The Tea Party is the latest of a long series of Rich People’s Movements, but its reactionary zeal now challenges the rich people who seeded it. (More)
“I think he’s the most dangerous person that’s ever walked in these United States”
Last month the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart interviewed David Jackson at the Belmont General Store in Belmont, North Carolina. While Jackson doesn’t mention the Tea Party, his comments mirror common Tea Party rhetoric and they’re worth reading in full.
Jackson repeats many right-wing fables, from undocumented immigrants using the Affordable Care Act (they can’t) to President Obama hosting a Muslim Brotherhood meeting on the White House lawn (which never happened), faking the death of Osama bin Laden (a conspiracy that began within hours after the raid), and refusing to send help to the U.S. consulate in Benghazi (CIA security officer Glen Doherty, who died at Benghazi, was part of a team that flew in from Tripoli to provide help after the attack began). Jackson even claims President Obama lost his license to practice law (false). Jackson summarizes his view of the president in this passage:
Look at what our country has become. You can’t go to church without somebody persecuting you. You can’t say anything about the Muslim religion without somebody persecuting you for it. He makes it very well known what his intentions are and how he wants to change the country. And it goes completely against everything this country was founded on. He’s a smart guy, he’s brilliant. But I think he’s the most dangerous person that’s ever walked in these United States. I fear from him, and I’m not afraid of anyone. I’m afraid of him.
“A dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy”
Jackson’s comments on President Obama are strikingly similar to John Birch Society founder Robert Welch’s claim, in his initial draft of The Politician, that President Dwight Eisenhower was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.”
That similarity is hardly surprising, as we saw in the conclusion of our series on Isaac Martin’s Rich People’s Movements. The “tea party” theme for modern anti-tax protests began in California with Vivian Kellems’ Liberty Belles and, when that and other California anti-tax groups folded, their mailing lists were given to the John Birch Society. The JBS then provided what Dr. Martin sees as one of three essential elements of Rich People’s Movements:
- A policy threat – The 1% usually avoid populist movements and instead rely on campaign donations, lobbying, and other “inside” strategies to exert influence on government. Rich People’s Movements have arisen only when “inside” strategies failed to prevent a policy that threatened their interests: land-grant banks in the 1920s, the New Deal in the 1930s, expanding Social Security to cover domestic workers in the 1940s, civil rights and Great Society reforms of the 1950s and 60s and, most recently, the Affordable Care Act and Wall Street Reform Act.
- Movement entrepreneurs – Because the 1% usually avoid populist movements, they rely on what Martin calls “movement entrepreneurs” to develop and coordinate local groups. In the 1920s, Treasury Secretary Andrew Carnegie relied on J.A. Arnold to organize southern rural bankers against the land banks. In the late 1960s, the JBS took over the organizing work of Kellems and her Liberty Belles. In the 1980s, Charles and David Koch, the sons of JBS co-founder Fred Koch, founded and funded the Citizens for a Sound Economy that later split into Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, who in turn helped organize today’s Tea Party groups.
- Policy framing – It’s hard to rally a populist movement around cutting taxes for the 1%, and thus successful Rich People’s Movements have always framed policy proposals to bring in other groups: from economic appeals to southern rural bankers in the 1920s, to anti-war appeals to women in the 1940s and 50s, to “traditional values” appeals to white Christian men in the decades since.
Dr. Martin notes that Rich People’s Movements often borrow both the language and the tactics of previous progressive movements, and are more likely to succeed when his three elements are met and pro-business Republicans hold power. The movements are more likely to fail when Democrats hold power, when outside events like the Great Depression and World War II make Americans skeptical of appeals to self-interest, or when movement entrepreneurs are exposed as using the movement to enrich themselves.
“Fox News as a means of forging a collective identity”
In Change They Can’t Believe In, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto show that the Tea Party is a reactionary movement for which the election of President Obama was the catalyzing event. While the seeds of the Tea Party have existed for decades, and while Tea Party members typically score high on typical conservative personality traits like Social Dominance Orientation, Drs. Parker and Barreto also show that the Tea Party itself helps to radicalize its supporters:
Still, we think it’s more likely that support for the Tea Party … influences anti-Obama attitudes.
