The Right's New Left

http://www.slate.com/id/2267685/pagenum/all/#p2

The Right's New Left
The Tea Party movement has two defining traits: status anxiety and anarchism.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Saturday, Sept. 18, 2010, at 9:11 AM ET


After its primary victories this week in Delaware and New York—following ones in Kentucky, Arizona, and Alaska—there is no longer any question about whether to take the Tea Party seriously. Come 2011, we are likely to have Mama Grizzlies in the House and Senate, and the movement's gravitational pull is sucking in traditional Republicans by the day. While the Tea Party doesn't control the GOP, it's likely to remain the largest force acting on it for some time.

So who are these people and what do they want from us? A series of polls, as well as be-ins like Glenn Beck's Washington rally last month, have given us a picture of a movement predominated by middle-class, middle-aged white men angry about the expansion of government and hostile to societal change. But that profile could accurately describe the past several right-wing insurgencies, from the California tax revolt of the late 1970s to the Contract with America of 1994—not to mention the very Republican establishment that the Tea Party positions itself against. What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns.

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Other than nostalgia, the strongest emotion at Tea Parties is resentment, defined as placing blame for one's woes on those either above or below you in the social hierarchy. This finds expression in hostility toward a variety of elites: the "liberal" media, "career" politicians, "so-called" experts, and sometimes even the hoariest of populist targets, Wall Street bankers. These groups stand accused of promoting the interests of the poor, minorities and immigrants—or in the case of the financiers, the very rich—against those of hard-working, middle-class taxpayers. Beck and Sarah Palin, the fun couple that headlines the Tea Party, express their feelings of victimization at the hands of their betters and lessers on a daily basis—he in his histrionic vein, she in her preening one. Both hedge their resentment in a careful way that often walks the line of bigotry but seldom states it directly.

Anti-elitism defined in cultural terms is hardly a fresh theme for Republicans. But here, too, the Tea Partiers take it to a new level. The most radical statement of individualism is choosing your own reality, and to some in the Tea Party, the very fact that experts believe something is sufficient to disprove it. The media's insistence that Barack Obama was born in the United States, or that he is a Christian rather than a Muslim, merely fuels their radical skepticism. Other touchstones of the movement's separate reality include the view that Obama has a secret plan to deprive Americans of their guns, that global warming is a leftist hoax, and that—this is Christine O'Donnell again—there's more evidence for creationism than for evolution.

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For the Republican Party, the rise of the Tea Party is the essence of mixed blessing. The political problem is how to co-opt the movement's energy and motivational anger without succumbing to its incoherence and being tainted by the wacko voices within it. This is something the Democrats were fundamentally unable to do in relation to the New Left in the 1960s, and the Tea Party's radicalism threatens the GOP in a similar way. We've seen party elders confront this challenge week by week through the primaries, with senior figures within the GOP furiously recalibrating their visceral horror at nutball purity of a Rand Paul or Sharron Angle into expressions of support and encouragement. Liberals may be humoring themselves in seeing it as good news for them, but for the moment it's fun to watch slippery conservative politicians—Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich—scramble aboard the tiger.

As mobs go, Republicans will find this one will be especially hard to lead, pacify, or dispel. The Tea Party is fundamentally about venting anger at change it is doesn't like, not about fixing what's broken. Turn the movement's rage into a political program and you've already betrayed it.

These two phrases reveal his ignorance:

middle-class, middle-aged white men angry about the expansion of government and hostile to societal change

That's ridiculous. They're hostile to having lost control of the government, and especially hostile that there's a black president.

What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns.

"Antagonism toward any authority" is absurd. If anything, these people crave authority. They can't live without it. They just want their authority to be white, hateful and misogynist like they are. (And, yes, Palin meets all those requirements.)

And the idea that they "lack of any coherent program or alternative" is a result of nothing more than their unwillingness to publicly state that they can't stand having a black president.

And, finally, the only thing really keeping the "Tea Party" in existence is the non-stop free coverage from the Murdoch Media Wurlitzer (and dutifully regurgitated by the rest of the M$M including Slate) and unlimited funding of the theatrics by the Koch brothers.

I guess Slate had some "inches to fill" and it was Weisberg's job to just write enough words to fill them.

Over at Freeperville I see all the time "Where is our Franco?" "Where is our Pinochet?" I would expect if Benito didn't get involved with Shickelgruber I would be seeing "Where is our Mussolini?"

These people WANT a dictator really bad. So bad they want a SPANISH speaking one.

I missed that aspect.

If I read GP correctly.

"middle-class, middle-aged white men angry about the expansion of government and hostile to societal change"

"expansion of government" = socialism, meaning the government taking over the car companies and imposing health care reform; "hostile to societal change" = as you said, a black president, and a dwindling white majority. Never mind that they are wrong about the 'socialism' in every respect, that this is the most corporate friendly Dem administration in history - they SEE it that way.

"What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns."

Much of the tea-party IS extremely anarchic {in the active sense, not the political sense) such as bringing guns to political rallys; "antagonism toward any authority" = they DO reject the authority of the elected government, particularly the Birthers who believe Obama, and by extension the entire government, to be illegitimate, while at the same time rejecting the control of the 'mainstream' Republican, as shown by the primary challanges to RNC candidates; "lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns" - well, I would think that speaks for itself, though you don't seem to agree. They DON'T have any serious alternatives, for the very fact that you stated - they are not about policy and platform, but about hatred, largely of the black president.

The author does know what he's talking about. It's the teabagger that don't know what they are talking about.

Weisberg's take is insightful. Some confusion about it may be due to the fact that the 'baggers are riddled with contradictions. They are both anarchic and authoritarian (especially the fundie Dominionist/Reconstructionist elements); they want smaller government, except for DoD, immigration enforcement and militarizing the border, doubling House investigative staff to go after dems if the GOP takes the House, etc.; they demand that the Constitution be followed, except for a long list of its provisions that they want to repeal.

You make an excellent point about being mindful of their perceptions--which are largely spoon-fed to them by Fox News and the other usual suspects. In some ways, they seem to live on a different planet...

Those don't have to be different things, and lest we forget the single act that got the tea party rolling was TARP.

They voted for Bush.

When Bush said the rich were getting a tax cut they thought that included them.

If your not rich why would you vote Republican.

Are you serious? I can't even gather a response for that because there is so much wrong with it.

Why did/do 30% of rethugs still support the rethug party? Because they are willfully ignorant, same as it ever was?

We even got a check mailed out during the year of the tax cut, which caught several people by surprise the next April.

The Right's jealous fixation on the 1960s is evident in much of their behavior, and it's been visible right along in the Tea Party.

The author effectively points out the essential difference: Hopeful young people looking for some vague, idealistic future vs. resentful old people looking for some vague, non-existent past.