March 15, 2010

Tea Party Brings Energy, Change and Tumult to GOP

The political commentariat doesn’t know what to make of those thousands of Americans who have spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town hall meetings to oppose the big government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.

Some on the left attack them as fascists or racists, though evidence of that is sorely lacking. David Brooks in The New York Times compared them to the New Left campus radicals of the 1970s, which comes closer to reality but doesn’t quite ring true.

Some tea partiers, citing the Declaration and the Constitution, compare themselves to the patriots of 1776 and the founders of 1787, which has some validity but seems overly self-congratulatory.

In terms of their immediate effect on conventional politics and their potential for continued influence, I think the tea partiers bear an uncanny resemblance to the antiwar activists in the Vietnam War period.

Like the tea partiers, the antiwar folk did not start off affiliated with one political party. They campaigned against an incumbent Democratic president and his political heir in 1968. Four years later, some supported Rep. Pete McCloskey’s antiwar primary challenge to Richard Nixon. The tea partiers have plenty of corrosive things to say about the Republican politicians of the last decade, and at least some of them may support likeminded Democrats.

But if they stay involved, the tea partiers are likely to gravitate to the Republican Party, just as the antiwar folk gravitated to the Democratic Party, on which they had a long-lasting and pervasive effect.

Not all of that effect was positive. Antiwar Democrats beat hawks in primaries and then lost general elections to Republicans. The disarray of the 1968 Democratic national convention helped beat Hubert Humphrey, and the antiwar 1972 nominee George McGovern lost 49 states. Some antiwar folks voiced an anti-Americanism that turned off ordinary voters.

But antiwar Democrats supplied energy and impressive recruits to their party. Many Democrats who were motivated by dovish views and supported by dovish volunteers and contributors won breakthrough victories in 1974, enabling the party to hold congressional and legislative majorities for much of the next 20 years. And even as Democrats lost support from white Southerners and blue-collar men, their antiwar tendency helped them win support from affluent and culturally liberal suburbanites who now, despite Democrats’ workingman rhetoric, form the dominant part of the party base.

You can see the intellectual influence of the antiwar people in the speeches of Democrats opposing the conflicts in the Gulf in 1991 and Iraq in 2002. Their arguments are a better fit for the facts of the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964 than for the facts on the ground in 1991 and 2002.

Like the antiwar activists of 40 years ago, the tea partiers include many good citizens moved to political involvement because of intellectually serious concerns about public policy. Similarly, they include a much smaller number of cranks, conspiracy theorists and congenital malcontents.

Tea partiers have caused some internal party splits (see the New York 23 special election), and some may launch primary challenges or third-party efforts that will elect Democrats. Any time a large number of motivated people inject themselves into electoral politics, they cause a certain amount of chaos.

They also add a lot of energy, political creativity and enthusiasm into a moribund and dejected political party, like the Democrats of 1968 and the Republicans of 2008. New people change the positions and focus of their parties. The Democrats before 1968 were a pro-Cold War party. Since 1968 they have been, with occasional exceptions, a dovish party. Hawks need not apply (ask Joe Lieberman).

The Republicans for the last two decades have been a party whose litmus tests have been cultural issues, especially abortion. The tea partiers have helped to change their focus to issues of government overreach and spending. That may be a helpful pivot, given the emergence of a Millennial generation uncomfortable with crusading cultural conservatism.

It’s not clear whether the tea partiers’ influence on Republicans will last as long as the antiwar cohort’s imprint on Democrats. But their concern – the fact that government spending is on a trajectory to increase far beyond revenues – seems likely to persist. In which case a spontaneous movement that no one predicted and that no one person led could end up, again, reshaping one of our great political parties.

COPYRIGHT 2010 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.