Reading the Tea Leaves

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

I think that, you know, when we start talking about the Tea Party, people want to marginalize that into some kind of organization or party, but it really isn't. - Sharron Angle

I came across this article in the Washington Post regarding the September annual conference of the American Political Science Association in Seattle.  It is, as the name implies, an association of political science scholars from multiple universities across the country.  During this conference, they submitted several papers regarding the impact of the Tea Party on today's politics, and in particular the 2010 elections and the House of Representative races.

The article states that, although the Tea Party was able to energize the Republican base, it had very little to do with the impact of the 2010 elections on the House races.  As a matter of fact, it may have been a detriment in a couple of Senate races.

"Instead, they argue that more traditional factors — in this case high unemployment, the Republican tilt of many districts that Democrats were defending, along with candidate experience and performance — were more decisive in the outcome than a tea party stamp of approval."

The conference papers also gave a demographic of the type of people that tended to be Tea Party Activists:

"As many media polls have shown, people who are “white, married, older, less educated, higher income . . . from the South and more religious tend to have more favorable opinions of the tea party movement,” Jacobson writes.

Both Jacobson and Abramowitz also say that those who support the tea party movement show higher levels of racial resentment than do non-supporters and that they were more likely to say they disliked Obama."

The gist of the article seems to be that the scholars believed that the Tea Party is going to have an outsized influence on the Republican Party for the 2012 election, much to the detriment of the Republican Party.  While the Tea Party may be a mobilizing force for the Republican Party, much of their message is more noise than representation.  As a result, I believe their gravitation to the far right and tendency to pursue further polarization will contribute heavily to Republican difficulties for the 2012 elections.

For those that would have more of a vested interest in the Republican side of the race, would you agree?

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

For those that would have more of a vested interest in the Republican side of the race, would you agree?

I'd be puzzled, but we're talking academics who are quite out of touch with what's actually on the ground.

Here's what the Tea Party did:

1) Got more of that "silent majority" involved, providing grassroots and boots-on-the-ground support for conservative candidates.

2) Contested more races. Even in Massachusetts, you had 9 of the 10 Congressional districts contested, something that hasn't happened up here in recent memory. My current representative, Richard Neal, had previously been opposed once in 22 years as an incumbent.

3) Most importantly, moved the Republican Party rightward. The Republicans under Bush had embraced his centrist "compassionate conservatism," largely abandoning the Reaganesque "government is the problem" ideals. It's largely why the Republicans lost Congress in 2006 and why Republican turnout was depressed in 2008.

Along the same lines on this note is that we saw some Republicans - folks like Bill Bennett in Utah and Charlie Crist in Florida - who were more "moderate" ousted in favor of more ideologically favorable people. This backfired in a few places like Nevada and Delaware, but there's something to be said about the party better reflecting the ideological desires of their constituency. A failure of national GOTV efforts also hampered some of the closer races - the GOP could have credibly picked up 5 more House seats and perhaps Harry Reid's seat if there was a good plan in place.

Now, to be fair, many of the Republican gains in 2010 came in districts that won on Obama's coattails in 2008 - NH-1 with Carol Shea-Porter being a good example local-ish for me. The switch back to Republicans made sense, and it means that, if the GOP continues to make gains in 2012, they will not be as many because the Republicans have largely picked off the low-hanging fruit already. With that said, there doesn't appear to be a lot of slowing down on the activism end - it's easy to dismiss it as noise because we're used to populist noise from the left with little action, but the Tea Party movement has largely co-opted left wing populist activism with traditional right wing ideology to great success.

The Tea Party movement is largely the only reason the Republican Party is credible right now. Far from it being a detriment, it's actually been a boon for the party itself. I expect the Tea Party movement in the next few years to less become an oddity and instead be just part of the show, just as we treat so many sub-groups within the Democratic Party. At some point the media will get over the fact that a credible populist challenge to the narrative exists, and things will even out again.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Along the same lines on this note is that we saw some Republicans - folks like Bill Bennett in Utah and Charlie Crist in Florida - who were more "moderate" ousted in favor of more ideologically favorable people. This backfired in a few places like Nevada and Delaware, but there's something to be said about the party better reflecting the ideological desires of their constituency. A failure of national GOTV efforts also hampered some of the closer races - the GOP could have credibly picked up 5 more House seats and perhaps Harry Reid's seat if there was a good plan in place.

^That is only the case if the ideological consistency can survive a challenge outside the confines of primaries, which every single Tea Party election that was contested did not.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

BTW, the GOP can thank the Tea Party Republicans for this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-15/republicans-get-most-blame-for-ineffective-governing-in-national-u-s-poll.html

With my usual caveat that even when I agree with polls I consider what happens on election day to be the only real barometer.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

^That is only the case if the ideological consistency can survive a challenge outside the confines of primaries, which every single Tea Party election that was contested did not.

Unless your name is Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Kristi Noem, Jeff Landry, etc...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Rand Paul winning election with a neo-Nazi racist father in Kentucky, one of the strongholds of Neo-Confederate/neo-white supremacist politics in the modern age is no surprise.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

we're talking academics who are quite out of touch with what's actually on the ground.

I know it is popular, particularly by the right, to marginalize academia. But they are the ones that actually study this stuff, as opposed to buying targeted polls that are intended to produce the results that are paid for.

Those that claim they are out of touch are the first ones to claim the accolades of a PhD., J.D. or other academic achievements in their quest for credibility.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

"show higher levels of racial resentment than do non-supporters and that they were more likely to say they disliked Obama."

That's politics, not science, and taking people like that seriously is quite hard to do.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

What's political about saying that people who self-identified as having a positive opinion of the Tea Party were also more likely to answer survey questions in a way that would indicate racial resentment?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I know it is popular, particularly by the right, to marginalize academia. But they are the ones that actually study this stuff, as opposed to buying targeted polls that are intended to produce the results that are paid for.

