The Tea Party is an antigovernment, grass-roots political movement. It began in 2009 in protest of the bank bailout and economic stimulus package. Its supporters vowed to purge the Republican Party of officials they consider not sufficiently conservative and to block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment and health care. Tea Party supporters tend to unite around fiscal conservatism and a belief that the federal government has overstepped its constitutional powers.
The Tea Party became a pivotal player in the Republicans’ successful bid to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. In those elections, four in 10 voters expressed support for the movement in exit polls. Those figures, and victories at the polls, underscored the extent to which Republicans and Democrats alike may have underestimated the power of the party, a loosely affiliated coalition of libertarians and disaffected Republicans.
But two years later, the picture appeared quite different. The Tea Party and Sarah Palin — who helped turn the party into a powerful political force in 2010 — had so far displayed little impact on the course of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign.
Just months after Ms. Palin announced she would not run for president, her attempts to wield influence in the presidential primaries the way she did during the 2010 midterm elections had largely fizzled.
She urged voters in South Carolina and Florida to vote for Newt Gingrich as a way of striking back against the Republican establishment in Washington and against liberals.
Tea Party supporters in South Carolina did vote for Mr. Gingrich, according to exit polls. Of the 64 percent who said they supported the Tea Party, 45 percent went for Mr. Gingrich; Mr. Romney received just a quarter of Tea Party supporters.
But a week later in Florida, the establishment won decisively. Not only did Mr. Gingrich lose badly to Mitt Romney after Ms. Palin’s public pronouncement, but he even lost over all among supporters of the Tea Party, a plurality of whom apparently rejected Ms. Palin’s call to arms for the supporters of that movement.
About 65 percent of the voters in Florida’s Republican primary said they supported the Tea Party. But among those voters, 41 percent told pollsters that they cast ballots for Mr. Romney, while 37 percent said they cast ballots for Mr. Gingrich. (Though, those who said they strongly support the Tea Party favored Mr. Gingrich 45 percent to 33 percent.)
A Decline in Influence
The results could reflect in part the lack of wall-to-wall coverage of Ms. Palin these days. She continues to have a perch at Fox News and millions of followers on her Facebook page, but as the 2012 campaign has heated up, she no longer commands the kind of attention that she once did.
It may also signal that the Tea Party movement is no longer able to exert the kind of sway that it did during the primary campaigns two years ago.
The Tea Party became a pivotal player in the Republicans’ successful bid to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections. In those elections, four in 10 voters expressed support for the movement in exit polls. Those figures, and victories at the polls, underscored the extent to which Republicans and Democrats alike may have underestimated the power of the party, a loosely affiliated coalition of libertarians and disaffected Republicans.
But two years later, the picture appeared quite different. The Tea Party and Sarah Palin — who helped turn the party into a powerful political force in 2010 — had so far displayed little impact on the course of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign.
Just months after Ms. Palin announced she would not run for president, her attempts to wield influence in the presidential primaries the way she did during the 2010 midterm elections had largely fizzled.
She urged voters in South Carolina and Florida to vote for Newt Gingrich as a way of striking back against the Republican establishment in Washington and against liberals.
Tea Party supporters in South Carolina did vote for Mr. Gingrich, according to exit polls. Of the 64 percent who said they supported the Tea Party, 45 percent went for Mr. Gingrich; Mr. Romney received just a quarter of Tea Party supporters.
But a week later in Florida, the establishment won decisively. Not only did Mr. Gingrich lose badly to Mitt Romney after Ms. Palin’s public pronouncement, but he even lost over all among supporters of the Tea Party, a plurality of whom apparently rejected Ms. Palin’s call to arms for the supporters of that movement.
About 65 percent of the voters in Florida’s Republican primary said they supported the Tea Party. But among those voters, 41 percent told pollsters that they cast ballots for Mr. Romney, while 37 percent said they cast ballots for Mr. Gingrich. (Though, those who said they strongly support the Tea Party favored Mr. Gingrich 45 percent to 33 percent.)
A Decline in Influence
The results could reflect in part the lack of wall-to-wall coverage of Ms. Palin these days. She continues to have a perch at Fox News and millions of followers on her Facebook page, but as the 2012 campaign has heated up, she no longer commands the kind of attention that she once did.
It may also signal that the Tea Party movement is no longer able to exert the kind of sway that it did during the primary campaigns two years ago.
For example, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who calls herself a founding member of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, bowed out of the presidential race after a disappointing finish in Iowa. Her Tea Party affiliation did little to help her campaign.
Herman Cain, who also claimed the mantle of the Tea Party, and Rick Perry, whose conservative views were in line with many members of the movement, both dropped out of the primary race.
That has left Mr. Gingrich as a possible candidate to be embraced by the Tea Party as conservatives seek to find an alternative to Mr. Romney.
