Posted on 12/19/2014 8:28:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Is the tea party a movement or just a mood?
That was the question posed by Weekly Standard columnist and Fox News contributor Steven Hayes as he kicked off a panel at the Heritage Foundation celebrating the 5th anniversary of the tea party.
Hayes and his co-panelists, Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham and University of Virginia professor of politics James Ceaser, all agreed that the tea party is in fact a movement. Moods, as Hayes noted, don’t last for five years.
Recent polls regarding national tea party support show the panel’s assessment is correct. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in November found one-fifth of American adults consider themselves supporters of the tea party. As panel moderator David Azerrad of the Heritage Foundation noted, that’s quite an improvement from the original tea party, which numbered between 30 and 130 members.
But the panelists didn’t just rely on poll numbers to support their conclusion. They also highlighted some of the tea party’s major accomplishments since its inception in 2009.
Particularly noteworthy, according to the panelists, is the influence of 2010 tea party candidates such as Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky. The media prefers to focus on failed tea party candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, but it has been Lee, Cruz, Rubio and Paul who have injected new life into the GOP and are producing its most innovative policy solutions.
Needham pointed specifically to Lee’s Higher Education Reform and Opportunity, or HERO, Act, Senator Cruz’s proposed energy legislation and Senator Paul’s focus on overcriminalization as prime examples of tea party ideas in action.
Another sign of tea party success has been its ability to set the terms of political debates. In particular, Ceaser credited the tea party with “bringing the national debt onto the front burner,” and reminding Americans that “if you spend today, someone will have to pay [for] it tomorrow.”
Tea partiers such as Cruz frequently have caused a ruckus on Capitol Hill fighting spending bills and opposing debt-ceiling increases. The result has often been legislative gridlock. Many on the left and in the mainstream media regard this as a failure of the tea party, but Hayes observed that “that was, in some ways, the entire point of the tea party.”
The tea party-fueled debt debate has had an even greater impact at the state level. In what Ceaser called the tea party’s “greatest actual achievement,” state governments have taken bold steps to rein in public-sector unions and control pensions. And it’s happening in both Republican and Democratic states, Ceaser noted, as both parties are realizing the problems of excessive debt.
That the tea party has made popular a topic as unexciting as government debt indicates how truly influential it is.
The panel also credited the tea party with bringing the Constitution back into public discourse. Ceaser praised the tea party for restoring the idea of the Constitution as “a guide for the thinking of a political party and program,” which he noted was the role it played in the 19th century. In that era, legislators often engaged in debates about what the Constitution allowed and what it meant.
Unfortunately, our current Democratic and Republican parties largely have ignored the Constitution and, prior to the tea party, rarely debated its meaning. The result was a mistaken perception of the Constitution as nothing more than “a matter of individual rights protected by courts” that political parties and movements simply should not bother with.
The tea party’s return to the Constitution has revitalized public interest in its meaning and forced politicians to engage once more in constitutional debates.
Despite frequent mischaracterizations in the mainstream media, targeting by the IRS, and verbal attacks from President Obama, the tea party remains highly influential in American politics. The left and the media don’t want to admit it, but the tea party is not a passing mood; it’s a movement. And, as Steve Hayes concluded, “It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”
I’m in.
Is there a national headquarters where we can send money?
By formalizing it into a political party we will no longer be the voice of the people. Political parties are lobbied and tend to become corrupted. As long as we don't have leaders to corrupt, we will remain the voice of the people even as some voices move on to become political candidates.
I’d say a group of people numbering in the tens of millions is a movement not a move. Many stay hidden like Freemasons not declaring their status....
“…………………….I am forced to conclude that the political left in this country throws around the name Nazi, not because they believe that anyone they call one resembles a Nazi, but because they desperately need to draw attention away from the terrifying reality that they themselves are becoming the new Nazi party.
