The Real Tea Party

John Judis and Timothy Dalrymple have some of the best takes on the Tea Party movement that I've seen so far, in this case on the left and right respectively.

Can The Tea Party Play in Peoria?

David Frum comes up with a good analysis of what will probably happen to Republicans come fall. With all the talk about the Tea Party and how it is transforming the GOP, and how they will take back Congress from the Democrats in November, there has been little talk about how "seaworthy" these Tea Party candidates will be when they come face to face with Democrats.

As Frum notes, in states like Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire, mainstream Republicans are the standardbearers who will probably win their races for the US Senate. In contrast, the Tea Party candidates such as Nevada's Sharon Angle and Kentucky's Rand Paul might have captured the imagination of activists, but so far are not catching fire with the general electorate. Here's a sample:

...Republicans (in New Hampshire, Ohio and Illinois)nominated a range of mainstream candidates. In Illinois they have Mark Kirk – a socially moderate, fiscally conservative member of Congress, who represents the suburbs north of Chicago.

In Ohio, the Republican candidate is Rob Portman, a former US Trade Representative and White House budget chief. Kelly Ayotte is likely to win the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Currently the state's attorney general, she is a mainstream conservative: for lower taxes, against abortion. This is exactly the kind of candidate Republicans ought to nominate, and all three look set to win. Result: two holds and one net gain in the Senate.

But this good news for the mainstream GOP is balanced by the grim tally for Tea Party candidates. Consider another set of races. In Kentucky and Nevada, Tea Party activists won nominations for two of their own: Rand Paul and Sharron Angle. Both have aligned themselves with an array of wild positions. Mrs Angle wants to abolish social security and Medicare and has spoken favourably of armed insurrection against the federal government.

Mr Paul has declared his dislike of laws forbidding businesses to discriminate on grounds of race. He fears that global elites are plotting to abolish the dollar and substitute a new North American currency, "the Amero".

The Tea Party has been a sensation, but only within the GOP. When these candidates come in contact with the real world and with worldy Democratic candidates, we might see that the power of the Tea Party is that of a paper tiger.

Elections have to be won by getting the votes in the center, and when you have people running for office believing in some crackpot theories, you've pretty much lost the middle.

I think come November, we shall see if the Tea Party has any staying power.

Thinking About Tea Parties

David Brooks has a good take on the Tea Party movement and what it might be saying about American society circa 2010. It would be easy to write the movement off and some have (including yours truly). But Brooks, being a student of history, can see some of the underlying currents in America that are being made manifest in the Tea Party. He cites that Americans have lost faith in institutions and the Tea Party is basically saying what others are thinking:

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.

The tea party movement is mostly famous for its flamboyant fringe. But it is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.

Again, most of us in the "educated class" have written these people off as silly idiots. And while I still think there is a lot of silly and even dangerous thinking coming from these folks, they are also on to something. Think about: over the last few years, we have seen governments unable to do anything as a major American city is inundated with water, get bogged down in two wars and run up massive deficits. When Americans look at business, the picture is no better: banks that made stupid risks, car companies that made cars no one wanted, and all supported in some way by an inept government. In some ways, this goes beyond who is in the White House: people are mad at everyone and even worse, they think the only person they can depend on is themselves.

This is the challenge that both political parties have to face. I don't think that the Tea Party has the answer: if we followed their advice in the fall of 2008, we'd basically be living through the Second Great Depression instead of the Great Recession. But both Republicans and Democrats have to find some way to restore trust to American institutions. It's not simply about having a "public option" as it is about making sure that government is doing it's job well. It's about making business follow rules that benefit all and not just a few. It's about not going using military action unless we know we are going win. It's about trying to live within our means.

The Tea Parties want us to believe that we are on our own. I don't think that's true, but they have a point when you look at the landscape of the last few years.

As the Partiers go after mainstream Republicans, it's important that those establishment candidates speak to the underlying problems. What the American public needs to hear is that they will work to restore the public's trust.

That's why we need to listen to the Tea Parties, even if we don't like them.