Tea Party Hot, Tea Party Cold? How much does it really matter?

Has the Tea Party peaked, and begun to decline into oblivion, or at least, history?

Polls and pundits have stressed the enthusiasm factor in who will win in the 2010 elections on November 2nd.  Some indicators suggest to the media the conservative political movement may be losing steam.  For example, the Tea Party Nation's Las Vegas convention, previously rescheduled for lack of attendance was recently cancelled due to lack of interest, just a short time before the event.  The New York Times quotes an email from Barbara Kinnison, one of the event activists in Las Vegas, asserting that other large Tea Party events were declining in both attendance and donations.  You can read more here.


I checked with a locally well-connected conservative blogger/radio host/ activist (thank you Mitch Berg, from Shot In the Dark and NARN) here in the northern high prairie of fly-over land, inquiring about the Minnesota tea party activity.  Or inactivity, as the case may be. He responded that the last major organized event was on April 15th, 2010; but that there are small tea party events 'all over the place'.

Perhaps more important in Mitch's reply to my inquiries was the insight that attendance at rallies and conventions is declining - but that it does not equate to diminished enthusiasm.  Rather that it is reflective of a shift in activities as formerly inactive conservatives become more involved in other areas of the political process. 

If he is correct, and I believe he knows about Minnesota activity, then the speculation by political commenters, pundits, bloggers, et al,  that is focused on rally participation to interpret either polls or will be wrong in interpreting voting behavior for the 2010 elections.  I think Minnesota activity is as likely to be indicative of at least some of the regional tea parties' influence, and future, if not all of them

According to Mitch Berg,

"This year? Turnout is lower at rallies (although still big in most places). But here's the cool part; it's translating into activism where it matters. I met with all the GOP candidates in CD4 the other night; of the 20 or so of them, most had never been involved in politics before last year; some of them had gotten their first taste of it at that first big Tea Party. And they're organizing people, and going door to door in areas that haven't had a GOP doorknocker in 20 years! Precinct caucuses that used to get 2-3 people got 10 or 15 last February in Saint Paul, and double that in Falcon Heights. People like Randy Demmer and Lee Byberg are raising six figures in districts that used to raise $20K for a US House race."

So, it seems reasonable to cautiously assume this is the 'enthusiasm' that pollsters are reporting on the right.  Although it occurred to me to wonder how much of that increased fund raising is from engaged and supportive individuals, and how much might be from a few sources of 'big money' now flooding politics.

Mitch continued,

"People aren't going to rallies - because they're busy, calling the capitol switchboard, phone-banking, writing letters, and voting in unprecedented numbers for conservatives. They're coming out to vote in primaries - in numbers big enough to upset the GOP establishment in places that the Tea Party hasn't won over the party establishment (that's why I got a laugh when you and the rest of the leftyblogger said Doug Hoffman's defeat in NY23 was a black eye for the tea party; it was a huge symbolic victory!)."

I respectfully disagree that NY23 was a huge victory, symbolic or otherwise. A loss is a loss, and this one seemed to be indicative of a cohesive failure on the right which could splinter conservative voting into right and further right, consistent with the numerous names for their divisions - paleocon, neocon, etc., and the division between moderates, the establishment/machine, and the newcomer / tea partiers who were disenchanted with that establishment.  It is NOT a 'big tent' when less moderate people push out the more moderate people, which seems to be happening not only in Minnesota, but nationally.

In taking a longer view of the history of politics in this country, these movements seem to come and go, sometimes affecting a few election cycles, but not becoming sustainable influences.  The moral majority and the GOP led coalition including the religious right in the 90's, as well as the much earlier movements, like the Know-nothings, come to mind.  Or, in the case of the GOP since the 2008 elections, the 'nay-saying party'. The tea partiers, other than the covert GOP money and organizations which have tried to co-opt the movement, the so-called astro-turf elements,  seem to me less organized and less effective than their predecessors, with the occasional politically vulnerable candidate exceptions.  It remains to be seen if the primaries where established Republicans were ousted, which are reflective of far smaller numbers of voters, will translate their results into the general election results.  I don't think they will, because in at least some primaries, the tea partiers and their popular leaders like Palin, supported poor choices that I don't believe will appeal to the broader electorate.

