At this point all I can do is laugh when I think about how some of my friends on the far right were naive as to think that sensible Republicans in Congress had failed to heed the message of the 2012 election and the current political realities borne therefrom. The latest development in the fiscal cliff drama show to what degree some on the right have regained their senses and moved back to the center, in the direction of much needed compromise. Quoting political commentator Jennifer Steinhauer: “Ending a climactic fiscal showdown in the final hours of the 112th Congress, the House late Tuesday passed and sent to President Obama legislation to avert big income tax increases on most Americans and prevent large cuts in spending for the Pentagon and other government programs. The measure, brought to the House floor less than 24 hours after its passage in the Senate, was approved 257 to 167, with 85 Republicans joining 172 Democrats in voting to allow income taxes to rise for the first time in two decades, in this case for the highest-earning Americans…The decision by Republican leaders to allow the vote came despite widespread scorn among House Republicans for the bill, passed overwhelmingly by the Senate in the early hours of New Year’s Day. They were unhappy that it did not include significant spending cuts in health and other social programs, which they say are essential to any long-term solution to the nation’s debt.” Clearly and unequivocally the resolution of the fiscal cliff represents a major defeat for Grover Norquist and his Tea Party allies as well as a significant victory for president Obama.

And what of those Republican Congressman who voted to let tax rates rise? Remember how often we’ve been told that almost every Republican in the House had signed Grover Norquist’s “No Tax Pledge.” Quoting Politico’s Alexander Burns and Maggie Habberman: “…given the lopsided Senate vote in favor of the tax-hiking measure, as well as the 85 GOP House members who voted yes, members of the GOP have violated the party’s no-new-taxes orthodoxy for the first time in two decades. It’s a significant concession in the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s November defeat and a potentially existential moment for a party that has prided itself on a defiant and dogmatic dislike of tax increases. What remains to be seen is whether that is merely a tactical retreat — bowing to the unique circumstances of the fiscal cliff — or a more meaningful cave-in on the part of Republicans who believe that their anti-tax platform has become politically unsustainable, particularly after a presidential cycle in which the party found itself caricatured as the puppets of the rich and powerful.” Perhaps it was the fact that a large majority of Republican Senators had voted for a tax hike that finally drove home the political reality to the 85 Republican Congressional legislators who decided to follow suit. Why even such staunch conservatives as Congressman Paul Ryan and Senators Patrick J. Toomey and Tom Coburn voted in favor of raising taxes. The fact that, in the face of a growing fiscal crisis, that Republicans voted to raise revenue via tax hikes, should come as no surprise as 2012 election exit polling showed 75% of the voters supported said increases, including a large minority of those who voted for Mitt Romney. Fox News contributor and prominent conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer opined: “This is a complete surrender on everything” and “a rout.” Not surprisingly, Norquist himself appeared on the cable circuit claiming to Anderson Cooper, among others, that the “deal was technically not a pledge violation”, but then what would you expect to hear from a guy who just went off of his own political cliff.

Many on the right have been seen to try to spin this defeat as a tactical maneuver that takes taxes off the table thereby enabling the G.O.P. to be more hard-nosed in dealing with the debt ceiling / spending cuts debate that we’ll be revisiting in a few months. But this too may amount to nothing but wishful thinking. Again quoting Burns and Habberman: “The president’s party, meanwhile, has no intention of easing up on a GOP they believe is in serious disarray. And while Republicans take heart from the hope that they’ll have more leverage in the next showdown, emboldened Democrats say the demand for “balanced” deficit reduction — meaning both spending cuts and new taxes — remains a challenge for their foes. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who advised the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, called the fiscal cliff deal “a band-aid on a serious wound” for Republicans. “The sane wing of the Republican Party recognized the GOP was playing a losing hand badly on taxes in a way that was deeply damaging to the Republican brand,” Garin said. “The Republicans will find themselves in a similar mess going forward if they insist on entitlement cuts while resisting new revenues from closing loopholes and tax breaks for those at the top.”

