Breaking – The Tea Party is dead again, deja dead all over again
I wish I cared enough to have an opinion on whether we won or lost.
Of course we’ve heard this before.
From Josh Kraushaar at National Journal, The Tea Party’s Over:
2014 is shaping up as the year the Republican establishment is finding its footing. Of the 12 Republican senators on the ballot, six face primary competition, but only one looks seriously threatened: Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi. More significantly, only two House Republicans are facing credible competition from tea-party conservatives: Simpson and Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania—fewer than the number of conservative House Republicans facing competition from the establishment wing (Reps. Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and Kerry Bentivolio). With filing deadlines already passed in 23 states, it’s hard to see that dynamic changing.
Molly Ball at Democracy, Weak Tea:
…. I see a Tea Party whose influence is gradually declining, not increasing. Its clout in Congress appears to be on the wane. Its ability to win intra-GOP contests is being newly challenged. And the organizational advantages it once enjoyed are no longer so clear-cut. The GOP rank and file that greeted the movement as an exciting infusion of new energy now regard it with weariness and skepticism. The far right, in turn, has focused much of its ire on the Republican Party itself, with increasing threats to start a third-party splinter movement. This seems unlikely to happen, but it reflects Tea Partiers’ frustration at their inability to control the GOP more fully.
Ben Domenech partially dissents, The Tea Party is over because it won:
How do political movements end? And how do we assess the impact they had on the political sphere? In the case of the Tea Party, it seems to me that some smart analysts are focusing too much on horserace politics, and less on the bigger picture of how public policy is made….
I think these analyses aren’t all wrong, but they miss something important that’s actually taken place here. The Tea Party’s success is not gauged by primaries alone. It’s gauged by how much the Tea Party’s priorities become the Republican Party’s priorities….
And there’s no question that of the top ten most public and prominent faces of the next generation of Republican policy leadership in DC, most — Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Pat Toomey — are all Tea Partiers or Tea Party-friendly. Only Paul Ryan is outside the Tea Party circle of friendship, and they still like him just fine — heck, he used to work for Empower America.
As for me?
The Tea Party movement has accomplished everything Domenech states despite fierce pushback from Republicans who brought us this disaster.
At this point, though, I wish I cared enough to have an opinion on whether we won or lost.
Thanks Republican Party.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
These things are tidal.
Waves slosh around, and surge up and down the beach.
We have a way to go to find out about how long-lived the movement will be.
One thing is sure: the TEA Party has made the right enemies.
To paraphrase Kurt Hoffman, being despised by the despicable is just as good as being admired by the admirable. Sometimes better.
If that’s true, the TEA Party has certainly pissed off the right people, Democrat and RINO alike.
Ben Domenech pegged it. What’s happening is assimilation of the Tea Party agenda into the Republican agenda. Obamacare, the multifarious failures of the Obama administration, and the Democrats’ own nonsense have helped that along.
The goal of the TEA Parties should be to take over either the local Republican or Democratic party, depending on the state of a given State. When that happens, the “TEA Parties” will be no more, officially.
Agree mostly, particularly with Domenech’s statement about a next generation. Democrats seem left with little new – there are some – and lots of the old guard crooks, cronies, groupies, and hangers-on.
It is difficult to give a r–’s a– about the Republicans. They’re tired, old, worn out, and, to hang on, are desperately stomping out all signs of new life. Nothing else matters.
That said, I’m not ready to write off the Tea Party. They may be a bit of a disorganized rabble but they will matter to pols who work with them. What’s worrisome is that they may be receptive to “moderate” Democrats who may come calling. That (the calling) wouldn’t surprise me one bit given promises by Republicans to “crush them.” The country and the world are in such deplorable condition that even an occasional Democrat might find something objectionable. Republicans are just stupid and inept enough to make that possible. It is dispiriting.
the TP planted a seed that is germinating.
while they keep moaning about it and ayoing its dead its somehow important in every election now.
pretty good for something that has no power huh??
that should read “saying its dead” but the cat in the avatar demand attention from me…
I am encouraged – my cousin’s daughter, who is in her late 20s or so, was a rabid Obama fan who mocked anyone who wasn’t for Obama, to the point of obnoxiousness. She is now singing a different tune, apologizing for having been duped and talking third party. Now I have to convince her that’s not the way, either. But it’s a start.