Without exception, every generation considers itself to be the smartest generation to have ever existed (despite clear evidence to the contrary). I wish this one would realize it isn’t, and try to learn something from history.
|
Nazi |
Democrat |
Republican |
Tea Party |
|
|
Anti-Semitism |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Statist / Promotes Big, Centralized Government |
Yes |
Yes |
Partially* |
No |
|
Eugenics |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Exerts Control of the Media for Political Gain |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Gun Control / Gun Registration |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Strong Nationalism |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Nationalized Healthcare |
Yes |
Yes |
Partially*** |
No |
|
Political Intimidation / Targeting |
Yes |
Yes |
Partially** |
No |
|
Religion |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Use of Public Education in Political Indoctrination |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Use of Racial Divisiveness for Political Gain |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
* Government expansion has occurred onder several republican administrations. |
||||
|
** Political intimidation occurred under the Nixon Administration |
||||
|
*** Romneycare |
||||
Michael Needham (Heritage), is awesome. Got inspired listening to him talk about one of his books on C-Span.
The original idea of the “movement” is a Hegelian utopian construct. The only “movement” we really need is for Christians in this country to MOVE BACK TO SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH AND NON-NEGOTIABLE PRINCIPLE and then to STOP MOVING.
Thanks, you nailed it perfectly!
Not yet.
“By formalizing it into a political party we will no longer be the voice of the people. Political parties are lobbied and tend to become corrupted”
That’s certainly a constant danger. But there needs to be a way to run good candidates against GOPe sellouts when we can’t knock them off in the primaries and a party is the only way we can do that. Back in 1970 the New York Conservative Party nominated James Buckley in the US Senate race and won.
If we were to organize a party that stayed too small and loose knit to bribe but big enough run candidates in Congressional races it could work. All we would need is to be a constant worry for the GOP so that it’s harder for them to betray their voters, not to mention the country.
The GOP will have all the money, but money isn’t the same thing as votes. Michael Huffington was one who learned that in California. Eric Cantor learned that this year when Dave Brat beat him.
After Cantor’s defeat, you’d think Cruz, Lee Sessions would have had total support as Cantor’s fate surely awaits the squishes that voted in support of zero.
Thanks for your post! Very good synopsis of that the TEA Party aims are and what has transpired.
My apprehension at the graduation of tea party sentiment into Tea Party formal is rooted in the same problems that always come with those that claim backing by the people, movement or sentiment.
Exactly how are these “leaders” anointed - do they self-identify and start fund raising? I know one here started in Georgia seems to be making a good living at it.
Further, this person’s (Tea Party something leader) performance in the defeat of Cantor and the failures of its Tea Party something in Louisiana left me cringing, frankly
In other words, how do you vet them? To me, that is the problem with a national Tea Party (formal).
Very good observations.
Most GOP Senators will follow policy initiatives proposed by President Cruz regardless of their past relationship with the GOPe as evidenced by the recent actions of Senator Moran. But this is predicated on Senator Cruz becoming President Cruz.
For Senator Cruz to become President Cruz is a process that needs innovation. The GOPe with their ties to Wall St. Bankers which in turn are influenced by foreign interests such as the Saudis via the US Chamber of Commerce, they will be well funded to remove Senator Cruz as a viable GOP candidate for President regardless of his popular support within the GOP. Their funding will buy media and local operatives to disparage and sink his GOP candidacy.
Electing an independent US Senator is one thing, electing an independent President is another.
Electing Ted Cruz as an independent President requires a national party, a national organization and a national financing network. It can be done. To get it launched requires seed financing and selection of leaders and directors with established communication protocols.
One of our more prolific Freepers says to wait first until about 2 to 3 months from now to see how things shake out in the new Congress. I agree but in the meantime serious discussions about 3rd party should continue as it is no longer a radical or fringe idea but should become more acceptable and plausible in the coming months, just as an Article V process was not so long ago a fringe idea that has since developed into a viable process now underway by very serious credible persons organized around a Convention of States (COS) project.
An offshoot of COS can germinate from its people in the states to form the seedlings of a national organization to campaign for Ted Cruz as President and to follow through in placing his name on the ballot in each state as a Presidential Candidate for 2016 while also acting as an executive body to sway voters that an independent President Cruz is an idea whose time has come and is acceptable for mainstream thinking. The entire campaign could be carried as one of needed and practical innovation. With 42% of the
electorate now registered or self-identifying as Independents, an independent President Cruz is not far-fetched.
Good article. Focuses on the Tea Party influence, even when it doesn’t get credit for the positive changes.
O’Donnell and Angle shouldn’t be counted as failures of the Tea Party. Both brought up ridicule-inducing images and guaranteed their own destruction, with Angle’s failure being helped along by a master of immoral political intrigue.
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