"The Tea Party as a Movement, Not a Faction"

“The Tea Party as a Movement, Not a Faction”

By: J. Hunter

Tea Party Ad (Pic1)

Since the 2010 election, it has been unclear what will be the future role of the Tea Party. Liberals, dismayed by the group’s influence and efficacy, fancy suggesting that it will become an uncontrollable group of obstructionists and villains. Daniel Stone writes a piece that appears in The Daily Beast claiming that “this ragtag band of proud obstructionists is already looking down the calendar to its next targets: blocking President Obama’s judicial and federal-agency nominations, radically restructuring Medicare and other entitlement programs, and maybe even killing the gasoline tax.”[1] God willing, Stone’s worst nightmare will come true. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warns that the movement that made her “Minority Speaker” seeks to “[destroy] the public space.” The Democratic Congressman from Indiana, Andre Carson, suspects an even more sinister—and absurd—goal for the Tea Party. “Some of them in Congress right now,” he said at a Black Caucus Job Tour event in Miami, “with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree.”[2]

As usual, the liberal perspective offers little intelligent insight. What is more fascinating though, is to consider the Tea Party’s role in the larger conservative movement. The media portrays the Tea Party as a faction of the Republican Party that is at odds with the party’s objectives at large. Dave Cook, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, quotes a Republican pollster, Bill McInturff, who believes that the Tea Party splits the GOP into thirds. “The groups can vary sharply in terms of ‘their issue positions and their intensity.”[3] The Nation’s, John Nichols, writes, “the party with the most serious divisions…is the Republicans” because of the Tea Party.[4] Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman, Robert Menendez, reportedly called on campaign managers to “drive a wedge between moderate voters and tea-party style conservatives.”[5]

What liberals, media and some conservatives seem to forget is the history of the modern conservative movement—a movement shaped by decades of sharp disagreement and debate that led to Fusionism, and ultimately, the modern conservative movement.

Tea Party Protest in Chicago (Pic2)

Fusionism is the coalescence of the various ideological sects of the conservative movement into one cohesive unit. The word “cohesive” is used loosely as you can see remnants of ideological differences still, to this day, between traditional conservatives who are motivated primarily by matters security, fiscal or social and libertarians. This process of hard-fought compromising, aimed at repelling liberal plots to expand the size of government, also helped the modern conservative movement sharpen its policy positions and cope with internal divergent viewpoints. Thus, the idea that the Tea Party could unwind the conservative movement is wishful thinking that ignores the very essence and history of conservatism.

That said, however, there is another aspect of the Tea Party’s relationship with the conservative movement that may help predict its future—the Tea Party’s ideology. Since the movement began, conservatives and liberals alike struggled to define what ideology (if any) motivated Tea Party conservatives. Are they libertarian budget hawks? Are they social conservatives motivated to protest by fiscal issues? What percentage of the Tea Party is made up of disaffected liberals or independent voters? Because the Tea Party does not have a body of literature written by people advocating the supremacy of Tea Party ideals, an advantage that Fusionist factions had with writers like Frank Meyer and L. Brent Bozell, these questions have largely gone unanswered.

Tea Partier Making the Case against Obama's Deficit Spending (Pic3)

What seems evident, despite the Tea Party’s amorphousness, is that the movement consists of many stripes of conservative. It is libertarian while paradoxically welcoming of religious values. It is fiscally conservative, yet reticent to tackle defense spending. It is pragmatic, though sometimes short-sighted. The Tea Party is a movement bred of the modern conservative movement, not a faction apart from conservatism. In this regard, it poses no threat to conservatism at all. Fusing with the Tea Party is impossible, for there is no organized Tea Party with which to contend. Instead, it is simply an organic expression of conservative populism—an expression that has been met with the same hostility and apprehension as modern conservatism at large. Liberals abhor it because it is conservative, while some conservatives fear it because it is populist—a tendency with which prudence-obsessed conservatism struggles.

Questions about the Tea Party’s staying power are therefore answered: “The Tea Party exists as long as the modern conservative movement exists.” Most importantly, though, the question of whether the Tea Party will collapse conservatism, too, is answered resoundingly: “No.”

Article Sources:

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/07/tea-party-s-next-targets-blocking-judicial-appointees-killing-gas-tax.html

[2] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/08/rep-andre-carson-tea-party-wants-to-see-blacks-hanging-on-a-tree/

[3] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2010/1104/Tea-party-splits-GOP-in-thirds-says-Republican-strategist

[4] http://www.thenation.com/blog/156474/split-gop-tea-party-third-party-john-mccain-says-it-could-happen

[5] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31991.html

Photo Sources: "Pic1" from http://scottystarnes.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/tea-party.jpg?w=430&h=410; "Pic2" from http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uDG3UJKYe0U/SekOB3ccQtI/AAAAAAAAAj4/S2sDMWczsa0/s320/tea-party-protest-chicago.jpg; "Pic3" from http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RaRg5_v_Eus/SeyO1ZE4lMI/AAAAAAAACnA/ZMoU4lCnbpQ/s400/TeaParty12.jpg