Tea Party Movement
The New York Times
Updated: Sept. 15, 2010
The Tea Party Movement is a diffuse American grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments.
The movement burst onto the scene in 2009 in protest of the economic stimulus package. Its supporters have vowed to purge theRepublican Party of officials they consider not sufficiently conservative and block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment and health care. Tea Party supporters tend to unite around fiscal conservatism and a belief that the federal government has overstepped its constitutional powers.
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released in April 2010. They are wealthier and better-educated than the general public.
Tea Partiers hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as "very conservative" and President Obama as "very liberal." And while most Republicans say they are "dissatisfied" with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as "angry."
Although Tea Party organizers have insisted they created a nonpartisan grass-roots movement, others have argued that tea parties were largely created by the clamor of cable news and fueled by the financial and political support of current and former Republican leaders.
The movement played a significant in several significant important primary fights; insurgent candidates backed by Tea Party figures who won Senate nominations included Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, who defeated Representative Michael N. Castle in Delaware, and Joe Miller of Alaska, who beat Senator Lisa Murkowski.
The establishment Republican party had backed both losing candidates, and afterwards grappled with how to approach a movement that promises a boost in enthusiasm during the fall election season even as it heartens Democrats who view its candidates as out of the mainstream.
Tea Party supporters' fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.
The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites; compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Political Impact
As much as the Tea Party fervor was expected to help Republicans in November 2010, it may also create problems for them — and opportunities for the Democrats.
So far this election season, the Tea Party has brought a huge amount of unexpected energy into the campaign, and it could drive sufficient Republican turnout to become a major and perhaps decisive factor in many races. But the movement has also forced Republicans to spend precious time and money on primary races they should have won easily and has produced some inexperienced candidates who have stumbled in the early going.
In some House races, Republicans have all but given up hope of winning after local Tea Party groups helped conservative candidates win primaries in districts that historically prefer moderates. And in some districts, Tea Party candidates are mounting third-party challenges that could allow the Democrats to maintain or even win some seats.
Of the 18 Senate races that The New York Times considers competitive, there are 11 where the Tea Party stands to be a significant factor. While it is harder to predict the Tea Party’s influence in the House races, given the diffuse nature of thousands of local groups across the country, there are at least 48 out of 104 competitive seats where it could have a major impact.
In many places, the impact will be from Tea Party groups — local, national or both — that are working to mobilize voters. In others, however, the Tea Party is complicating what should have been easy Republican primary victories.
Rand Paul, a Tea Party candidate for Kentucky's open Senate seat in 2010, easily won the Republican primary and delivered a significant blow to the Republican establishment. His 24-point victory over Trey Grayson, who was supported by the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Senator Mitch McConnell, underscored the anti-Washington sentiment that Tea Partiers hope to harness.
Several analysts said the January 2010 victory in the Massachusetts Senate race of Scott Brown, a Republican who ran with Tea Party support, encouraged more challenges and drove incumbents further right.
Tough Test for Young Movement
In the general election, the young movement will face its toughest test yet, as voters focus on what the Tea Party is for, rather than what it is against.
They will have to decide whether they will embrace what Mr. Paul acknowledges are "tough choices" — like his proposals to raise the age of Social Security eligibility, to slash spending deeply enough to balance the budget every year even while cutting taxes and relying more on charity to provide the social services that the government has since the New Deal.
So far, the Tea Party's victories have come largely as the result of voter protests. In Utah, Tea Party supporters helped vote out Senator Robert F. Bennett because they opposed his support of the bank bailout. They helped elect Mr. Brown in Massachusetts to stop the health care bill. And while Tea Party backers helped Marco Rubio drive Gov. Charlie Crist from the Republican Senate primary in Florida, Mr. Rubio is not from the movement.
In contrast, Mr. Paul, an ophthalmologist, was an early and principled adherent of the Tea Party.
Tea Partiers like Mr. Paul embrace arguments that government should not provide what individuals can provide for themselves. So, police and public safety are acceptable functions of government, but government should not take from one person's income to provide for another's health or well-being.
And when Mr. Paul and his Tea Party supporters espouse "constitutionally limited government," they argue that much of the New Deal, as well as social programs like Medicare that were enacted later, were a gross violation of the founding document. Those ideas may be hard to sell in a general election, even to Republicans.
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