Steve Chapman points out that the Tea Party movement (like any other large group of people) has a few odd characters, but he is delighted that there is a growing mass of citizens who think it’s important to restrain government and not impose burdens of future generations.
Here’s my first impression of the tea party movement: It’s a rabidly right-wing phenomenon with a shaky grasp of history, a strain of intolerance and xenophobia, a paranoia about Barack Obama, and an unhealthy reverence for Fox News. Any movement that doesn’t firmly exclude Birchers, birthers, and Islamaphobes is not a movement for me. Here’s my second impression of the tea party movement: We are lucky to have it. That’s because the tea partiers, who may not all agree on gay marriage or birthright citizenship, are united behind a couple of sound goals: curtailing the cost of government and refusing to live at the expense of future generations. Those are goals that, for eight years, had many rhetorical supporters in Washington, but few authentic champions. Blame that on George W. Bush, who arrived billing himself as a compassionate conservative, a description that was accurate except for the adjective and the noun. Whatever his ideology, his policy was to expand federal spending at a rate unseen since President Lyndon Johnson, the architect of the Great Society. He didn’t do it alone, though. Had Bush been a Democrat, Republicans would have fought his budget plans at every turn. But since he was one of theirs, they joined in the spree with gusto, even as they cut taxes and piled up deficits. The prevailing attitude was: Live it up now, and let someone else worry about paying for it later. Budget hawks were left wondering what happened to Republican tightwads, who thought every dollar spent by the government was a dollar that had to be justified as a vital necessity. The tea partiers were dismayed to see these penny-pinchers replaced by poll-driven insiders with an appetite for earmarks. That’s one big reason hard-right candidates have scored so many upsets in recent GOP Senate primaries—including Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Joe Miller in Alaska, and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. They didn’t get nominated because they look and sound like the popular image of a savvy, experienced, well-informed, practical-minded U.S. senator. They got nominated because they don’t.
[...] have to take issue with my former Cato colleague Dan Mitchell and Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, someone who I agree with on many issues. Like them I [...]
Dan I visit this blog almost every day and follow much of your work with Cato. However, I was somewhat disappointed upon reading this article on Reason.com. Everyone is very quick to judge the tea party movement as “rabid” and “intolerant” and “xenophobic” based on the VERY few outliers and the rare actions of such outliers. Are these people (who are quick to judge) so ignorant and naive to believe that there are NO members of the Libertarian, Conservative, progressive, Democratic, Republican, Working Families, Liberal, Green, etc parties and/or movements that are at all “rabid” or “intolerant” or “xenophobic”? That is, I find it almost amusing that people (such as Steve Chapman) initial impression was so “rabid” and “intolerant” of others who support limited government…… and even more amusing that he would admit his ignorance and naiveté in an article such as this, even if he did (begrudgingly) concede that for now “the tea party will have to do”….. as if the movement needs his approval. Please keep up the great work Dan.
Reading about the Tea Party movement across the border in Nova Scotia—where I no doubt miss many of the nuances and lived experiences that inform American life—it seems to me that at its core (apart from the inevitable fringe that coalesces around any sort of political movement) the Tea Party is about returning to the first principles of the U.S. Constitution: limited government, local empowerment, and personal freedom.
That the Tea Party has been subject to such heated abuse—from both progressive liberals and moderate conservatives—makes me wonder about the vitality of Americans’ constitutional consciousness.
I’ll be convince when we actually start closing whole departments. Like the DoE. Something big. Regan couldn’t even do that. It’s not a real movement until something big gets shut down permanently.