thanks so much for having us, Bev, and to Jeremi for his thoughtful, challenging, and insightful comments, and for his participation. thanks to paul too and to all who followed/participated in this.

73% of tp supporters disapproved of Obma’s supposed policy of “engaging with Muslim countries”

to add a more recent survey from the pew research center this year, 67% of tea partiers agree that islam is “more likely than other religions to encourage violence.” this also fits into the anti-islamic militarism we witnessed at local chicago meetings described in the book. this doesn’t bode well for the potential of those on the left to engage in a constructive dialogue or agenda with tea partiers based on promoting an easing of tensions with the middle east and a greater cross-national understanding based on mutual respect and support. just my take, although there’s a lot more to be said on the matter.

this one’s been very hard to answer. I don’t like to make generalizations about questions where there hasn’t been systematic research, at least in the form of some sort of basic polling. all I can tell is that most tea partiers have a positive perception of Bush, which suggests to me that they didn’t have a fundamental problem with his foreign policies. then again, something like 40% of tea partiers don’t like bush, so they may dissent from his hawkish policies. we do know that most tea partiers disagree with obama’s strategy of engaging (via speeches) with the muslim world. this seems to fit into their racist perception (expressed by 59% of tea partiers)that obama either wasn’t born in this country or that they just can’t be sure that he’s a citizen. it appears to be an outgrowth of a radical anti-muslim, xenophobia which fits nicely into a hawkish foreign policy.

to add to whatever paul says, there have been quite a few tensions, but that’s with the few remaining moderate republicans. far right republicans have for quite a while been the mainstay of the party, as voting studies reveal. in this sense, the much-to-do about tensions within the party between tea partiers and “establishment” republicans has been greatly exaggerated. I wasn’t surprised that tea party officials have been pushing for massive budget cuts in social welfare programs, and haven’t pushed to trim military spending or the bush tax cuts. these policies have been the bread and butter of the republican party for thirty years! what the tea partiers did was just get more in people’s faces with it and obnoxiously push this agenda, without even being willing to compromise to get what they want (“we want it all now, rather than over the next ten years,” couldu be an appropriate description). I don’t see a substantive difference then, between “tea party republicans” and non-tea party republicans.

I think this growing polarization could spell doom for tea partiers and republicans because of all the fire they’re playing with. Republicans voted 2-1 against the bailout the first time around, and more voted against it the second time then for it. that’ squite a risk you’re taking with the future of the financial class, since the collapse could have totally wiped them out without a bailout. similarly problems have come up recently. our health care system can’t function anymore, and businesses are being hurt. tea partiers and republican see no problem with teh parasitic role health care companies play against other businesses. further more, the 60 billion in cuts they recently pushed (republicans) was openly rebuked by goldman sachs, which worried about the effects it could have on the economy. now we have the playing chicken with the debt ceiling, which could play havoc on the economy and bond markets. the problem today is that tea partiers and republicans have come to believe in the lies republicans have been telling for years about the need for “free markets”. no one ever took that seriously before, and now they are, and simply put, the system can’t function if anyone takes free market rhetoric even remotely seriously.

I think the Tea Party is also in for quite a bit of trouble however, along the lines that paul described. It is representative of what has increasingly become the heart of the republican party, by which I mean extreme right-wingers. statistical voting studies in political science show that the republican party is more extreme now than at any time over the last 100 years. it’s been going this way for a while. in this sense, the tea party is merely the most recent “update” to this growing right-wingi polarization of the party. there are very few moderates left, as anyone who looks at political science voting studies or Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) voting scores can tell you.

whether the Republican-tea party agenda is successful, however, will depend on whether they can get past two institutional hurdles: 1. seniors, who will fight medicare and social security privatization to the bitter end, as Bush so quickly found out, and 2. what’s left of the unions (particularly in the public sector), who don’t appear to be likely to go down without a fight. Their benefits (tenure, collective bargaining, health care) were won with years of struggle, and I don’t see them giving up without a fight. I can’t predict how these battles will play out, but I can say, generally speaking, that the public is on the side of those fighting for basic union protections and preserving social security/medicare. that’s certainly worth something.

I expect them to be around for quite a while. as a rebranding of the republican party, they are extremely valuable, especially come election time. the party of the president typically gets blamed when the economy tanks, and obama is going to have a hell of a time if the current downturn trend continues. he could get thrown out and a republican could win by default.

Jeremi is right that there is certainly a lot of support among the general public for views associated with the American right and the tea party. depending on how the question is asked, for example, you can find that support for the tea party reaches as high as 50% of the public, especially when you ask: “do you support obama or the tea party?” (an actual rasmussen question). this shows that there is quite a bit of support for right wing views in general among the public. those sentiments have been mobilized mostly, however, as a result of mediated right-wing views being disseminated by pundits and political officials in their media/campaign statements.