The question for the Tea Party — and Ms. Palin — going forward is whether Mr. Gingrich fully embraces the movement, and whether he continues to remain a viable alternative to Mr. Romney for the next several months.
If Mr. Romney manages to quickly dispatch the challenge by Mr. Gingrich, it will further call into question the power of a movement to produce electoral change on the scale that many thought possible less than two years ago.
On the other hand, if Mr. Gingrich maintains an effective candidacy through the coming months, he could help to re-energize the Tea Party movement around the fear of the establishment from both parties.
Earlier Polls With Similar Results
An article in The New York Times on Nov. 29, 2011, based on an analysis of polls, said that support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — had fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds.
In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagreed with the movement had risen significantly since it powered a Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm elections; almost as many people disagreed with it as agreed with it, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Support for the Republican Party had fallen even further in those places than it had in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans were viewed about as negatively as Democrats.
The analysis suggested that the Tea Party could be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives the year before.
Taking a Hard Line on the Federal Deficit
Other polls showed a connection between the decline in support for the Tea Party and the hard line it had taken during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction. In 2010, the Tea Party was more of an abstraction. In 2011, its positions had clear consequences, like Congressional stalemate.
In the House, the Tea Party contingent and its supporters played an important role as a series of fights over federal spending unfolded over the course of 2011. It was pressure from Tea Party members that led House Speaker John A. Boehner to push for deep cuts in the final months of the 2011 budget, which brought the government to the brink of a shutdown in April.
And resistance to making revenue increases part of any deal over raising the federal debt ceiling played a large role in Mr. Boehner’s decision to break off talks with Mr. Obama in late July over a so-called grand bargain to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.
While Tea Party groups and members of the Tea Party caucus in the House loudly insisted that they would not support any increase in the debt limit, many rank-and-file Tea Party voters did support it, according to polls. They did not want to risk damaging an already-fragile economy with a potential government default. The majority of Tea Party supporters, in fact, wanted an agreement.
Looking to State and Local Elections
Since the Tea Party movement propelled Republicans to control of the House in 2010, the groups trying to shape it into an enduring force have been focused on building organized grass-roots networks, training local activists and supporting new generations of candidates for local and state offices. With none of the remaining 2012 presidential hopefuls inspiring much passion in their ranks, Tea Party groups are focusing as much on Congress and state and local elections as on the race for the White House. This could potentially deprive the eventual nominee of some of the energy that carried the party back to power in Congress in the midterm elections.
Many Tea Party supporters have said that while they would work to help any Republican defeat Mr. Obama, their real passion is for electing small-government conservatives further down the ballot and building a stable of leaders who grow up in the movement rather than trying to adapt themselves to it. If that means it takes four or eight more years for them to feel any passion for a presidential nominee, they said, it will be worth the wait.
Background
In a New York Times/CBS News poll released in April 2010, the 18 percent of Americans who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters tended to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. They were wealthier and better-educated than the general public.
The poll showed Tea Partiers holding more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They were also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.” And while most Republicans said they were “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters were more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”
Although Tea Party organizers have insisted they created a nonpartisan grass-roots movement, others have argued that tea parties were largely created by the clamor of cable news and fueled by the financial and political support of current and former Republican leaders.
The movement played a significant part in several important primary fights in 2010. Along with Christine O’Donnell, who defeated Representative Michael N. Castle in Delaware, there was Joe Miller of Alaska, who beat Senator Lisa Murkowski — only to see Ms. Murkowski run a successful write-in campaign.
Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.
The overwhelming majority of supporters said Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half said the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent said the administration favors blacks over whites, compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They were more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Political Impact
While the numbers of Tea Party-affiliated winners in the November 2010 elections was relatively small, they have exerted outsize influence, putting pressure on Republican leaders to carry out promises to significantly cut spending and taxes and to repeal health care legislation passed in 2010.
They vowed not only to permanently extend the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush and to eliminate the estate tax, but also to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax or a national sales tax. Several candidates advocated abolishing the Internal Revenue Service entirely.
Many called for a balanced budget amendment. They opposed newly passed financial regulation, and cap-and-trade of carbon emissions. They also promised to carry into office the Tea Party’s strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Tea Partiers like Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, embrace arguments that government should not provide what individuals can provide for themselves. So, police and public safety are acceptable functions of government, but government should not take from one person’s income to provide for another’s health or well-being.
And when Mr. Paul and his Tea Party supporters espouse “constitutionally limited government,” they argue that much of the New Deal, as well as social programs like Medicare that were enacted later, were a gross violation of the founding document. Those ideas may be hard to sell in a general election, even to Republicans.
Resources: The New York Times
Herman Cain, who also claimed the mantle of the Tea Party, and Rick Perry, whose conservative views were in line with many members of the movement, both dropped out of the primary race.
