Mythbusting The Tea Party

prospect.org — The most reliable lesson of recent American politics is that movements dependent on that level of heat eventually — or, actually, quite quickly — burn themselves out. The tea-party movement cannot be sustained at the level of anger that's currently fueling it. It may leave a permanent impact on the Republican Party, giving it some new faces and new language, and most important, allowing the party to divorce itself from the legacy of that squishy moderate, George W. Bush. But regardless of the economic times or the political mood, hot populism of both the left and right varieties has never had a very long run.

more »

thenation.com — For branding purposes that the right-wing organizers and activists draping themselves in nostalgia for the founding fathers would rather not find themselves tied in the public mind to the Republican Party, loathed by a significant minority of the electorate and distrusted by an overwhelming majority. The reason is not hard to divine: over the last decade, the GOP ran the country into the ground. While the party's rhetorical fidelity is to small government and a big military, it has for decades been operationally committed to no philosophy other than perpetual war, upward redistribution of wealth, the defense of corporate power and white Christian identity politics. But despite the tea party's arm's-length stance toward the GOP, these are precisely the values for which it stands.

more »

washingtonpost.com — Yes, parts of this movement do seem to be motivated by a new nativism and by racism. But it would be a mistake to see the hostility toward Obama only in terms of race. Something else is going on in the Tea Party movement, and it has deep roots in our history. Anti-statism, a profound mistrust of power in Washington, dates all the way to the Anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution because they saw it concentrating too much authority in the central government. This suspicion of government is not amenable to "facts" — not because it is irrational, but because the facts are beside the point. For the anti-statists, opposing government power is a matter of principle. Understanding the principled anti-government radicalism that animates this movement explains why its partisans see the conservative Bush as a sellout and the cautiously liberal Obama as a socialist. For now, their fears of Obama are enough to tether the Tea Partiers to the GOP. In the long run, establishment Republicans are destined to disappoint them.

more »