Politics & Society

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT / Even Grassroots Need to Grow up Some Day

Irene Senfter

venerdì 5 marzo 2010

America has suffered a cataclysm. For millions, the recession of 2008 – 2009 has turned the American dream into a shameful nightmare. A nation’s confidence has been uprooted. Many long to wake up to a new morning in America. The sun is indeed rising: in Tea Party country.

The Tea Party movement, a loose network of local groups fighting for limited government and free markets, is rapidly growing. The movement’s passion, force and radical ideas scare party leaders and activists of all stripes. A sober look at political realities reveals that fear to be exaggerated, however. The Tea Party followers are already aligning themselves with the establishment, even while fiercely proclaiming their independence.

Since Rick Santelli’s “ramble” against mortgage bailouts on CNBC in February of 2009, thousands of Americans have organized in local Tea Party groups. Their grassroots campaigns cry afoul of big government and impending tyranny. Rightwing extremists such as Patriots, “Birchers”, libertarians, birthers and gun-right activists are joining in the cause and claiming space in the Tea Party’s ample spotlight. Conservative lobbying groups, foremost FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, are harnessing the activists’ zeal to promote their own special interests.

Several influential publications have recently produced research on the subject. Their findings shed light into the Tea Party backyard and clarify its potential. As facts and numbers are difficult to come by, journalists have focused mainly on the personal stories of Tea Party activists, telling a tale of economic hardship and private transformation.

Ben McGrath from the New Yorker has conducted extensive interviews around Tea Party country. He concludes that the movement is an amorphous social group, which unifies around a strong opposition to the status quo and big government. In his opinion, the Internet, cable news and the collapse of Wall Street and Detroit have helped to advance the movement to the point it is today.

David Barstow from the New York Times has equally found that a significant number of Tea Party supporters react primarily to the trauma of the Great Recession. New Yorker writer John Cassidy, underscores in his blog “Rational Irrationality” how the belief in America as a “chosen nation” causes many Americans to underestimate the role of the federal government in political and economic development.

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These days many analysts are reviewing Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (Harpers Magazine, 1964). Hofstadter (1916-1970), a well-respected historian at Columbia University, argued how at any period in time there is a persistent minority in every society that is psychically predisposed to espouse paranoid conspiracy theories. Certain religious or social developments, but also historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties.

In his essay he describes how the rightwing feels dispossessed, as if Intellectuals and Cosmopolitans acting from within the very heart of American power had taken America away from them. The whole political order and the entire system of human values seem at stake. Although George F. Will from the Washington Post calls Hofstadter “the iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension”, the essay certainly reads like an analysis of contemporary politics as seen on Fox News.

However, among Tea Party followers, conspiracy theories and cries for a Second Revolution are not preponderant, merely more visible and certainly more dramatic. The scores of regular Americans who have quite rational grievances against the government compound the “silent majority” in the movement.

Michael Gerson of the Washington Post maintains that the movement will need to shed its extremists if it seeks enduring influence. In his words, every political movement is threatened by the impatient and irresponsible. Ultimately, he considers the Tea Party movement as an intensification of conservative activism, not the triumph of the paranoid style of politics.

Unlike some of the paranoids studied by Hofstadter, the Tea Party movement will not forever be estranged from the political process. The battle cries “Can you hear us now” and “Is it 2012 yet”, but most of all the recruiting of candidates such as Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, tell as much.

The movement’s declared goal, if it can declare one since it is lacking both structure and leadership, are the midterm elections of November 2010, and, finally, the Presidential Election of 2012. After New York’s 23rd Congressional District special election it is facing the possibility of real political clout.

Thus, now is the time to roll back the sleeves and play the election game. The movement may still vow to bring down both blue and red along with the White House, but soon it will look and act much like a political party itself. Extremist figures will exit through the back door.

If the Tea Partiers play their cards well, they will score a few victories across America, but chances of another Revolution or anything scarier than the passage of electoral seats to populist candidates are remote. After all, Scott Brown, the Massachusetts candidate for Senate supported by the Tea Party, has just voted on a bipartisan 15bn jobs bill.

The most valuable thing about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen, quotes Hofstadter. Common sense tells us that even grassroots need to grow up some day. The sun may be shining on the Tea Partiers, but winter is never far away in the United States of America – unless you live in Florida.

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