The Tea Party Coalition

A lot of people don't realize that our beloved American Tea Party movement is not a group of ideologically pure individuals in agreement. It is a coalition, a group of people with diverse views on a variety of issues, but one major issue to bring them together. In this case the driving issue is economic conservatism. To explain, it can be reasonably argued that the history of what became the Tea Party actually began in 2007 with the general public backlash against the President at the time, George Bush.

Representative Ron Paul (R) of Texas shocked audience members at the Republican Presidential Primary debates with his message of extreme fiscal conservatism bordering on outright libertarianism. Though most Republicans were incensed at some of Paul's 'extreme' positions, a number of people who were frustrated with the growth of government spending found for the first time in a long time a person they felt like they could get behind. A person who was unwilling to compromise, had a record of "no" votes on almost anything growing the government, and was charismatic in a folksy way. With massive online fundraising campaigns he called "money bombs" Paul managed to stay in the primary fight long after others had been forced out, picking up support from 5-15% of the Republican electorate in all over the United States. He capped off his bid with an event that took place at the same time as the Republican National Convention that he called the "Rally for the Republic" after being denied a speaking slot at the RNC. More than 10,000 people attended. The groundswell was quite impressive, and the anti-establishment sentiment was clear.

Though Paul's campaign did not result in the Republican nomination for President, and the GOP leaders dismissed his effort as extremist noise, Paul went on eventually to found the C4L (Campaign for Liberty) and went to work trying to elect what he called "constitutional conservatives" to public office. Notable persons that C4L supported include William (BJ) Lawson (R) in NC-04, Adam Kokesh (R) in NM-03, and Bob Conley (D) for SC Senate, none of whom were successful. But the string of attempts, continuing fundraising, and foundation of C4L (and YAL Young Americans for Liberty) chapters throughout the US-- efforts continued through 2008 and 2009 at which point something began to happen in American politics.

The thing that was unique about the C4L or Ron Paul movement (we'll call it the "Liberty" movement) was that it embraced a variety of socially liberal values like elimination of drug enforcement and additional gay rights. Meanwhile the movement called for a return to isolationist American values and the withdrawal of all US troops abroad with the intent of a drawdown of defense spending. We'll come back to this point later.

Some of the first protests that established the Tea Party on the national stage were in response to major bills that increased the size of government spending and bureaucracy, including TARP, the Recovery Act, and Health Care legislation. By the middle of 2009, the Tea Party had already become influential in many local races and in the beginning of 2010, the surprise upset of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Special Election for Senate solidified the group in the national dialogue. Ron Paul was considered a darling, maybe even a founder, of the movement and his son, Rand Paul, used his Tea Party and C4L roots to build the momentum for a major Senate campaign in Kentucky. The rallying cry for the movement was the same as it had been during Ron Paul's upward battle in 2008: pay down the deficit, eliminate bureaucracy, and leave American free enterprise out of the scope of the government.

During those early days, there weren't clear Tea Party leaders like there are today. Many media outlets turned to Ron Paul and his son, Rand, to talk about the movement in connection to what they had started in 2007. But within a matter of months, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Sean Hannity and Michelle Bachmann had established themselves as major "Tea Partiers" and the movement started to show some distinct colors that had been (to some degree) hidden before 2010. Suddenly the Tea Party movement organizers started talking about more things than just economic conservatism. They started talking about the corruption of the family, the evils of Islamic terrorism, and the denigration of American Christianity. Rand Paul, at this point running a very national Senate campaign, on cue began to backtrack on some of his previous socially libertarian positions, becoming hawkish on foreign policy, snapping shut on drug enforcement, and reinforcing his ties to the Christian right. His change in attitude was not just a reflection of the internal concerns of a Kentucky Senate race, but were also a reflection of major shifts in the Liberty movement.

Now the prime examples of true Tea Partiers are people like Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Pat Toomey, Joe Miller, and Carly Fiorina (look these people up if you like, you'll see what I mean). Suddenly the Tea Party made it a mission to bring down the Islamic Cultural Center in NYC by drawing on xenophobia, racism, and security concerns within the Tea Party movement. Rand Paul, at this point having defeated the establishment GOP candidate in a primary, proved his clear hard right position by coming out against the mosque.

Meanwhile his father, stubborn as ever, continued to toe his original socially pluralistic line: diversity is good in America, of course Muslims should build the mosque there, why in the world shouldn't they? But where was the rest of the Tea Party when Ron Paul was breaking with them on these issues? Rallying against the Mosque in NYC and spouting rhetoric that seemed to recall traditional GOP fear mongering.

So what happened to those original supporters of Ron Paul's? What happened to the Liberty movement? It's still alive today, as a sub-faction of the Tea Party. It turns out that the Tea Party is a coalition: eager for substantial conservative change on economic issues, original Liberty activists were glad to make room in their movement for foreign policy hawks, the Christian Right, and even members of the establishment GOP. For now, they're content to work with these other people to enact serious fiscal discipline on the part of the Government. At this point its safe to say that the Liberty movement is a minority within the Tea Party, and as long as President Obama continues in office, its unlikely that there will be any major defections from Tea Party ranks from those who would see Ron Paul as President.

But the Tea Party is now a hard right-wing movement that has essentially stripped of itself of all non-economic ideals associated with the Liberty movement. It'll be interesting to see how this coalition holds up as the future progresses. "Libertiers" will be content for now to work with people like Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, but for how long? This Coalition and this movement are still brand new; can its leaders manage to appease its growing and diversifying membership, or will the group fall into factionalist disarray when some of the original backbone of the groundswell is neglected? The way it's going now, the Tea Party's obsession with "purity" may weed out some of its own members from amidst its own grumbling and disaffected ranks, leaving the GOP with a shrinking set of values (and voters) from which to draw upon, and perhaps leading to the break-up of the once-powerful Tea Party Coalition.