So What Are The Tea Parties All About, Anyhow?

What is the Tea Party Movement really all about? I have my ideas, and I’ll share them in a bit, but first, I want to tip you to an excellent Stacy McCain piece at The American Spectator’s site. This paragraph jives very nicely with my own thoughts on the movement.

A few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with a liberal journalist who asked me, “Who do you see as the leader of the conservative movement?” I didn’t have an answer, but Richard Viguerie is onto something when he emphasizes the “leaderless” quality of the Tea Party grassroots, quoting a historical study of the Apaches: “You wanted to follow Geronimo? You followed Geronimo. You didn’t want to follow him? Then you didn’t. The power lay with each individual.”

I’m not necessarily a fan of Viguerie (though I do recognize his important role in the modern conservative movement), but on this he is certainly hunting down the right trail. Stacy fills in the blanks nicely (He’s a smart guy. Heck, he can even do math!). The only thing I’ll add is that we should be careful of thinking of the Tea Party Movement as an actual political movement. It’s not and I don’t think it ever will be. It’s far too regional and resists a single leader far too vehemently to coalesce into a movement. More importantly, there are very few people people inside the Tea Party movement who actually want to be in charge (and those folks aren’t in a good position to get what they want). Tea party folks generally don’t aspire to high political office, though they are starting to look at being more politically active in their own communities. What they really want is for their elected representatives to listen to them. They have realized that speaking as individuals or in small groups hasn’t worked and so they’ve found a way to speak in thousands and tens of thousands.

That’s not necessarily a recipe for a cohesive national movement. It is, however, a great source of political energy that a national movement, say the conservative movement, could tap to great benefit.

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Tags: Tea Parties

Category: Conservatism