I think Jane’s bringing up important points. when you see something like “60% of tea partiers” feel one way or another, which happens all the time, it certainly suggests that there is a lot of room for disagreement, especially regionally. I think they will have a hard go of it coming together as a coherent national movement because there is so much confusion, even among the supporters in the general public. most say they want to keep their social security and medicare, then vote in republicans (tea party or not) who have shown commitment over the last thirty years to dismantling those programs. That’s a profound confusion!

thanks for the insight. I’d say it goes even further too. something like half (or perhaps more than half) of members of congress are millionaires. in other words, they don’t just serve affluent interests, they ARE the affluent interests. a close look at Obama’s economic advisers, who are largely drawn from the financial class, is another example. How can Obama be controlled by Wall Street if his administration IS Wall Street. There’s not even a pretense of separation between the elite class and the political class anymore.

very sorry I didn’t get to respond to this question. what we know of the most inspirational leaders has been dicatated by pollsters, who only ask about certain figures. It seems that Glenn Beck is the most respected figure, according to poll numbers, which is quite indicative of who is helping drive this thing and in terms of the mediated nature of the movement. Sarah Palin scores very well too. Bush scores pretty well, with something like 60% of TP supporters scoring him favorably. Bachmann, as far as I can tell, is viewed pretty favorably.

I also do a comprehensive analysis of the online communication of the chicago tea party chapter, supposedly where it all started back in 2009. I was part of their listserv over the last year. there was minimal evidence of anything productive going on there. in fact those who attended chicago meetings specifically dismissed it as a place where nothing productive or meaningful happened. there is one very important element online, though. people visit various local tea party websites and provide their email information. then the local activist coordinating it sends an “email blast” to these people informing them of when and where to show up for a rally. this was reguarly recognized at the very few meetings throughout chicago that did take place. it should be noted at these meetings that organizers informed me that they were tired of having local meetings, because no one wanted to show up. they could get their 500 to 2,000 people to turnout once a year through email blasts. that’s quite a worthy tactic for coordinating rallies and should be part of any social movement, but by itself it’s just not enough. you need people who are willing to actually show up and talk to each other.

another good question, very good. It’s hard for me to conclude so, although I considered this very point. the analysis of local chapters for the 150 cities who claimed an april 15th turnout specifically looked at the tea party national site (which coordinates activities for local chapters). we also looked at every local site we could find when they existed. more than half the groups didn’t even have a local site, making coordination very difficult, if not impossible. the 92% failure rate to organize was calculated by looking at the national site and at local ones, and looking at announcements and calendars for evidence of meetings. little was available.

potentially a very intriguing point, and I’m glad you brought it up. But it is belied by the finding in the same survey that: 73% agree that “it’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would just only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites”

three quarters of tea party supporters, then, are willing to say that blacks are lazy and if they just were willing to try, they would do well. that’s certainly a majority willing to commit to a negative stereotype.

I should point out, by the way, that I started this project assuming from teh beginning that it WAS a mass movement. I was excited about the prospect of contacting local branches and doing interviews with activists and “movement members.” I had no reason to doubt they were a movement in light of the media reporting. I was greatly disappointed when I couldn’t find evidence of regular meetings throughout the chicago area and nationally. at that point, we decided doing a book on the lack of widespread participation was just as interesting as doing one on widespread participation.

that’s a very good question. I don’t call it a social movement. I deem it, in light of our national and local evidence collected, to be a conglomeration of small interest groups seen in the very small number of people who are active in local tea party “chapters” affiliated with patriot action network and tea party patriots, and in light of their coordination with national groups like america deserves better, freedomworks, americans for prosperity, etc. They look very much like a social movement at first glance, because the rallies seem like they have fairly large numbers when you see them on television reporting. But when the “mass” part is missing in organizational meetings and when you actually look at the size of rally turnouts (versus the number whoh claim to be active tea partiers), it falls short of mass membership. The only piece of evidence that does strongly suggest the tea party is a mass movement is the polling data suggesting 4% of the public is active. but if you can’t find evidence of that activity, then the number doesn’t mean much

the madison protests were advertised heavily by national and local tea party groups. they pleaded with midwesterners to show up. at the end of the day, they marshalled for the month of february less than 1,000 people ONE TIME. Those protesting against walker had tens of thousands to more than 100,000 for weeks on end. it’s not hard to get less than 1,000 people together once when you have millionaires funding groups like freedom works and the sam adam’s alliance, who have tremendous resources and are able to get some sort of turnout one time. The chasm between what a movement should look like (with regard to union protestor turnout) and what it looked like with tea partier’s anemic numbers, was instructive and quite a revelation when I saw it.

they are not judged JUST by those who show up at a rally. they are also judged by: 1. how many people are actually coming together locally and participating in discussions, via forums, town halls, protests, and organizing meetings. 2. whether people bother to show up for rallies, and then according to other criteria as well. the first point is the most important for an organic movement that is bottom up. something can look like a movement from a far, but actually be the product of the kind of top-down organizing I’m describing, via national groups like Freedom works, tea party patriots, americans for prosperity, etc. coordinating with a very small/miniscule number of local activists who don’t bother to have regular meetings. You can call this a “movement” if you like, but the term becomes almost meaningless at that point without regular, mass interaction at the local level across a significant number of chapters. These pre-requisites are not made up by me, they are a consensus of the social movement literature, which has been developed over the decades.