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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Clarence Page
Tea party supporters -- the movement is too proudly unstructured to have card-carrying "members" -- had better savor this moment. They've had an exciting ride so far, but their political life probably won't get any better than this.
Now that the movement has begun to score some electoral successes, its standard bearers are expected to show less anger and produce more answers. Anger unifies a movement. Proposed answers lead to arguments.
Polls and my own conversations with participants at tea party rallies tell me that the movement is a fervently anti-tax, anti-big-government wing of the 40 percent of Americans who identify themselves as conservative in recent Gallup polls. Many were angry at President George W. Bush's spending policies and showed it by failing to turn out for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008. But that allowed Democratic President Barack Obama to win, popping the lid of fiscal conservative rage with the help of the same Internet connections that fired up Obama's campaign.
"I don't think the tea parties represent a brand new force in our politics. They represent a shift in control of politics," said David Weigel, who writes the Right Now blog for The
Yet the panel agreed that the tea party's biggest rallying issue cooled when Obama's health care overhaul passed. History indicates that it is unlikely to be undone, regardless of how much some Republicans may call for its repeal, since American voters are not in the habit of taking a major benefit away from themselves.
That sentiment appears to be supported in a new
Democratic politicians also are readjusting their strategies, including avoiding long-cherished town-hall meetings to deprive tea party hecklers of cheap YouTube moments. Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, wrote Jeff Zeleny in the
Urged by national party leaders, the lawmakers wanted to reduce opportunities for angry voters to vent as video cameras roll.
What will tea partiers do without politicians to scream at? They can yell at each other. Now that the anti-tax movement has begun to score some electoral victories, their endorsed candidates increasingly will be asked to offer solutions, not just complaints. That's when the real arguing begins.
That's also why Sen. Harry Reid, for example, breathed a little easier after tea party darling Sharron Angle won the Republican nomination for his
That's politically wise, even though it sounds like old-school politics as usual. In the abstract, everybody wants to reduce the deficit and cut government spending. But as President George W. Bush discovered in the backlash to his own comparatively modest
Bottom line: The tea party has changed American politics in the way other populist movements of the past that also had the advantage of charismatic leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, George Wallace, Ross Perot or Ralph Nader: Like bees, they don't stick around long, but they do leave a mark.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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