The Significance of the Tea Party

The Tea Party, which is essentially a right-wing populist movement, has been winning primary victories across the land, and that is good news. For the Democrats.

First, let's talk a bit about history. These are midterm elections upcoming, and the tendency over many, many decades has been for the party that is in power to lose seats in both the House and the Senate in midterm elections. To not gain seats would be a disaster. And to only gain a few in a year when the other party is vulnerable because of a sluggish economy and widespread misconceptions about the legislation it has passed is not a sign of strength.

But that is the situation the Republicans find themselves in. And they find themselves in that position thanks to the Tea Party.

Elections are generally won not from either extreme but in the middle. And the candidates backed and pushed by the Tea Party have tended to the very extreme right. Many of these people are downright scary and are easily painted as extremists, all of which will make it easier for the Democrats to retain seats in both houses that they probably should have--had mainstream candidates been chosen--lost with little Republican effort. And any upticks in the economy between now and the beginning of November--a possibility that is quite reasonable--will further erode the chances of extreme Tea Party candidates against mainstream Democrats.

Furthermore, by 2012 the Republican Party will be in such a state of civil war that it is going to have one hell of a time not slipping back to complete minority status. The GOP is facing a tremendous dilemma. On the one hand, you have the Republican power structure, which is owned and operated by the top 1/2 of one percent of taxpayers, by and for their interests alone, and, on the other, you have the Tea Party, which is populist and is driven mostly by emotion and largely by fear. They are not conservatives, although that label is generally applied to them. They are reactionary revolutionaries, and they are seeking, more and more, to overthrow the public face of the 1/2 of one percent that has spent a fair amount of money in the quest to get them fired up and rabid.

The significance of the Tea Party is that it is the improvised explosive device at the heart of Republican politics, and it was fashioned by Rush and Beck and Fox News. Cynicism and hubris have built a weapon out of outrage, but, like most such devices, it is likely to go off at the wrong time in the wrong place and to inflict more damage on the cause it is meant to support than the one it is meant to destroy.

The populist uprising that flowered in the waning years of the 19th and sputtered out in the early 20th centuries never put William Jennings Bryan in the White House or secured the Free Silver policy that they advocated. They did manage, however, to keep the Democratic Party out of power for a period of about 20 years.