So, I asked Mitch for his opinion on the tea party fizzling out, IF they don't succeed in this round of elections.  Obama and the Democrats were also very successful in turning out new voters, people who had been uninvolved in politics, who were energized and passionately enthusiastic.  That movement did succeed, yet the common wisdom of pundits is not, so far, predicting a repeat turnout.

I'm not so sure.  More recent polls are suggesting a sharp rise in voter enthusiasm among moderates and on the left, equating to a comparable enthusiasm among likely voters on the right.  And I think the Democrats remember how to get those voters to participate. So, I asked Mitch if he thought the Tea Party movement would decline and dissipate, if they didn't prevail in the 2010 elections.  His reply,

"Will the movement sustain itself? Well, I'm sure gonna do my best." 

Meanwhile Newsweek doesn't seem convinced that anger, or the flip side, enthusiasm, is going to make much difference  The poll indicates voters, while in many cases unhappy with Democrats, still trust them more than Republicans.  And the poll further notes "self-described angry voters constitute only 23 percent of the electorate, and there's no reason to believe that they're more likely to cast ballots in November than their calmer peers. Why? Because the percentage of angry voters who say they will definitely vote in the midterms is statistically indistinguishable from the overall percentage of voters who say the same thing (84 percent vs. 81 percent)."  And the Newsweek article goes on to state, "Voters dissatisfied with the country's current course are more likely to place "a lot" of blame on Bush (39 percent) than on his successor (32 percent)."  That argues to me that many (although certainly not all), of those who turned out in the 2008 election, and those who voted against the Republicans in the 2006 cycle before it, will turn out again for the 2010 elections. 

I'm inclined to agree with Newsweek.  I vote, I'm an independent,  I am still more angry with the Republicans than I am disenchanted with the Democrats, and I don't go to rallies.  I don't support the simplistic, 'common sense' recycled same-old-same-old solutions that appeal to the tea partiers.  Unlike the tea partiers, I'm not new to following politics, so I can recognize retread solutions when I see them. Again.  And by again, I don't just mean the past decade. 

I recently watched "A Face in the Crowd" from 1957, shown on the cable network Turner Classic Movies, in tribute to the recently deceased co-star Patricia Neal.  A classic film, actor Andy Griffith portrays a character 'Lonesome Rhodes', who espouses the same attitudes on topics like social security, and unemployment insurance, revisionist history of the origins of our country, patriotism, and guns, as our current Tea Party conservatives.  While I do not have any first hand knowledge of 1957/8 politics, the movie, as well as video clips of Reagan a few years later in the early 1960's arguing against medicare, could be substituted seamlessly into the 21st century Tea Party rallies.   Here is an excerpt of dialog, near the end of the movie with Griffith playing 'Lonesome Rhodes', promoting the character of  Senator Fuller, the presidential wannabe,  to their angry, active, tea-party-esque supporters,

"I'd say that people today...are obsessed.  I mean, real drawn for security.  They want protection, coddling from the cradle to the grave. I say that weakens the moral fibre.[Daniel] Boone wasn't looking for unemployment insurance and old age pension.  All he needed was his axe and his gun...and a chance to hue a living out of the forest, with his own hands.  Real wizzy, ain't it? That’s the spirit that built this country."

 The movie is worth a look prior to the 2010 elections.  Pay very close attention to screenwriter Budd Shulberg's dialog - it is brilliant, even prophetic.

Ironically, Andy Griffith, now 84, made an info-mercial in support of the Health Care Reform which you can see here. Aka 'Obamacare',  it is aimed primarily at the older demographic of voters, which describes a large segment of the Tea Party movment (although,I hasten to add, not my friend Mitch).

But Time will tell if Newsweek's poll (pun intended), and their conclusions are correct, or if my Tea Party savvy friend Mitch will be right about the right altering the 2010 elections outcome in their favor. To return a compliment he paid to me a while back, he's a smart cookie; but he was wrong about the outcome of the 2008 election in most cases, and I think he is going to be wrong about at least some of the 2010 outcomes.  But if he is right and I am the one who is reading incorrectly the mood of a majority of voters, who are the current more silent majority (compared to the tea partiers),  I will humbly admit it here on Penigma after the November elections.