The Tea Party in the Age of Obama: Mainstream Conservatism or Out-Group Anxiety? (original) (raw)
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In 2009, after the financial meltdown, the mortgage bubble"s burst and the following bailouts of Wall Street banks and major corporations, 80 percent of American adults said they distrusted the U.S. government, and 75 percent said they felt either angry or frustrated, feeling that the government looks out for the interests of a few special interests at the expense of the people (DiMaggio). One could imagine 80 percent of an angered public coming together, marching together and demanding change in public policy, after all, everyone identified the problem as the same, the same circumstances and policies had set the conditions that lead to the problem. But, that isn"t what happened.
The Tea Party and American Populism Today: Between Protest, Patriotism and Paranoia
dms – der moderne staat – Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management, 2011
This article takes a closer look at the Tea Party by adding a transatlantic perspective. Its aim is to show that the Tea Party is a genuine right-wing movement with strong affinities to the Republican Party which revives particular American traditions of conservatism and the radical right. Its support base is not ‘the mainstream’ but a particular cross section of the white middle classes. In this, it is the American mirror image of many European parties and movements of the populist radical right which share the Tea Party’s anti-establishment message, its ultra-patriotism and ethnocentrism. It also shares some of its characteristics with the Christian Right with which it competes and cooperates when aiming at influencing the Republican Party and Washington while marking the merger of the Christian Right with Southern conservatism.
The Tea Party: A Party Within a Party
Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2016
It is little surprise that conservatives were politically disaffected in early 2009, or that highly conservative individuals mobilized as a political movement to protest ‘big government’ and Obama’s election. Rather than merely directing its animus against liberals, the Tea Party mobilized against the Republican Party in primaries and beyond. This dissertation draws from original survey, interview, Tea Party blog, and social network datasets to explain the Tea Party’s strategy for mobilization as a ‘Party within a Party’. Integrating new data on the Tea Party with existing theories of political parties, I show that the Tea Party’s strategy transcends the focused aims of a party faction. Instead, it works to co-opt the Republican Party’s political and electoral machinery in order to gain control of the party. This dissertation offers new insights on the Tea Party while developing a theory of intra-party mobilization that endures beyond the Tea Party. Index words: Dissertations, Gover...
The prevailing media narratives relating to the Tea Party have generally missed the mark by either portraying the movement as new and revolutionary or a cynical political creation of the GOP after its 2008 defeat. Nonetheless, it is necessary to find a satisfactory way in which to interpret the emergence of the Tea Party, its constituent parts, and its engagement with the US general population and the Republican Party organisational structures. We can reframe the discussion within the following question: is the Tea Party’s place within US politics, the American conservative movement, and the GOP better explained by revolution or evolution? With reference to the above criteria and by analysing both the historical and contemporary context, I intend to demonstrate that the Tea Party is neither truly revolutionary nor a pawn of the GOP, but instead reflects the ongoing development and evolution of the far-right in the US.
2012
My essay on the background on Trump/Pence conspiracist theories about Hillary as evil, "Political Correctness," the Culture Wars, and "Cultural Marxism." These claims are circulating in the Christian Right as election day approaches. The Tea Party folks never vanished. It's still a voting bloc. Has been since the John Birch Society was founded by a business executive and National Association of Manufacturers stooge in the late 1950s. = = = = The Tea Parties are a right-wing populist movement echoing earlier episodes of white nationalism in the USA. Power elites have encouraged similar counter-subversion panics using populist rhetoric and producerist narratives to enlist a mass base to defend their unfair power, privilege, and wealth. Typically, a large, middle-class white constituency sides with organized wealth as a way to defend their relative and precarious position in society. The blame for economic, political, and social tensions is transferred away from free market capitalism to mythical conspiracies of collectivists, communists, labor bosses, and other scapegoated subversives and traitors. At the same time, defense of unequal racial and gender hierarchies can be mobilized as part of these counter-subversion efforts. Patriots, economic libertarians, Christian dominionists, militia activists, nativists, and ethnic nationalists fit under the Tea Party umbrella in an uneasy coalition ostensibly built around reversing the ‘big government’ policies of the Obama administration.