The tea party may have won Republicans the House of Representatives in 2010.
In 2012, it’s looking like it could help Democrats retain the White House.
The tea party movement, now nearly three years old, has fallen out of favor with Americans. And Democrats are prepared to use it against Republicans in the 2012 election.
Does anyone else remember when some liberals got on a bandwagon of telling us all that we needed to learn something from the tactics of tea partiers? Perhaps they didn't say it so boldly all the time, but I certainly remember the sentiment.
I always assumed it would be a flash-in-the-pan rather than a bonafide movement. There are probably several reasons why, but I think the main one is something it has always shared with OWS. Both were reactions built on emotion. And neither group ever rallied around a clearly articulated goal. So people experienced a catharsis - but then what?
What both the tea party and OWS demonstrated is that when people get angry (or scared) enough - they are prepared to rally. But unless the groundwork of laying out an agenda for change has been done, anger provides a short fuse that fizzles out pretty quickly. It gets exhausting after awhile. When that happens, unless there is some substance to fall back on - the party is over.
The difference being that the Tea Party was full of voters and people prepared to do the work to primary incumbents and win elections. That is not nor will it ever be something OWS is prepared to do. Plus there was never any central dominant figure to rally the troops like the half-termer.
ReplyDeleteThere are still people clinging to the Tea Party, but the We the People signs are all gone now. I think even some of the people who were part of that movement became embarrassed by it. There are still some hangers-on to the OWS model and I expect both groups to be out in force during the conventions. Publicity hounds.