In the final analysis, when the spin and the political posturing is put aside there is one simple fact that comes through as the dust settles in the aftermath of the fiscal cliff and that is that Barack Obama has just cashed in on some major political capital and the sensible conservatives knew he had it to use and fully intended to use it. Obama ran, in part, on solving the fiscal crisis by raising taxes on the richest among us and won. America had two clear choices to pick from and they didn’t pick the conservative version. Much has been made of the fact that the G.O.P. had held onto the House but they only did so as a result of redistricting. In terms of absolute votes cast for those running for Congress, across the nation as a whole, “Democratic candidates for Congress won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, according to a tally of the popular vote kept by David Wasserman, the House editor of The Cook Political Report.” The Republican leadership in Congress knows that winning as a result of map making means a lot less politically than does winning by popular appeal and presently the G.O.P. ranks near the low end of its historic popularity. More importantly, the American people have demanded compromise and they indicated that they are clearly fed up with Tea Party obstruction on Capitol Hill. This had to be a motivating factor for Republicans as it is they, not Obama and the Democrats who would have been blamed for the country’s sliding back into a recession. In the end President Obama wound up giving less in the way of concessions than he would have just two weeks ago when he bargained with John Boehner in search of a deal and dramatically less than he would have back in 2011 when he and the Speaker were on the verge of a “Grand Bargain.” Such is the measure of the political shift that has taken place since the Tea Party victories in 2010 and Obama’s re-election this past November.

Steven J. Gulitti
1/2/2013

Sources:
Jennifer Steinhauer: “Divided House Passes Tax Deal in End to Latest Fiscal Standoff”; http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/us/politics/house-takes-on-fiscal-cliff.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=todayspaper

“John Boehner, Eric Cantor Split On Fiscal Cliff Deal”; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/john-boehner-eric-cantor_n_2395593.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=010213&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei: “BEHIND THE CURTAIN — Why the GOP caved: The politics are horrible on the backside of the cliff”; http://www.politico.com/playbook/

“Tea party backers swallow a bitter pill in ‘cliff’ bill”; http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cliff-bill-is-a-bitter-pill-for-houses-tea-party-adherents-to-swallow/2013/01/01/5345286e-544d-11e2-8e84-e933f677fe68_story.html

“GOP anti-tax policy goes over the cliff”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/gop-anti-tax-policy-goes-over-the-cliff-85657.html

Charles Krauthammer: “Cliff deal a ‘rout”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/krauthammer-cliff-deal-surrender-85656.html?ml=po_r

“Why President Obama, Mitch McConnell took the deal”; http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/why-mcconnell-obama-took-the-deal-85655.html#ixzz2Gr6BLtPZ

“Obama hails tax bill, warns GOP not to pick fight on debt ceiling”; http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/275123-obama-hail-cliff-deal-but-warns-gop-on-debt-ceiling

“How Maps Helped Republicans Keep an Edge in the House”; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/po

In the run up to the 2010 elections and in the aftermath, I theorized that the net effect of the Tea Party on the Republican Party and American politics in general, would be negative. Like many others, I detailed the turn in the tide in the movement’s popularity in “The Fading Allure of the Tea Party Movement”. Also like many others who follow this most intriguing of American political phenomenon’s, I have chronicled the continued fading fortunes of the Tea Party movement. As such I am not surprised in the least at the newest findings that point to the continued decline in the popularity of the Tea Party movement: “More Now Disagree with Tea Party – Even in Tea Party Districts”; recently released by the Pew Research Center.

 What this new research shows is the following:

1. “Since the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party has not only lost support nationwide, but also in the congressional districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus.”

2. “The image of the Republican Party has declined even more sharply in these GOP-controlled districts than across the country at large…As recently as March of this year, GOP favorability was 55% compared to 41% who say they have a favorable opinion of the GOP. 48% say they now have an unfavorable view…But the steep decline in GOP favorability in Tea Party districts means that these constituencies now view the Republican Party about as negatively as the Democratic Party.”

3. “More Americans say they disagree (27%) than agree (20%) with the Tea Party movement…A year ago the balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% agreed and 22% disagreed with the Tea Party.”

4. “Nationwide, support has decreased significantly over the past year; now about as many people living in Tea Party districts disagree (23%) as agree (25%) with the Tea Party.” 

 What these findings confirm is that there has been absolutely no resurgence of popularity of the Tea Party movement which has emerged to stanch what seems to be an inevitable long term decline. While sitting legislators on Capitol Hill, who rode to power on what now seems to be a protest vote in 2010, continue to wreck havoc on the legislative process, there is little reason to believe that most of these same people will be back in office after 2012. That is if these findings are at all accurate. Thus for all of the fanfare and theatrics that surrounded the rise of the Tea Party movement, it’s seemingly unrelenting decline seems to be far less dramatic. Perhaps that’s a function of the movement having already lost so much in terms of popularity that the American people have already written it off. After all, the Tea Party movement is no more or less popular than the two major political parties and we all know that Congress and the G.O.P. have favorability ratings that are at an all time low.

