Tea Party: A New Puritanism

As noted in my previous posting, the Tea Party (TP) is creating some uncertainty within the Republican party establishment, among GOP congressional leaders, and for would-be presidential aspirants. But the biggest problem for them should be the basic nature of the Tea Party movement itself. It has taken on the character of a puritanical movement. That is, it has a package of grievances it perceives as threats to our governmental and fiscal future and moral values. In political terms, this translates to, "if you want our support you must accept and endorse the entire package or we'll fight against you."

The TP is not a coherent, structured organization. It is an umbrella movement that brings together multiple groups with diverse agendas. The current central core of the TP package is anti-big government and anti-federal spending/deficits. Within this core anti-agenda are President Obama's biggest legislative successes--stimulus spending, health care reform, and financial regulation. His successes are their clubs to beat on him and, it must be said, their rhetoric has gained some traction among voters.

But there is also another set of anti- issues linked to the TP--social policy issues including anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration reform. There is a tug of war within the TP on whether to include the diverse social issues on their agenda. But TP adherents include groups focused on social policy. If the umbrella TP cuts out such issues, it risks losing those fellow travelers who feel intensely about the social policy agenda. Further, given the inclusion of God and religion in the speeches of some the most visible TP leaders and spear carriers such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Senate candidates such as Sharron Angle of Nevada and most recently Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, it seems highly unlikely that the TP can confine itself to a secular-only path to national redemption. In short, the whole is defined by the sum of its disparate parts.

If you are skeptical about "puritanical" as a term to describe the TP, you might consider the case of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Very early this year Brown was elected to fill the vacant seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Brown started his campaign as a clear underdog and his upset victory was attributed in significant part to late support and money from the Tea Party movement. But he quickly earned the ire of the TP in late February when he voted with the Democratic majority to block a filibuster on a $15 billion jobs bill. If that wasn't enough, in the summer he was one of the three Republicans who bucked the party leadership and crossed the aisle to help the Democrats pass the financial reform legislation aimed at curbing the excesses of Wall Street which were at the heart of the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008. His vote on financial regulatory reform, according to the Associated Press, resulted in TP activists protesting outside his office.

Some of Brown's decisions off the floor also drew the ire of the TP and other conservative activists. In April, he chose not to attend a rally on the Boston Common which featured an appearance of Palin, the political darling of the TP. Palin was later quoted as telling Fox News that while Massachusetts may "put up with" Brown, conservatives in Alaska would not. He also traveled to fund raising events for mostly moderate candidates for the Senate and House. Given that he was elected in a state with a Democratic tilt, it might be expected that he would choose to join the shrinking ranks of moderate Republicans and the majority Democrats on some issues rather than support the naked partisan, obstructionist strategy of the GOP congressional leaders.

So far, all of the TP activism has occurred outside of Congress (although sometimes on the sidewalk of the Capitol), with the TP looking in as a very vocal spectator. But it has also had some highly visible successes as a participant in the primaries, O'Donnell being the most recent. If, come November, the TP successes are extended to include getting some of their candidates into the House and/or Senate, the pressure for moving the party policy agenda closer to the TP extremist position will be inside Congress within the party caucuses of the two chambers. Like the Brown experience, the TP "our way or the highway" puritanism also extends to would-be presidential hopefuls. They will be subjected to the same litmus test on policy issues wrapped in an overarching God/religion/country theme.

So while the TP rhetorically portrays itself as wanting to give the country back to the people, return to the Constitution, and restore old values, it appears instead to be a movement that simply wants to define in its own terms what all of this means and support only those who accept what the movement says -- OR ELSE!!