Is The Tea Party Losing Steam?
Yesterday there was a big Tea Party rally planned in Washington D.C. It was supposed to put pressure on Congressional Republicans to stay strong in the budget fight and to keep their promise of $100B in cuts. Only a few hundred people showed up despite the line up of Tea Party “stars” like Michele Bachmann and Rand Paul. Fox blamed the weather (to be fair it was cold) even though >100,000 protested for weeks in Wisconsin in the extreme cold.
Daily Kos speculates that the Tea Party is getting less popular, which is backed up by polling data. The Tea Party had -15 favorability in the last survey 32% favorable/47% unfavorable. There are other signs that the Tea Party is losing momentum. During the Wisconsin protests, the Tea Party was able to do only one counterprotest, again with only a few hundred people. Recent TV ratings show Fox has lost 21% of its audience (Beck has lost 30%) while CNN and MSNBC gain in ratings.
I would argue that the Tea Party was a net positive for Republicans in 2010. Yes, they lost some races that Republicans would have won (like Castle) but they brought passion and excitement to the right. I’m just not sure that would have happened without them. A lot of people speculate that the Tea Party passion is waning because the health care fight is mostly over. I think it’s because Republicans are back in power, so conservatives have lost their focus somewhat (nothing unites more than a common enemy). The current antics of energized birthers like Donald Trump are going to make Republicans look really bad. (Trump may be getting a lot of attention but it’s not the kind of positive attention you want to be elected to office.)
In Delaware, the Tea Party and energized right have successfully pushed the traditional Republicans out of power. What influence will the new Teapublican establishment have on elections in 2012? Will they be a net negative this time or will the memory of their antics have faded so that generic Republicans are once again the mythical independent fiscal conservatives?
Tags: Tea Party
woah woah woah woah! hold the phone!
you mean to tell me an astroturf organization totally funded by an entertainment channel and backed by corporate greed-money that now exists for the sole purpose of making a black guy look like the devil doesnt have the internal fortitude to stand just on it’s inbred redneck members?
ga-faw!
Wait til 2012 before you count them out. Meanwhile watch the actions of both parties in Congress to see what legacy the 2010 TP movement has made.
Is it me or is the political pendulum swinging faster and farther than ever before?!? I’m getting whipsawed by the back and forth – momentum for Obama in 2008, then Tea Party in 2010, then dropping again now, and who-knows-where in 2012.
I think we are witnessing the last hurrah of old, white men. It’s like the end of a fireworks show – lots of noise and chaos.
I think the GOP primaries will be the test. Will Snowe and Lugar survive or will the Tea Party dominate the primary again?
i hope they get beat by baggers who make CoD look like Hillary. I honestly dont care anymore if conservatives get disenfranchised and non-represented on any significant level ever again. They have bad ideas about everything and are so dumb they constantly vote against their own economic interests because rich people tell them to. The common teabag cat be trusted to make good decisions.
Lugar is gone. 30 years late but I can hardly wait. The protest was stupid. Why protest against your own guys when it is the other side holding things up? The Republicans already passed their bills. You need to protest the Democrats who are doing nothing but say no.
The people are smart enough to know that. Some of the self appointed leaders are malcontent losers who will be replaced in time.
The Naderite/TeaBagger movements will always be a part of the American political scene and their effectiveness will always be determined by who steps in to be the puppeteer, and how deep their pockets are. Since rich people like Republicans they can be depended upon to fund these fringe groups whenever it looks like a good electoral strategy. Either as spoilers or base rousers. 2011 is an off-year in most of the country so throwing good money at these folks isn’t good strategy this year. These guys didn’t get rich by being stupid with their money. They will be back next year in some incarnation. Bet on it.
The great success of the Republicans was to convince voters that Democratic opposition to their jihad against government and the middle class is “partisan bickering.”
The teabaggers helped that argument by providing enough lunacy and extremism that they actually did provoke partisan bickering.
“The Republicans already passed their bills. You need to protest the Democrats who are doing nothing but say no.”
very nice stab at the mind numbing hypocrisy. but your talking points are too transparent. Id suggest waiting a little longer until the american people forget that it was the GOP strategy to say NO. (wont take long) but you knew that. You also probably knew everyone would catch that mistake, so im just going to assume your entire comment was a joke and laugh at the snarkyness.
“Fox blamed the weather (to be fair it was cold)”
It was just as cold at Washington’s baseball stadium, and there were tens of thousands of people there.
I am starting to understand the GOP goal for this term is to do as much damage as possible to unions, even if they all go down in flames in the next election. It is like a suicide bombing aimed at labor.
