both political parties want power. They may disagree on how to garner the power for themselves, but they would rather gush over a terrible budget deal because suddenly everyone is singing “Kumbaya” than actually do what’s right, constitutional, and best for the country.
The Tea Party threatens that power, and for a while GOP leaders – and some Democrats – were too scared of Tea Party activists to revert fully back to power-grabbing form. Now, however, they are no longer scared of the Tea Party, and thus the grassroots have lost power on Capitol Hill.
Why they’re not scared brings us to the second reason the Tea Party has lost influence: Several tactical errors in the last 14 months gave GOP leaders all the excuse they needed to brush off the Tea Party and revert back to form.
Consider the following:
In early 2013, fiscal cliff legislation was passed into law. It was a pretty awful piece of legislation, complete with a one-year farm bill, delay of the sequester’s impact, and $67 billion in special interest tax loopholes. It also, most importantly, raised taxes on the American people.
Tea Party activists went into attack mode, with Erick Erickson declaring the whole disaster to be “the McConnell tax hike.” Yet what was often ignored was how, due to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the unwise payroll tax cut, taxes were set to skyrocket. So, yes, the fiscal cliff legislation raised taxes, but thanks to the GOP the damage was somewhat limited. Not as limited as it should have been, but limited.
In June of last year, conservatives held the line and voted down the farm bill. Unfortunately, this strong stance was not backed by better legislation that had the backing of a conservative coalition. Which meant things went exactly as Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) predicted at the time: A very bad farm bill in June turned into an atrocious one earlier this year, and passed into law.
Should conservatives have held the line in June? I’m not such a Monday Morning quarterback that I would feel comfortable saying one way or the other. But given the way the bill’s underlying laws are written, unraveling the mess takes time, and multiple reform efforts. So it would have been good to see a more comprehensive strategy be brought to the fore by its opponents, instead of simply saying “no” to the bill that was brought forward. (To his credit, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), a leading opponent of the bill, did have his own plan drawn up and proposed.)
Finally, the partial government shutdown is what really did the Tea Party in on Capitol Hill. For two months, Republicans were attacked, and told if they didn’t stand with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) they were RINOs. This is opposed to being encouraged to stand with the Tea Party and fight for fairness for the American people because President Obama was delaying the law’s effects for his allies.
Even Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), one of the strongest fiscal conservatives in the last 20 years, was suddenly in the RINO category to many. All because, in many cases, of a difference of opinion on tactics, not principles.
And so the government partially shut down – fully 17 percent, which is pitifully small to everyone but the mainstream media and opportunistic politicians – and public opinion quickly turned against the Tea Party. The government reopened, the ACA continued to be implemented, and the establishment GOP finally had an excuse to push the Tea Party aside and ignore its principles and influence.
Could things have gone differently? Certainly, GOP power players prefer to spend, spend, spend. But what if the Tea Party had worked with Speaker Boehner on acceptable compromises on the fiscal cliff, the farm bill, and the shutdown?
For example, instead of fighting tooth-and-nail over fully delaying the ACA, conservatives could have pushed for a delay of the individual mandate, keeping the sequester in place, and eliminating the ACA congressional loophole. These would have had full GOP support, likely gotten passed into law, and had the GOP and conservatives focused on the debt ceiling.
Such a tactic would have also given the Tea Party the ability to say to Boehner, “Look, we compromised three times. We played your game. Now play ours, and don’t raise the debt ceiling.” And he would have listened, like he did during the partial shutdown – except with better results.
I would love to see a hard line taken on every issue, but that simply isn’t where things are in D.C. The farm bill is a convoluted mess that takes time to unravel, and the votes and public opinion weren’t there on the ACA/shutdown fight. The country won’t win on a hard-line approach to those situations, especially when small to medium chops can be made that would move the ball int the right direction.
However, on some issues, hard-line approaches are wise on both principles and tactics. With the debt ceiling, for example, conservatives should take a stand. No matter what the political consequences end up being, cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in spending to balance the budget – which is what would happen if the debt ceiling was not raised – is worth the consequences in media attacks and complaints from politicians.
Again, the biggest problem here is the political class, its love for power, and its distaste for fiscal responsibility. The Tea Party made some tactical errors, and this gave the power players in the GOP an excuse to ignore the Tea Party. Of course, these same politicians, lobbyists, and media folks also ignore what Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle pointed out a couple of months ago: If it wasn’t for the Tea Party, gun control and amnesty would be law instead of largely editorial page wishes at the New York Times.
But, hey – that doesn’t fit into Washington’s “country bumpkins” image of Tea Party activists.
Lest we forget.
No, and no. Read the Declaration. God bless the tea party.
Everybody wants to claim the Tea Party as their own. This inlcudes libertarians and SoCons. Even plenty of GOP-e RINO’S like to pass themselves off as Tea Partiers.
Truth is - no one group can legitimately claim Tea Party values are their own exclusively.
Morality is the foundation of economics.
Why the Tea Party’s Waning, Not Winning: It strayed from its original focus on economic issues
I’ve long believed that had the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah voted for low taxes, that would not have spared them God’s Righteous Wrath. As you so rightly stated, morality is the foundation of economics. And the Inerrant, Everlasting Word of God is the cornerstone of America.
I know that the tea party has always been made up overwhelmingly of social conservatives, but I wasn’t aware that the tea party had shifted to social conservative issues.
Idiot author elaborating an idiot premise.
It is the foundation of everything in my view. How can you enter into an agreement on anything with immoral people who cannot be trusted honor it?
Amen
The Taxed Enough Already Party was founded upon economic and tax/budget issues. True, so many other groups have tried to adapt it to their causes and I think that may be an issue.
I don’t recall it being a moralistic or social movement at the beginning and it’s real message was that many Americans could agree that D.C. was taxing and spending way too much regardless of their social background. Much like the ladies in the picture above.
They don’t call it Hot Air for nothing.
The tea party isn’t owned by anyone, if some want to focus on only spending issues that’s their right, if others want to focus on social issued: Great! If still more want to focus on both, EVEN BETTER!!
There is no tea party anymore. I’m a constitutional conservative. As such, I want my government to do one of its few real obligations. That would be to protect and defend the US from foreign aggression.
I attended over 200 tea party rallies from sea to shining sea. The overriding goal was and is a return to the constitution. God bless America was a popular theme.
” The overriding goal was and is a return to the constitution”
Okay, how is that at odds with what I said?
If you don’t have morals, you don’t have anything. If we adopt a go with the flow attitude, we who are already circling the drain will be flushed away. The complete collapse will not happened tomorrow or for a long time. But we will have a slow and steady decay and eventually this country will look like Detroit.
I’m a senior citizen. My parents and grandparents didn’t have a lot. My grandmother was very poor after her husband died. But they all knew right from wrong. Now, we race from activity to activity and when something seems wrong, we tell ourselves that we will think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and we find another reason not to notice.
I thought TEA was for Taxed Enough Already. Smaller governments don’t intrude on personal decisions. Leadership can come from a pulpit; it needn’t come from Washington on every subject. If the pastors can’t be persuasive don’t count on DC to pick up the slack. People have to do some things for themselves.
Let the Talking Knuckleheads think and say what they want about the Tea Party. I always love surprises.
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