This isn't trying to marginalize them at all - it's more pointing out that they are, in fact, isolated from what's going on outside of academia. When an academic talks about the Republicans moving further right over the last 20 years, that's not an informed position. When an academic assumes that a Tea Party endorsement had no impact on the result of a race, that doesn't show informed ideas about the way Tea Party groups are organized or act. For example - the local Tea Party group did not outright endorse a candidate in our local federal race, but worked very hard to try and get him elected. which direction should that go? Were they even aware of the race?

It's silly - maybe in 20 years, when the academics have some distance and documentation, this might be worth noting. Not right now.

Those that claim they are out of touch are the first ones to claim the accolades of a PhD., J.D. or other academic achievements in their quest for credibility.

You won't be seeing me do that. Do you have any response for what I wrote in response, or is this just a chance for you to swipe at your viewpoints on conservatives and academia?

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

it's more pointing out that they are, in fact, isolated from what's going on outside of academia

Which is, in fact, marginalizing academia. Thanks for proving my point.

Do you have any response for what I wrote in response

Responded

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

When an academic talks about the Republicans moving further right over the last 20 years. . .

. . . that academic bases the assertion on a historical examination of congressional votes, which is, really, an informed position. It's informed by the congressional record.

When political scientists analyze the ways the two parties have changed ideologically, they confirm the obvious. Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal studied every recorded vote in the Hose and Senate from 1970 to 2003 and found that Republicans have moved sharply to the right while Democrats have scarcely moved leff at all. Moreover, even the slight leftward shift among Democrats is accounted for by the disappearance of the party's conservative Southern wing. . . .

The center has disappeared because the parameters of the political debate have lurched rightward. Politicians who have stayed in national office long enough have found themselves relocated on the political spectrum without having changed their beliefs. . . .

The poles of the political spectrum may be pulling farther apart, but the right is doing all of the pulling.

(Jonathan Chait, The Big Con, Houghton Mifflin, 2007, pp. 221-222.)

You might be right about your other assertions, but given how very wrong on this one you have proven to be, I'd be skeptical.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In other words you do as you claim you do not do and hope nobody has the reading comprehension ability to notice this.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Reagan expanded the federal government and started the deficit-expanding Spendapalooza - it's about time people like you acknowledge that Reaganesque "government is the problem" ideals were never actually put into play. Never submitted a single balanced budget to Congress.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Reagan was a definite ideological force, that's all I'm talking about when I talk about that. He spent to win the Cold War, absolutely - he also fundamentally reformed the tax code and put much of the conservative ideology as we know it now into play for many in the country.

He also shredded the Constitution.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Let us not forget the way that Reagan made an end-run around the Congressional power to declare war. (I do not truly debit Reagan himself, given his witless acquiescence in the plans and objects of others.)

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

1) Got more of that "silent majority" involved, providing grassroots and boots-on-the-ground support for conservative candidates.2) Contested more races. Even in Massachusetts, you had 9 of the 10 Congressional districts contested, something that hasn't happened up here in recent memory. My current representative, Richard Neal, had previously been opposed once in 22 years as an incumbent.3) Most importantly, moved the Republican Party rightward. The Republicans under Bush had embraced his centrist "compassionate conservatism," largely abandoning the Reaganesque "government is the problem" ideals. It's largely why the Republicans lost Congress in 2006 and why Republican turnout was depressed in 2008.

Which is nothing more than standard campaigning. I don't see anything exceptional about what they did. What you have listed pretty much puts them in the category of ACORN

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How much campaigning have you been involved with? What's your understanding of a basic campaign? Hell, what do you know about the Republican Party over the last 2 decades?

If you think that completely shifting the ideological makeup of a party, creating new GOTV efforts out of people who have never been engaged before, and contesting more races specifically because of that new engagement is "standard campaigning," I am willing to wager that the answer to those questions is "not much."

To the right...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... or to the more insane? I agree that there is a purgative effect on the Republican Party. More rational party stalwarts are less likely to consider themselves Republican anymore. It has driven more rational Republicans into the Independent column.

Re: To the right...

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

More rational party stalwarts are less likely to consider themselves Republican anymore. It has driven more rational Republicans into the Independent column.

Which is fine. At the end of the day, they're:

a) still conservative

b) still going to vote Republican.

The nation has been plurality conservative for years, even while Democrats decimate Republicans in party ID.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Reaganesque "government is the problem" ideals.

That's why he made it so much bigger?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I agree that the Tea Party's influence as a whole was a net negative. The most explicitly avowed Tea Party candidates like Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell lost in every single campaign they ran in, while the Tea Party is busy persecuting such Stalinists as Orrin Hatch. The Tea Party may have made the Republicans more ideologically consistent but it's steadily enervating Republicans in general elections against Democrats.

No Republican interest here.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I find that the Tea Party entertainment factor is a big boost to the nation's morale. It gives us something to ridicule and help us feel better about our own position. There but for divine grace go I.

Re: No Republican interest here.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Having some lulz in a time of difficulty could be crucial for the general survival of sanity.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The Tea Party has shown the nation what's it like when the fringe Republicans get a mouthpiece. It's going to be much more difficult to swallow their promises as Tea Partiers keep on keepin' on.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason I distanced myself from the Tea Party. I understand some of their political views, but not all of them. And after the actions of Mark Williams and Judson Phillips, I was done. I went to one local Tea Party meeting, and that's only because our state Senator was there to speak about state legislation. Not to mention I got sick and tired of people within the Tea Party bitching at me because my views weren't dead-on with their status quo.