SJG

Sources:

More Now Disagree with Tea Party – Even in Tea Party Districts; http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/29/more-now-disagree-with-tea-party-–-even-in-tea-party-districts/

An Impending and Inevitable Train Wreck; http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2010/10/31/an_impending_and_inevitable_train_wreck

The Fading Allure of the Tea Party Movement; http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2011/04/23/the_fading_allure_of_the_tea_party_movement

Now correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the Tea Party crowd supposed to come to Washington and do away with things like business as usual, excessive and wasteful government spending ad infinitum? I guess if you can grab some loot from those same interest groups that the Tea Party has been railing against from the start, well so much the better. Sounds and seems like business as usual to me. It also smells like more of the same old hypocrisy as well.

Lets take a look at one Tea Party politician in her own words, those of Congresswoman Diane Black (R-TN): “I believe the best ideas to solve our nation’s problems will come from people like you, not Washington bureaucrats and special interest groups.” In the words of one Washington watcher: “…while many say Black and her companions have created a split in the Republican Party, it is not visible among the companies and interest groups that are donating to members of Congress.” Thus it should come as no surprise that Ms. Black has accepted $ 418,000.00 from 190 different PACs!

In an article titled “15 Tea Party Caucus freshmen rake in $3.5 million in first 9 months in Washington” Aaron Mehta, a staff writer with the Center for Public Integrity and Bob Biersack, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics detailed the contribution track record of contributions to fifteen of the most prominent Tea Party freshman showing just how much money each has received. “A joint analysis by iWatch News and the Center for Responsive Politics has found that the 15 freshmen members of the Tea Party Caucus have embraced many of the same special interests that have supported Republicans for years. The fifteen combined have received over $3,450,000 during the first three quarters of this year from almost 700 different PACs.” Well a tidy $3.4 Million plus dollars sounds like real money to me. And does anyone think that that huge chunk of change comes with no strings attached? Hardly, so lets all just be honest and admit that the Tea Party “patriots” are no less corruptible than anyone else who is in Washington and plenty of them are carrying out business as usual just like the veterans.

For some like Congressman Dennis Ross (R-FL) two thirds of the money he raised this year came from PACs. The litany of contributors ranges from major American corporations to the American Bankers Association to, of course, the Koch Brothers. Again, quoting the aforementioned article: “Overall, this group of freshmen representatives has become just as reliant on PAC money as their counterparts who have been in the House longer. The median Tea Party Caucus freshman brought in roughly 44 percent of their money from PACs, 43 percent from large individual donors, and 4 percent from small donors who gave less than $200 each. Comparatively, the median House Republican got 46 percent from PACs, 45 percent from large individuals and 4 percent from small individual donors.” Its important to note that small rank and file individual donors amount for a piddly four percent of the total intake in contributions. I guess when the “people” represent such a small portion of your total cash intake there’s no reason to believe that their interests will remain in the forefront for very long.

Oh well, so much for the Tea Party movement being a genuine engine of change in Washington. To date the only visible effect of the arrival of the Tea Party on Capitol Hill seems to be a more intense variety of gridlock than had existed before and just a new set of folks who seem amenable to the pay to play politics that they were supposed to change but seems to have changed them instead. All of this kind of reminds me of the Republican “Revolution” that produced the “Contract with America”. Remember all of those fresh faced Republicans who came to Washington in the 90s and were only going to stay for one term? Well more than a few became professional politicians as well, some are still in Washington. Oh well the more things change the more they stay the same.

SJG
11/22/11

Source: 15 Tea Party Caucus freshmen rake in $3.5 million in first 9 months in Washington; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-center-for-public-integrity/15-tea-party-caucus-fresh_b_1101194.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=111811&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Has Michele Bachmann become a Tea Party darling that forgot to heed the dimming of the stage lights? Well apparently that may in fact be the case. As it turns out: “Five of Michele Bachmann’s New Hampshire campaign team released a statement on Monday confirming that they have quit the campaign despite comments by Bachmann and her team that the New Hampshire campaign was still together. The five members, who comprised the entirety of Bachmann’s New Hampshire staff, said that her campaign was “rude, unprofessional, dishonest, and at times cruel” to the New Hampshire staffers.”

Okay so lets all ask ourselves a question, if New Hampshire is the preeminent forum for retail politics and Bachmann’s New Hampshire team has ditched her and she can’t effectively manage her own campaign, then how can a Bachmann administration ever hope to function effectively in leading the United States during a period as challenging as this? The answer of course is that it can’t and it’s high time for her to realize this and get out of the way so serious political contenders can get down to the business of determining who will lead this country after 2012. The time for frivolity is long since past and the time to get down to business has long since arrived. Enough said?

