Tea Parties Defined By What They Oppose

The grassroots movement is hostile to Washington, Wall Street and the media.

Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010
by Bill Schneider
National Journal

The "tea party" movement is leaderless, disorganized, unruly -- and proud of it. That's part of its self-image as a grassroots phenomenon.

At last weekend's National Tea Party Convention, which was sponsored by Tea Party Nation, one branch of the movement, you could find anti-tax activists, "birthers," libertarians, Republican Party operatives, and religious conservatives. "You don't need a proclaimed leader -- as if we are all just a bunch of sheep and we're looking for a leader -- to progress this movement," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, told the delegates.

There was diversity of views, yes, but not a diversity of much else. Delegates were overwhelmingly white, middle class, and middle age. Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., even sounded an anti-diversity theme. He condemned "the cult of multiculturalism" and told the delegates, "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."

The tea party movement is defined mostly by what it is against: President Obama, Big Government, taxes, and the Democratic agenda, especially on health care reform. Those are the same things the Republican Party is against. Many tea party activists are suspicious that the Republican Party is trying to co-opt them. It is.

So is Obama. Tea party activists are hostile to Washington and to Wall Street. Last week in New Hampshire, the president said, "Many good, hardworking people who met their responsibilities are now struggling, in part because folks on Wall Street and people in Washington didn't meet their responsibilities."

But there is one message that the Harvard-educated president can't co-opt: Populism is anti-elitist, and the tea party movement is defiantly opposed to the educated elites who run Washington, Wall Street, and the media. Palin lobbed a zinger directly at the president when she said, "We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."

(More here.)