Tea Party: the cracks begin to show

[jrtom]

As a political movement, the Tea Party has come a long way in a relatively short time. They've already got one prominent supporter on the national ballot for November 2010 (Rand Paul), and there are probably others that I'm unaware of.

I'm starting to wonder whether it may have peaked too soon, though:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/not-all-tea-partiers-support-sharron-angle/57793/

It seems to me that established parties can afford to have public schisms; I'm not sure that insurgent movements can.

(For those who may have come in late: I am not a TP supporter.)

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I think this particular rift will coalesce back together; they're arguing over who is most extreme, which is a good argument for an extremist insurgency to have. (I am not a TP supporter either, I just call 'em as I see 'em.) A fanatic movement can have endless internal schisms over the question of who's most fanatical, and still survive as a movement, growing more and more fanatical as they go -- witness the Terror in the wake of the French Revolution. They only eventually crash when they turn so hard and so often on each other that individuals become frightened to draw notice from their own supporters, because as soon as they do, they will draw enemies who can do them real harm also. Then you have people backing up and deciding that maybe this group has gone too far... and the group loses momentum and credibility as its own membership, and maybe its own leadership (what hasn't been guillotined of it), repudiate it in order to save their own skins.

Nobody's repudiating the Tea Party movement yet, because even if it's unpredictable, it can still do an individual candidate far more good than it is likely to do them harm, especially if they make all the right extremist noises. When they start destroying political careers not because someone isn't extreme enough, but because for everyone who makes extremist noises there is a rival who will make more of them, they're in at least mild trouble, but so far that has causes muffled flurries but not destroyed careers. They're in major trouble when they start killing people who have rivals in the party, rather than simply ruining their careers, because that's when the candidates have more to lose by getting the party's attention than they have to gain. Right now it's very much the other way around still.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

What I meant by "can afford to" may not have been entirely clear.

Right now it's useful for some candidates to claim affiliation with or support of the Tea Party in part because it's viewed as being a big enough force to make a difference in an election. If it starts fragmenting (such that not all the Tea Party support goes to a single candidate) then that utility decreases and may disappear entirely. Especially because I think that a lot of candidates, and voters, are looking to see whether the Tea Party is merely sound and fury signifying nothing, or in fact a storm that's not blowing over soon.

Put another way: neither the Libertarians nor the Greens are currently a notable force in American national politics, and this was only made worse (for the Greens) by Nader doing an independent candidacy last time around while the Greens still ran their own candidate. In the absence of approval or ranked-choice voting, parties have to be big in order to survive, or they get strategically voted into irrelevance.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I see your point here, but part of the effect of an insurgency (which carries a degree of wild enthusiasm that neither the Green Party nor the Libertarians have been able to muster) isn't just that its support makes people who would have voted one way vote a different way, it's that, especially at primaries, it can deluge the polls with so many voters who mightn't otherwise have gone as to effectively eliminate early any candidate who doesn't have their support. It might end up being the case that Tea Party endorsement becomes a prerequisite for gaining the Republican nomination for office in some states or locales, and even if it's split and so you're not guaranteed the nomination with TP support, you're absolutely guaranteed not to have a chance without it.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Greens and the Libertarians have been short on wild enthusiasm for some time now. Arguably they need a rebranding (and arguably, the Tea Party is a Libertarian rebranding, for that matter--sort of, anyway).

Part of my argument, however--which is still not spelled out very well--is that if there are multiple 'insurgency' candidates that it may actually decrease turnout, because it's clear that the individual candidates' chances are compromised by the split.

The situation you're describing--in which TP support, or even a segment of it, becomes a prerequisite for nomination--is arguably concomitant to the TP supplanting the Republicans as a party, at least locally. (Granted, the phrase 'necessary, but not sufficient' should probably appear in here somewhere. :) )

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I think the Tea Party is starting to, de facto, replace the Republican Party in a lot of local offices. For national stuff, there will need to be a coalition of TP and assorted other people who can tolerate them... AKA the Republicans, which has for some time largely consisted of the whacko libertarian/social conservative/ultrapatriots plus whoever else can tolerate them. So I don't see that changing much.