SJG
10/26/11

Sources:

Bachmann’s NH team quits, cites campaign dishonesty, rudeness, cruelty; http://minnesotaindependent.com/90549/bachmanns-nh-team-quits-cites-campaign-dishonesty-rudeness-cruelty

Bachmann NH Team Quits; http://thepage.time.com/2011/10/21/bachmanns-nh-team-quits/

Some conservatives are desperately trying to besmirch the ever growing “Occupy Wall Street Movement” as something other than a grass roots movement and some have gone so far as to say that America’s newest grass roots movement is trying to make themselves look “as grassroots as the tea party.” Moreover, they’re saying that the “Occupy” movement has co-opted the Tea Party slogan “take back our country.” There’s more than one fallacy contained in this analysis, lets take a look.

First, the phrase “take our country back” predates the Tea Party movement by several years. I recall it being used by Republicans who wanted to retake the White House from Bill Clinton on the theory that by having won a plurality, his presidency was somehow not quite legitimate. Odd but one of the few Tea Party candidate’s who won a senate seat in 2010, Marco Rubio of Florida, won by a plurality as well. The phrase was used yet again by Democrats in the 2004 elections as they were enraged by the fact that George Bush was handed the 2000 election by the Supreme Court. Hence there is no way that the phrase “take back our country” is generically a Tea Party creation.

As far as the Tea Party movement being genuinely grass roots, well by now it’s a well known fact that the “movement” has been buoyed up by the money of rich conservatives, PACs and other conservative organizations. Jane Mayer, of the New Yorker in an article called “Covert Operations detailed the support given to the Tea Party movement by the billionaire Koch Brothers. To wit: “A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering…Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas…At the lectern in Austin, however, Peggy Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channeled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Koch’s, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.” Beyond the Koch Brother’s there’s the millions of dollars funneled into the “movement” by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Then there’s the Tea Party Express and various and sundry other groups. By now all of this is established fact and undeniable as well.

Lastly, if the Tea Party is such a viable grass roots organization then why does it have such low favorability ratings? In April of this year in an article titled “The Fading Allure of the Tea Party Movement” I detailed how the “movement’s” favorability ratings had fallen to the levels of the two political party’s. Moreover, this decline was attributable to the fall off in support among those earning less than $50,000.00 per year, a threshold that represents roughly the mid point in American incomes. Thus it’s no surprise that the Tea Party continues to have low favorability ratings as per PollingReport.com which shows as of September of 2011 some polls show the Tea Party movement polling its lowest favorable and highest unfavorable ratings of all time or darn close to it. When asked “do you consider yourself part of the Tea Party movement only 12 percent of respondents answered yes and when asked if they supported the movement the number is a low 25 percent. Thus even if the Tea Party movement can legitimately be considered grass roots, big money donors aside, it’s obvious that most of that grass has wilted or died off all together. I have asked many of my friends on the right to show me something that contradicts these findings and I have yet to see anything from a legitimate source that shows the Tea Party ascendant.

SJG
10/10/11

Sources:

Covert Operations by Jane Mayer; http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1aQCFuZAK

The Fading Allure of the Tea Party Movement; http://open.salon.com/blog/steven_j_gulitti/2011/04/23/the_fading_allure_of_the_tea_party_movement

PollingReport.com: Politics – Tea Party; http://www.pollingreport.com/politics.htm

In the wake of the growing number and crescendo of Occupy Wall Street protests and the rising level of alarm among conservative politicians and pundits, one would think that there would be a wave of counter demonstrations by the rank and file of the Tea Party movement which is supposed to be so vociferous about “taking their country back.” However, to date, these counter demonstrations have not materialized and that leads to the question: What became of all the energy that the Tea Party movement displayed back in the summer of 2008 during the health care town halls?

That the Tea Party movement’s popularity is on the wane is by now an established political fact. Likewise it’s declining popularity among those who earn less than $50,000.00 a year is also an established fact. That’s probably a big reason behind the lack of spontaneity, energy or interest in launching a counter effort to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Are there simply not enough foot soldiers around to man the front lines of a counter attack on the scale of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations? Or if a large number of rank and file Tea Party members still exist do they lack the fire in their bellies that they had in the summer of 2008 and if so why? I’ve gotten some real pushback from pointing out the fading allure of the Tea Party movement but when I’ve asked my critics to provide me with some independently verifiable proof to the contrary all that I have received in response are people’s unsubstantiated opinions or deflections that the Wisconsin recall elections is proof of the Tea Party’s continuing viability. However the Tea Party wasn’t on the ballot in Wisconsin and I don’t think that any of the Republican winners were Tea Party sympathizers either. At any rate Republican’s suffered a net loss of two seats so that doesn’t square to well with the claim that Wisconsin was a referendum on the Tea Party movement, it wasn’t.