Our confidence rests on the role played by Fox News as a means of forging a collective identity among Tea Party elites, activists, and supporters. As Kathleen Hall Jamieson and John Capella’s research demonstrates, increasing exposure to conservative media tends to crystallize, even change opinions on important issues. Moreover, they show that the insularity of consumers of conservative media from more mainstream media outlets, in which they’d come across viewpoints counter to what they see on, say, Fox, tends to promote attitudes at variance with the rest of America.
Indeed the rise of right-wing talk radio, Fox News, the internet, and social media may explain why ‘mainstream’ Republicans now find it difficult to rein in the Tea Party. Drs. Parker and Barreto show that Tea Party members are more likely than other conservatives likely to vote in midterm elections and GOP primaries, boosting their electoral influence.
And unlike Rich People’s Movements of the past, the Tea Party does not have to rely on local meetings or expensive direct mail to exchange ideas. The rise of right-wing media and social media make the Tea Party more self-sustaining, and the group polarization effect of these “information islands” makes the Tea Party self-radicalizing, a Rich People’s Movement that Rich People no longer control.
In light of the Tea Party’s roots in millenia of human evolution, centuries of conservative rhetoric, and decades of Rich People’s Movements – now unleashed by our modern media – it is unrealistic for progressives to hope the Tea Party will Just Go Away. Instead, we must recognize that they represent less than a third of Americans, and focus our efforts on reaching out to median voters like our archetypal Fred.
When we reach out person-to-person, as we did in 2012, progressive values can win elections and enable positive change.
+++++
Happy Friday!
I wonder, especially after reading the links, if anyone actually controls the radical Tea/Republicans. I found myself having to reread things several times because the comments sounded like they came from another planet, not my fellow Americans. Maybe some of the rich people have enough money to insulate themselves from whatever happens but most people will not stand for the inmates taking over the asylum or the teas taking over the government. For less than a third of Americans, they seem to get a lot of air time. I am torn between wanting to know what they’re saying and turning off the TV or radio.
What really helped me get a sense of perspective on this was the notion that Eisenhower was a communist. I remember him as a hero/general who played golf but I was much younger then.
Somehow all this will make recruiting volunteers next year much easier. We cannot sit this out and count on them self-destructing.
A lot of mainstream Republicans are also wondering if anyone can control their reactionary Tea Party base. The problem for mainstream Republicans is they’re used to the veneer of populism: Rich People’s Movements organized and directed by movement entrepreneurs who know they work for Rich People.
The Tea Party began in that mold, but modern media enabled the groups to be self-sustaining and self-radicalizing. Tea Party supporters tend to be older and wealthier than the median U.S. family, with more time and money to contribute to candidates and political action committees, and Tea Party-backed candidates and PACs have adopted the many-small-donors-online model launched by Howard Dean in 2004 and proven successful by President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Put all of that together and the Rich People have lost control of their Movement.
So no, we can’t expect the Tea Party to self-destruct.
Good afternoon! ::hugggggs::
I grew up in small towns where the John Birch Society was prevalent and apparent. It wasn’t uncommon to see barn roofs painted with “Impeach Earl Warren.” One of the first young men to ask me out in high school gave me a copy of the JBS bible to read: None Dare Call It Treason.
The mistake we made back then in the great center was to dismiss them as fringe loonies. We considered them to be of no consequence. We had absolutely no idea that these groups were seething beneath what appeared to be a placid surface, ready to move and act when a critical mass of disgust was reached. In fact, we even thought JBS was a relatively recent cancer.
This new perspective on these groups has me seriously concerned. And you’re right, between Fox News and social media, they are growing and becoming more organized. The only hopeful thing I’ve read recently (sorry, can’t find the cite) is that an awful lot of cable news viewers watch both Fox and MSNBC, often switching back and forth.
But our only real hope is to mobilize ourselves for every election. No more blowing off midterms. We need to GOTV.
This is the real takeaway for progressive Democrats:
While Tea Party ideology may cost Republicans among women and independents, midterm elections usually see about 45% turnout and that makes 23% an electoral majority. With Tea Party supporters numbering 25-30% – depending on the poll – they can win a midterm election on their own. Unless progressive Democrats boost our GOTV efforts, the Tea Party will still control the U.S. House and many state governments in 2015….
Good afternoon! ::hugggggs::