The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism: on Budget & Economy
Tea Party:
2009: Tea Party sparked by opposing mortgage bailout
On February 19, 2009, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC television reporter Rick Santelli burst into a tirade against the Obama Administration's nascent foreclosure relief plan: "The government is rewarding bad behavior!"
Santelli shouted. He invited America's "capitalists" to a "Chicago Tea Party" to protest measures to "subsidize the losers' mortgages." Video of the Santelli rant quickly scaled the media pyramid.
The rant headlined the "Drudge Report" and was widely re-televised. Anyone who hadn't caught Santelli's original outburst could hardly miss the constant replays and escalating responses.Across the country, disgruntled conservatives perked up.
The "Tea Party" symbolism was a perfect rallying point since it brings to mind the original American colonial rebels opposing tyranny by tossing chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
Source: The Remaking of Republican Conservatism, p. 7
Jan 2, 2012
Tea Party:
Economic pessimism: Great Recession part of downward spiral
Journalists and academics have speculated that the Tea Party must be a response to the Great Recession that gathered force starting in 2008. The coincidence of popular protests with plunging economic indicators makes this seem plausible.
For Tea Partiers, however, pessimism about the economy is politically tinged. Tea Partiers who started organizing in 2009 got an extra prod from the downward-spiraling economy [but] Tea Partiers do not come from the groups that have borne the brunt of
the recent US economic crisis.Though members of the Tea Party do not bear the heaviest economic burden, they do have some of the most negative views of the economy, and their worries bleed into broader fears. Overall, fewer than half of
Americans said that good jobs are a thing of the past. But for members of the Tea Party, it felt as though the fundamentalist rules about the American Dream had changed. Working hard no longer meant getting ahead.
Source: The Remaking of Republican Conservatism, p. 29-30
Jan 2, 2012
Tea Party:
Budget woes more about coming collapse than redistribution
Tea Partiers speak constantly about an out-of-control federal budget deficit and the coming doom they think it portends for the US. There is real-world basis for worrying about the US fiscal situation, of course, though the US is in reasonably good
fiscal shape, as the steady health of the bond market attests. Tea Party worries about national debt therefore refer to real problems, but magnify them out of all proportion. Why? As we have learned, Tea Partiers are concerned that US deficits might be
addressed in part with tax hikes, which they imagine would require people like them to help pay for social spending that benefits undeserving freeloaders. But the fiscal question in the Tea Party imagination is more than just a redistributive matter,
more than just a set of worries about taxes and social spending. In the highly emotional telling of many Tea Partiers, the ballooning federal deficit merges into a general sense of a coming collapse for America.
Source: The Remaking of Republican Conservatism, p. 76-77
Jan 2, 2012
Tea Party:
Don't raise debt limit; already facing economic Armageddon
One group was discussing the debt limit. With little angst, they agreed it should not be raised--and planned to pressure their Congressional representatives accordingly. In the summer of 2011, national surveys showed that Tea Party sympathizers were
especially likely to oppose raising the federal debt limit, despite the financial crisis that might follow. Tea Partiers believe that the US already faces economic Armageddon, so a further step in that direction does not provoke much concern.
Source: The Remaking of Republican Conservatism, p.180
Jan 2, 2012
Page last updated: Feb 21, 2019