The Republicans already passed their bills. You need to protest the Democrats who are doing nothing but say no.
Not just hypocrisy, but the usual misdirection — as though no one here is paying attention. Those tejadis showed up specifically to tell repubs not to buy into the budget compromise that has been in the wind. Those teajadis showed up with a “$100B or bust” message for the GOP, so it certainly did make sense that they were protesting their own guys.
A NPR reporter talked to some of these people at this pitiful rally and compromise was definitely NOT on their minds.
Got to have a begrudging respect for these teajadis though — they continue to show up to pressure their lawmakers, rather than retreat to their keyboards for a litany of “you’re doing it wrong!” bluster.
Personally, I believe the stupid, “I can’t make up my mind” Indies finally figured out that these xenophobic bed-wetters were nothing more than an astroturf rebranding effort. Yes, the TPers believe what they say, but the kickoff (a CNBC hack and cash from Dick Armey [so fuckin apropos]), should be enough evidence that all this arm-flailing over the past two years has been nothing more than a release the hounds, last-chance to save the GOP brand for the foreseeable future. And it worked, the Indy rubes bought it and after seeing the turd sandwich they bought for lunch, I’m pretty sure they won’t order the same for dinner.
But with that said, if the purity fuckers just got off their asses and voted, then we wouldnt be having this conversation.
lefTeabags are even worse. At least the FoxBaggers are a clearly defined enemy with batshit crazy ideas….. the LefTeabags however CLAIM to be liberal, or progressives or what have you, but are actually dogmatists who do more damage to the cause by demanding total satisfaction or nothing at all. I’d say they are like children, but even kids will take pistachio ice cream instead of no ice cream.
The centrist compromisers put a little bit more Republican broccoli in the Democrat ice cream each time, until finally you are eating pure broccoli and ice cream is just a memory.
The they will come along and say stop whining for ice cream, ice cream is bad for you anyway, and the rightward cycle begins again.
and the purist approach makes ice cream seem like something for only immature brats, so people move away from ice cream so as not to be associated with the stigma they create.
and the purist approach makes ice cream seem like something for only immature brats, so people move away from ice cream so as not to be associated with the stigma they create.
Translation: scared of being called liberal.
Good for Wisconsin Dems they didn’t fall down that rabbit hole.
I think a lot of Dems emerged from their trance to identify with the Wisconsin Dem “stigma.”
wrong. translation “stop giving validity to those who make liberal a dirty word be acting like a teabagger”
Good for Wisconsin Dems they didn’t fall down that rabbit hole.
The rabbit hole Wisconsin Dems didn’t fall down into was the one that would have left them screaming that the President (or someone else) should be fixing this and he was doing it all wrong. They got off of their butts, into the streets, raising money, shutting down a bank and gathering signatures for a recall. As the man said — they were the ones they were waiting for.
Good thing they didn’t have local Democrats calling them lefteabaggers. That would have been pretty discouraging. In Wisconsin, apparently Dems stick together to support Democratic issues.
Here, lefteabaggers are sneered at – until they win. Then they become OK again (“the ones they were waiting for”)
The thing is that no one would have called them leftTeabaggers — if you are trying to address your own problems rather than calling for other people to do it you are — by definition — NOT a leftTeabagger.
Certainly there wasn’t anyone here calling the Wisconsin Dems lefteabaggers. There was (and still is ) a great deal of admiration for what they are working on.
The operable word being working.
Then the “teabagger” part of “lefteabagger” is a completely dishonest comparison. Because one thing teabaggers do is get off their butts, show up, and work for what they want.
One of the justifications for compromise with Republicans is “Progressives are a minority.” – kind of bewildering, since there aren’t even any progressive positions on the table; what’s being compromised away is straight Democrat, not progressive.
Anyway, as small a force as Progressives are, the Teabagger House caucus is even smaller than the Progressive House caucus, but twice as effective.
Even though they are smaller, they have forced leadership to deal with them, in a way Progressives never could.
In a way Progressives never could.
Indeed. And that is the thing to think about how to fix. The Wisconsin Dems are an especially good model.
@1:41 “I think a lot of Dems emerged from their trance to identify with the Wisconsin Dem “stigma.””
It’s not just the Dems. The number of people who self identify as Republican has dropped from 40% to 33% in just 6 months.
http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/pdf/AP-GfK%20Poll%20%20032911.pdf
Progressives have plenty of fight, but they have to fight faux Democrats as well as Republicans.
The problem is, Democrats invest a lot of time and effort splintering themselves. At one point the House progressives had pledged to vote against any Senate HCR bill that did not have a public option, and the rest of the House seemed pretty much OK with that. Then the White House sent Bill Clinton around to tell us all to lie back and think of England.
