The temporary triumph of the Tea Party

Here's an interesting take on the Tea Party movement:

The twist in the Obama-era is that some of the conservative backlash has been directed inward. This is because the right needed a way to explain how a far-left anti-American ideologue like Obama could have won 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008. What they settled on was an indictment of George W. Bush’s big government conservatism; the idea, basically, was that Bush had given their movement a bad name with his big spending and massive deficits, angering the masses and rendering them vulnerable to Obama’s deceptive charms. And the problem hadn’t just been Bush – it had been every Republican in office who’d abided his expansion of government, his deals with Democrats, his Wall Street bailout and all the rest.

Thus did the Tea Party movement represent a two-front war – one a conventional one against the Democratic president, and the other a new one against any “impure” Republicans.

But I have a slightly different take. 

In politics, power is not always about numbers, it's about intensity. At the base level, at the grassroots of the GOP, the Tea Party movement is still the most intense. These folks -- mostly older white men, well off -- are still attending weekly meetings, publishing newsletters, attending local hearings, scrutinizing candidates, etc.  And they are totally supported by talk radio, which sees in them its core audience who is at once an echo and an amplifier of every disproved and crazy conservative idea to come down the pike the past 20 years.  And so big-time Republican politicians ignore them at their peril. 

Way above them, we have big-money, ego-driven right-wing donors like the Koch brothers, Peter Thiel, Sheldon Adelson, et al, who basically subscribe to the Tea Party philosophy of small government with government-enforced Christian morality. 

In the middle are caught the actual majority of Republicans (let's call them fiscally conservative, morally ambivalent) who are hesitant to criticize the Tea Parties whom they mostly agree with and want to defend against unflattering portrayals in the mainstream "liberal" media; and who either don't understand, or don't see anything wrong with, the big-money donors who wildly skew our politics in their favor.

The upshot is that the Tea Parties are stronger in the GOP than their numbers might suggest because they have the hard-core conservative minority supporting the base, and the nutjob, let's-go-Galt, libertarian billionaires at the top throwing silly amounts of money at elections.  

Meanwhile, we all know how well Tea Party-affiliated candidates fared in the November 2012 elections.

The upshot for Democrats is: let this crazy drama play itself out. These are the pathetic death throes of a sick, wounded animal. We shouldn't seek to commiserate with the GOP, or advise it, or even hasten its demise... for who knows what will succeed it? 

Nay, we should relish this last "rage against the dying of the light" in the Republican party, since it's sure to garner us a few more elections and delay the advent of the more libertarian-leaning party that will take the GOP's place in U.S. politics and might possibly be much, much worse....

Triumph of the Tea Party mindset

By Steve Kornacki

December 27, 2012 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/triumph_of_the_tea_party_mindset/