The Tea Party’s Not-So-Civil War
By MATT BAI
NYT Magazine
I met Karen Martin, a few days before New Year’s, at a cafe in Greenville, the hub of conservative politics in South Carolina. A 54-year-old refugee from the North Shore of Massachusetts, Martin is the lead organizer of the nearby Spartanburg Tea Party. Another Tea Party leader described her to me as a grown-up, and in fact, Martin turned out to be the kind of activist — ideology notwithstanding — who makes you feel hopeful about the new age of political uprising. She recounted how she burst into tears at the moment she realized, watching the news in 2008, that children growing up today wouldn’t have the economic opportunities that she did. She talked about how the Tea Party would need to mature and become more politically sophisticated in the years ahead. “I think the movement is just too young and too emotional,” she said.
Then our conversation turned to Mitt Romney, and Martin’s sunny countenance darkened. “I don’t know a single Tea Party person,” she said, slowly drawing out her words, “who does not despise Mitt Romney to the very core of their being.” I searched her face for levity or compassion, but found neither.
Discussions about the Tea Party often miss the extent to which the movement is loose and leaderless, a disjointed collection of local chapters and agendas. But if the phenomenon has an epicenter, that place is South Carolina. The state’s junior senator, Jim DeMint, is generally seen as the ideological forefather of the Tea Party, at least among elected officials. Tea Party activism propelled South Carolina’s 39-year-old governor, Nikki Haley, into office in 2010, along with four new Republican congressmen. There are, by some estimates, more than 50 autonomous Tea Party groups operating throughout the state, and according to a recent Winthrop University poll, 61 percent of South Carolinians say they approve of the movement — more than double the national figure, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
When you talk to activists around the state, as I did recently during a weeklong visit, you hear a lot about Romney’s record on health care, specifically, and about his ideological squishiness in general. But you also come to understand that the antipathy in Tea Party circles is more visceral. It’s a reaction to what they perceive as Romney’s synthetic and calculating persona, the sense that he somehow embodies everything that’s false and impenetrable about the parties in Washington. And so South Carolina, which will hold its presidential primary Jan. 21, is the place where two powerful political vehicles — Mitt Romney’s establishment-backed campaign and the three-year-old Tea Party insurgency — will collide full force. It’s here where Tea Party activists have expected to assert their influence over the party’s nominating process. For most of them, that means, above all, stopping Mitt.
(More here.)
NYT Magazine
I met Karen Martin, a few days before New Year’s, at a cafe in Greenville, the hub of conservative politics in South Carolina. A 54-year-old refugee from the North Shore of Massachusetts, Martin is the lead organizer of the nearby Spartanburg Tea Party. Another Tea Party leader described her to me as a grown-up, and in fact, Martin turned out to be the kind of activist — ideology notwithstanding — who makes you feel hopeful about the new age of political uprising. She recounted how she burst into tears at the moment she realized, watching the news in 2008, that children growing up today wouldn’t have the economic opportunities that she did. She talked about how the Tea Party would need to mature and become more politically sophisticated in the years ahead. “I think the movement is just too young and too emotional,” she said.
Then our conversation turned to Mitt Romney, and Martin’s sunny countenance darkened. “I don’t know a single Tea Party person,” she said, slowly drawing out her words, “who does not despise Mitt Romney to the very core of their being.” I searched her face for levity or compassion, but found neither.
Discussions about the Tea Party often miss the extent to which the movement is loose and leaderless, a disjointed collection of local chapters and agendas. But if the phenomenon has an epicenter, that place is South Carolina. The state’s junior senator, Jim DeMint, is generally seen as the ideological forefather of the Tea Party, at least among elected officials. Tea Party activism propelled South Carolina’s 39-year-old governor, Nikki Haley, into office in 2010, along with four new Republican congressmen. There are, by some estimates, more than 50 autonomous Tea Party groups operating throughout the state, and according to a recent Winthrop University poll, 61 percent of South Carolinians say they approve of the movement — more than double the national figure, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
When you talk to activists around the state, as I did recently during a weeklong visit, you hear a lot about Romney’s record on health care, specifically, and about his ideological squishiness in general. But you also come to understand that the antipathy in Tea Party circles is more visceral. It’s a reaction to what they perceive as Romney’s synthetic and calculating persona, the sense that he somehow embodies everything that’s false and impenetrable about the parties in Washington. And so South Carolina, which will hold its presidential primary Jan. 21, is the place where two powerful political vehicles — Mitt Romney’s establishment-backed campaign and the three-year-old Tea Party insurgency — will collide full force. It’s here where Tea Party activists have expected to assert their influence over the party’s nominating process. For most of them, that means, above all, stopping Mitt.
(More here.)
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