That has left Mr. Gingrich as a possible candidate to be embraced by the Tea Party as conservatives seek to find an alternative to Mr. Romney.
The question for the Tea Party — and Ms. Palin — going forward is whether Mr. Gingrich fully embraces the movement, and whether he continues to remain a viable alternative to Mr. Romney for the next several months.
If Mr. Romney manages to quickly dispatch the challenge by Mr. Gingrich, it will further call into question the power of a movement to produce electoral change on the scale that many thought possible less than two years ago.
On the other hand, if Mr. Gingrich maintains an effective candidacy through the coming months, he could help to re-energize the Tea Party movement around the fear of the establishment from both parties.
Earlier Polls With Similar Results
An article in The New York Times on Nov. 29, 2011, based on an analysis of polls, said that support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — had fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds.
In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagreed with the movement had risen significantly since it powered a Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm elections; almost as many people disagreed with it as agreed with it, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Support for the Republican Party had fallen even further in those places than it had in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans were viewed about as negatively as Democrats.
The analysis suggested that the Tea Party could be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives the year before.
Taking a Hard Line on the Federal Deficit
Other polls showed a connection between the decline in support for the Tea Party and the hard line it had taken during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction. In 2010, the Tea Party was more of an abstraction. In 2011, its positions had clear consequences, like Congressional stalemate.
In the House, the Tea Party contingent and its supporters played an important role as a series of fights over federal spending unfolded over the course of 2011. It was pressure from Tea Party members that led House Speaker John A. Boehner to push for deep cuts in the final months of the 2011 budget, which brought the government to the brink of a shutdown in April.
And resistance to making revenue increases part of any deal over raising the federal debt ceiling played a large role in Mr. Boehner’s decision to break off talks with Mr. Obama in late July over a so-called grand bargain to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years.
While Tea Party groups and members of the Tea Party caucus in the House loudly insisted that they would not support any increase in the debt limit, many rank-and-file Tea Party voters did support it, according to polls. They did not want to risk damaging an already-fragile economy with a potential government default. The majority of Tea Party supporters, in fact, wanted an agreement.
Looking to State and Local Elections
Since the Tea Party movement propelled Republicans to control of the House in 2010, the groups trying to shape it into an enduring force have been focused on building organized grass-roots networks, training local activists and supporting new generations of candidates for local and state offices. With none of the remaining 2012 presidential hopefuls inspiring much passion in their ranks, Tea Party groups are focusing as much on Congress and state and local elections as on the race for the White House. This could potentially deprive the eventual nominee of some of the energy that carried the party back to power in Congress in the midterm elections.
Many Tea Party supporters have said that while they would work to help any Republican defeat Mr. Obama, their real passion is for electing small-government conservatives further down the ballot and building a stable of leaders who grow up in the movement rather than trying to adapt themselves to it. If that means it takes four or eight more years for them to feel any passion for a presidential nominee, they said, it will be worth the wait.
Background
In a New York Times/CBS News poll released in April 2010, the 18 percent of Americans who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters tended to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. They were wealthier and better-educated than the general public.
The poll showed Tea Partiers holding more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They were also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.” And while most Republicans said they were “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters were more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”
Although Tea Party organizers have insisted they created a nonpartisan grass-roots movement, others have argued that tea parties were largely created by the clamor of cable news and fueled by the financial and political support of current and former Republican leaders.
The movement played a significant part in several important primary fights in 2010. Along with Christine O’Donnell, who defeated Representative Michael N. Castle in Delaware, there was Joe Miller of Alaska, who beat Senator Lisa Murkowski — only to see Ms. Murkowski run a successful write-in campaign.
Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.
The overwhelming majority of supporters said Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half said the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent said the administration favors blacks over whites, compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They were more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Political Impact
While the numbers of Tea Party-affiliated winners in the November 2010 elections was relatively small, they have exerted outsize influence, putting pressure on Republican leaders to carry out promises to significantly cut spending and taxes and to repeal health care legislation passed in 2010.
They vowed not only to permanently extend the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush and to eliminate the estate tax, but also to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax or a national sales tax. Several candidates advocated abolishing the Internal Revenue Service entirely.
Many called for a balanced budget amendment. They opposed newly passed financial regulation, and cap-and-trade of carbon emissions. They also promised to carry into office the Tea Party’s strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Tea Partiers like Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, embrace arguments that government should not provide what individuals can provide for themselves. So, police and public safety are acceptable functions of government, but government should not take from one person’s income to provide for another’s health or well-being.
And when Mr. Paul and his Tea Party supporters espouse “constitutionally limited government,” they argue that much of the New Deal, as well as social programs like Medicare that were enacted later, were a gross violation of the founding document. Those ideas may be hard to sell in a general election, even to Republicans.
Resources: The New York Times