Now I know the comeback that will surely come from my own Tea Party family members and friends: “Tea Party people are all at work or doing something with their families.” Well that’s a quaint notion isn’t it? However, if this crowd was so busy with work and family in 2008, where did they find the time to protest and in many cases disrupt congressional town halls? Surely with the Occupy Wall Street movement now a 24 / 7 operation there’s got to be some time on the weekend to devote to attending counter demonstrations if you’re really interested in “taking your country back” from protestors who are making the same claim. Likewise there’s time after work, on the way home, seeing that so many of the 147 plus “Occupy” demonstrations are taking place in America’s business districts or government centers. It’s like a tug of war where only one team has shown up. Where is team Tea Party?

The last time I saw anything about a right-wing street protest was this past summer when Michele Bachmann called out the troops to protest in front of the Capitol in opposition to raising the debt ceiling. However, there weren’t even enough people at the demonstration to fill up the view of a wide angle camera lens. Again the lack of passion in the street on the right was undeniable. Yet beyond the politicians and cable news crowd there is now a telling quiet on the right, a quiet that leads me to believe that some part of the message coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement is resonating on the right as well. The pain of the Great Recession doesn’t differentiate on the basis of political philosophy and the notion that perhaps the rich aren’t paying their fair share, that more needs to be done about jobs or that a lightly regulated financial sector almost drove the economy into another Great Depression more likely than not resonates with lower income conservatives who are being pummeled economically just as it does with others. At any rate it’s hard to deny, that in the highly polarized political landscape of today’s America, a lack of a street response from the right is rather peculiar. That peculiarity exists especially in light of all the hyperventilated rhetoric flowing from conservative talk radio, cable channels and the blogosphere. Moreover, due to the fact that the radicalized right took to the streets in summer of 2008 in response to the supposed threats that the Obama administration posed to their version of what America should be one would think that they’d be back in the streets again. Shouldn’t the right be in the streets so as to stand up to a movement that they believe to be, beyond the shadow of a doubt, anti-American or even ‘Marxist”? Yet they’re nowhere to be found and to me that speaks volumes.

S.J. Gulitti
10/12/11

For the second time in the past two days a prominent conservative commentator has thrown Texas Governor Rick Perry under the bus possibly sending this latest Tea Party darling into a downward tailspin along the same trajectory as that of the faltering Michele Bachmann. This morning on Fox News Sunday veteran political analyst Brit Hume stated: “Perry is about one-half a step away from almost total collapse as a candidate…He still has some opportunity to recover his balance and put in a strong performance. What was so strikingly troubling about — from a Republican point of view — about this performance was that Perry was thought of as a really true conservative. Now it appears he has got this position on immigration which is anathema to a lot of conservatives. So this really hurts him with the base.” Just a few days ago William Kristol in an editorial analyzing the Republican debate in Orlando opined that any number of uncommitted potential candidates would be better than those who took the stage in Orlando.

I believe what we have here is a growing panic among the conservatives in this country as to their movement’s inability to produce a strong candidate that should be able to beat a very vulnerable Barack Obama. Not that I believe that the Republicans have any semblance of a strategy that could actually turn the economy around, but with the overall public dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs being what it is it should be relatively easy to unseat the incumbent. The fact that conservatives keep hoping to find someone better than Mitt Romney speaks volumes as to the consternation within their ranks as to the quality of their field of contenders. Add to that the simmering conflict between the emergent Tea Party movement and what some pundits call the “weakening G.O.P. establishment” and what you have are the ingredients for further internal conflict on the right. Whether or not this conflict burns up so much energy as to hobble their candidate during the upcoming presidential election remains to be seen. After all, any Republican candidate that’s not been vetted by the Tea Party will have to tack to the right in order to win in the Republican primaries. That may very well leave the winner with a track record of public comments that are unacceptable to the independent voters upon which the outcome of 2012 will ultimately depend. Thus the next election may be decided to a greater degree than anticipated on the internal warfare that will eventually erupt within the G.O.P.

Sources:

Hume: Perry “One Step Away from Collapse” ; http://thepage.time.com/2011/09/25/hume-perry-one-step-away-from-collapse/

Hume: ‘Perry is about one-half a step away from almost total collapse’; http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/25/hume-perry-is-about-one-half-a-step-away-from-almost-total-collapse/#ixzz1YyyiJKGN

William Kristol: Special Editorial: Yikes; http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/special-editorial-yikes_594095.html