In December the House was poised to shut down the tax cuts for the rich, until Biden was deployed to smooth the way for that capitulation.
So yes, focusing on leadership like Obama and Biden and holding them accountable is exactly the right way to keep policy from drifting right. Biting the ankles of those who would hold them accountable is the wrong way.
The Senate Dems’ greatest achievement was to lose the House by creating an enthusiasm gap. Which relieved them of their constant embarrassment of stripping Democratic bills of Democratic provisions.
They are much more comfortable now.
Progressives have plenty of fight, but they have to fight faux Democrats as well as Republicans.
And now we are into the rationalization part of the conversation.
When Progressive Democrats look like Wisconsin Dems (which they most assuredly do not — on almost any topic they claim to care about), you’ll have something. In the meantime, you are reduced to “you’re doing it wrong!” ranting.
In the meantime, you are reduced to “you’re doing it wrong!” ranting.
Which is a perfect description of the mentality that calls traditional Democrats “lefteabaggers.”
Yes Virginia, there are lefteabaggers, but they aren’t the people who are trying to hold Democratic feet to the fire on the traditional Democratic kitchen sink issues.
Traditional Democrats aren’t sitting at their keyboards working up their online rage over why someone else isn’t fixing it all.
Traditional Democrats look *very* much like the Wisconsin Democrats — doing some very effective work on multiple fronts trying to change the political conditions they aren’t happy about.
Not exactly the LOE that the leftTeabaggers are expending.
You don’t know what else I do, and I don’t know what else you do. So that is a red herring.
If you are working in some Democratic movement that is more effective than what I see here, bravo, but I don’t understand why you would undermine your good work with your own comments here.
Wisconsin Dems showed us how to all work on the same side, whether in our speech or in our actions. It is a good lesson about sticking together.
This talk about “lefteabaggers” and pissing contests about who does what kind of activism, isn’t helping.
Well, you may be having a pissing contest, but I’m making the point that I’ve been making for awhile.
And what I do know is that the work that Wisconsin Dems (followed by the Ohio ones) is marked by focus, sacrifice and political smarts aimed at exactly the right pressure points. Not exactly the hallmarks of the leftTeabaggers who persistently want someone else to do the work they should be out doing.
Just for the record, there have never been any Democratic leftists to speak of in Delaware government. So your “until they win” comment is another red herring.
I don’t want Democratic leftists. I want Democrat centrists – centered somewhere between Kucinich and Carper, not between Carper and Sarah Palin.
Blogging and other media is not inconsequential as you claim. Media and blogging creates the public perceptions that move voters and elected officials to the right or to the left. The lazy ones are the “good people” who have a platform yet do nothing. You either put your shoulder to the blogging wheel, or you allow it to roll back on the rest of us.
In your dreams. The Tea Party is the most potent political force in American politics today, and shall remain so. In just two years it has put more people in state and national offices than anything else.
The liberals worst dream is an educated and motivated electorate.
We are coming to get the libs and they are scared. Nancy, Barry and Barack Hussein are the gift that keeps on giving. The establishment Republicans never had the nerve to go after the Marxists, but the Tea Partiers sure do.
As you demonstrate, empty boasting is what Tea Partiers do best.
The liberals worst dream is an educated and motivated electorate.
No, our worst dream is a motivated and uneducated electorate – Tea Party.
The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of a passionate intensity. Same as it ever was.
I’ve never made the argument that blogging is inconsequential, so you have to find the person who said that to argue with.
You either put your shoulder to the blogging wheel, or you allow it to roll back on the rest of us.
And we’re back to the “it’s someone else’s job” card. Same as it ever was.
Steam? Steam was captured to do work. The flatulence emitted by the Tea-people are only inhaled by them and this noxious odor feeds an insular power source.
Can they harness this “power” to light incandescent bulbs?
*sigh* Down the same old rathole again. Basically, uncompromising and get things done don’t go together.
Compromising gets the wrong things done. Not all motion is progress.
People who can’t even be bothered to speak out for the right things, aren’t going to be bothered to help achieve them in any other way.
People who can’t even be bothered to speak out for the right things
And this is where we get back to the leftTeabagger thing. They’re the people working on this purity thing. As in speaking out for the *right* things? You can count on one hand the people here who think that you get to decide what is *right* for anyone to speak out on. But people who think that they have the *right* position or policy or whatever are doing something about getting that done — and that doing something is quite abit more than raging at your keyboard.
The Wisconsin Dems are still the model.