How do you resist the urge to rub her nose in it, like a dog that crapped on the rug?
Anyone who does not recognize that the TEA party impulse has not pushed the GOP toward conservative positions is lying to themselves.
John Cornyn did NOT hove to the center, but ran as a “John Wayne Cornyn.
This is exactly what Milton Friedman said. You push the people in office where they need to go.
And you elect a Ted Cruz anytime you can.
Obama: Look, don’t you see what you’re doing though? You’re forcing people to accept something that the majority of them don’t even want.
Putin: Yes, in Russia we have word for this: ObamaCare.
The “Tea Party Movement” was the series of public demonstrations protesting spending, debt, and bailouts inspired originally by Rick Santelli’s spontaneous on-air rant – near the end of the series, ObamaCare also became a target. After a highly successful grassroots surge, the demonstrations became fewer and farther between.
The actual “Tea Party” – if you define it as those people, myself included, who actually turned out for those demonstrations – never endorsed a candidate. EVER. It was nonpartisan. There were no acknowledged “leaders,” no organizational structure beyond arranging speakers and security for the dais and securing whatever permits were needed. It was NEVER about anyone’s big fat ego.
However, the name and brand was usurped by a wide range of self-appointed self-promoters and organizations. Most of them shared the same general goals as the real Tea Party, but they added in their own policy aims as if they were always a part of it. No elected them and no one ever put their add-on issues to any vote at any actual Tea Party event.
Among those groups are Freedom Works, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, and Tea Party America, all privately owned and controlled – but there are many others as well.
Even my old friends at the Club for Growth have attempted to use Tea Party momentum to further their own goals (which I generally support, but again were never part of the actual movement).
So with all these parasites sucking the blood off their name, the broad acceptance and appeal of the Tea Party was bound to decline. The grassroots had a few common bonds of belief, and as usurpers imposed their own agendas, it was bound to fracture that original big coalition. And it has – Tea Party approval has fallen from a healthy majority to under a quarter of the public.
At the original Tea Party rallies, I met quite a few Democrats and many independents. I suspect most of them have been driven into hiding in the interim as the Tea Party was hijacked and used as a political tool within the Republican Party.
I did not read Ball’s column. I read the columns of Kraushaar and Domenech in full.
It would seem to me that if you’re going to write about the death of the Tea Party, you’d have to at least reference that the IRS refusing to grant Tea Party groups tax exempt status left them twisting in the wind and unable to get themselves properly established and organized. Yet neither Kraushaar nor Demenech wrote one word about that.
Whether the Tea Party has lasting political influence within the Republican Party or not, Obama’s IRS undeniably restricted and delayed formation of Tea Parties around the country. But that doesn’t even merit a mention in columns announcing its death?
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain.
As long as federal and state governments continue to overtax, overspend, and stray from the US Constitution, the Tea Party lives.
The name ‘Tea Party’ is an accident, a media thing, picking up on Santelli’s classic on-air rant. I don’t give a shit what we call it. The bottom line remains: As long as federal and state governments continue to overtax, overspend, and stray from the US Constitution, the Tea Party lives.
Yeppers. Das rat.
A group or philosophy working inside a larger movement can alter that groups ideological trajectory just by its mere presence and influence. Hell, look what the Communists did to the Democratic Party of Scoop Jackson.
I’ll believe the Tea Party is having an effect when the national debt clock starts running the other way. Until then, America is still doomed.
Deja Pu (variant: Deja Poo) The feeling that you’ve heard this crap before.
Is the Tea Party dead or was the Republican Establishment dead in 2010 ?
“The Tea Party is kaput? How disconcerting.” ~ Scott Wagner
The TEA Party is dead.
Long live the TEA Party.
[…] As William Jacobson says, we’ve heard this before. […]
To me, the Tea Party condition is complex. And limited, self-limited, due to fear of political correctness.
They do great things, and have in my state, this week. However, I’d like to see a group that in my head, I call “Stronger Tea.” But I wouldn’t want their efforts to suffer from such a competing moniker…
One thing is they are for the most part political newbies and it takes time to learn… And the IRS did slow them down and they are now looking for new ways to address this… And, the media is against them, even local media… We are on these blogs, but the local papers and news stations have so many more viewers, they set the tone and know it… And relish their power to make and to destroy….
It’s a big set of problems that needed solved 5 years ago.