The Tea Party Express: 2010 and 2012

SECURING THE BASE: WHO IS THE FRINGE?

Democrats, we are told, are gleeful over the Tea Party Express (TPE) victories last Tuesday and in earlier primaries, giving hope that the extremism of the TPE will drive Republican moderates and disgruntled independents into the Democratic fold in November. For the Democrats, the big one on Tuesday was the Delaware primary giving Christine O'Donnell, backed by the TPE, a big win over her moderate opponent, Representative Mike Castle, in the race to take over Joe Biden's Senate seat. That, Democrats believe, demonstrates that right wing extremists are taking over the GOP and thus will tip the voter balance enough to give Democrats victories not only in Delaware but also in some other tough places like Nevada and Kentucky. And maybe allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to keep her job.

Besides the supposed boon for the Democrats, the post-primary election analyses see the wins by a number of extreme right wing candidates as a GOP headache not only for November but also for Republican leaders in the House and Senate in the next Congress. If TPE candidates win and go to Washington, can the GOP leadership bring the TPE victors into the fold or will they be openly challenged to push the party legislative agenda still farther to the right? So the ultimate question for Republicans in the short term is--who are the ideological fringe, the shrinking number of moderate Republicans or the small number of successful TPE-backed extremists who may be coming to Congress? I say "small" because, even if they all win, they will represent only a small fraction of the House and Senate membership. The two chambers will still be overwhelmingly dominated by incumbents. But even if only a small number, they certainly have proven to be vocal, thus posing a considerable annoyance at least to GOP congressional leaders whether in the majority or minority. And, of course, the voices of any new TPE members will be reinforced by outside cheerleaders like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

For President Obama, GOP obstructionism has already been a problem in getting important pieces of his economic recovery program through Congress, particularly in the Senate where the 60-vote rule has served the Republican minority well as the instrument of obstruction. Obama's problem is likely to be even greater if there is a small but vocal group of new right wing extremists pushing their definition of "change" on their mainstream conservative brethren.

But going beyond the many analyses of what lies ahead in elections just over six weeks away is what all of the sound and fury of the TPE and its fellow travelers may mean for the longer term, the presidential elections of 2012. The ideological trajectory of the Republican party seems to be clearly heading in the direction of the right wing extremists, as exemplified by the Tea Party and its adherents. Without knowing how this November's elections will turn out, GOP presidential hopefuls already must calculate whether to move further to the right or leave room for attracting the party's moderate voters and independents. Such calculating is part of the basic strategy of elective politics--first secure the base. One only has to listen to Newt Gingrich with his increasingly outrageous rhetoric to see where he thinks the party base lies. For Sarah Palin, there's no problem. She has helped define the far right base. For other would-be's like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee, it is a bit trickier. While they have certainly been right of center, they do not appear as yet to have committed themselves to the more extreme right policy positions or the Gingrich-like vocalizing , although Romney was quick to endorse O'Donnell after her victory. And then, of course, there is Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina who has so far confined himself to being a TPE spear carrier in the primaries but may become more ambitious in the near future.

The bottom line for all of the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, however, is not how the TPE and its adherents do in November. Win or lose, the TPE has already clearly demonstrated that they can make a significant difference and it is not likely to go away. The message is that the Republican voter base has shifted farther to the right and any presidential hopeful who ignores that does so at his or her peril. If Democrats are correct in their thinking that the right wing extremism displayed by the TPE will help them this year, then the continual sliding of the GOP to the right should also serve Obama well in 2012.