The Party’s Over

I'll never go there again!" said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the Stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!"

Well, frumps, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later: Glenn Beck is feeling his oats and is going all political activist on us. Maybe it was the success of his 912 Project’s Million-or-so Wingnut March on Washington, or maybe it was the warm fuzzy rush when Candidate Doug Hoffman cited Beck as his mentor, or maybe it was just an “ether dream” during his recent appendectomy – whatever, Beck is intimating that he’s found his true mission in life and is offering his services as Kingmaker.

Recently Beck is making noises about training future political candidates of a certain persuasion. This actually makes a lot of sense given Beck’s Ivy League educational background – in 1996, while working for a New Haven-area radio station, Beck was admitted to Yale University through a special program for non-traditional students. He took one theology class, “Early Christology,” and then dropped out, eschewing academe to devote more time to his budding radio career.

I’d venture a guess that Beck had a similar experience to some of my own drop-out friends and that is, after sitting in a course, they discovered that they actually knew far more than the other students and, usually, the professor – so, why bother?

According to the New York Times:

“Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.”

“To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.”

“On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.”

Aha . . . sounds like a “grassroots” book promotion and a big fat moneymaker to this frump (think of all those ticket-buying political wannabes). I think that Beck may be close to displacing Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi as the greatest snake oil salesman of the last century.

Beck said the “conventions” would resemble educational seminars:

“You’re going to learn about finance. You’re going to learn about community organizing. You’re going to learn everything we need to know if you want to be a politician.”

Golly! But Beck made it clear that while candidates may choose to align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses (as well as his sizable audience), he would not go a step further to endorse them. Guess he’s still smarting from that Hoffman non-endorsement . . .

Endorsements: a Minefield

When Hoffman’s name became a meme on the Right, Michelle Bachman jumped on the bandwagon with her usual irrational exuberance, declaring the 912 movement a force to be reckoned with:

“Hoffman’s candidacy illuminates the stark difference between GOP political opportunists willing to pimp out their endorsements to any old ACORN-embracing, Working Families Party-consorting, Big Labor crony who puts an “R” by her name.”

Wonder who she was talking about?

After Candidate Hoffman went down in flames, Robert Gibbs quipped that Hoffman’s loss “proves that anger can get you 45% of the vote.”

As Steve Krakauer, at mediaite.com said:

“The fact remains, the tea party activists couldn’t have picked a less charismatic candidate to kick off their national push toward Judgment Day. It wasn’t about Hoffman – it was about defeating Scozzafava, which the movement was successful in accomplishing. But now they’ve lost a congressional seat, and the result amplifies those voices, specifically Newt Gingrich’s, who said this wouldn’t work.”

“If Van Jones and ACORN were feathers in Glenn Beck’s cap, this loss plucks one of those feathers out. There will probably be more feathers going in down the road – his power, and ratings, seem to continually be on the incline. But for now, maybe reports (and Time covers) of his megalomaniac stardom are slightly premature.”

I have to agree with Steve on this; it’s pretty clear, so far, that a grassroots (even an Astroturf) movement does not a Party make.

All of the media attention to the various incarnations of Tea Party, 912 Project, Patriots, secessionists, etc. shines a light on a dynamic that is building on the Right that could actually do Republicans and Conservatives as well as the TP movement itself, far more harm than good in the long run.   It’s hard to use the term “history” when discussing the Tea Party movement but for lack of a better word, the history of the movement has been as fractious and splintered as a movement’s history can be.

A little while back, I posted about a split that occurred in one of the few national level umbrella groups, the Tea Party Patriots.   One of the co-founders of TPP found the slightly more radical Tea Party Express more to her liking and defected. Her related co-founders turned hostile and sued her. Some other state-level groups didn’t like the way that played out and decided to “secede” from the TPP and become autonomous groups on a more locally-focused level.

Many groups that call themselves Tea Party organizations have always been autonomous and pretty much do their own thing on a stat or local level. Kenneth Vogel, at Politico, has written a great in-depth look at what is most likely the deterioration of the TP movement, although some insiders see it as normal “growing pains.”

My takeaway from Vogel’s article is this:

“After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum.”

“The media figures’ roles may exacerbate the ideological feuds that are already roiling the party. For the diffuse tea party movement that taps into anti-government sentiments, “the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader,” said Adam Brandon, the vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.”

“These efforts are reminiscent of the Contract With America pledge made by conservatives during the 1994 elections, though some Republicans who are uncomfortable with media personalities taking on new political roles note that that effort originated with lawmakers.”

Sure enough, here’s what the ground forces are saying:

“People are beginning to become a little bit de-energized — they’re starting to feel like they’re fighting a losing battle, because we send a lot of letters into Washington, D.C., and things like that, and people are saying they’re not listening,” said Brian Britton, who heads the Greeley, Colo., 9/12 group.

That fear is echoed by Glenn Galls, a Hot Springs, Ark., tea party organizer who said:

“If the tea party movement is going to continue to thrive and to grow and to have influence,” he said, “it must start coming together and coalescing and finding its purpose in life, because if it doesn’t, the excitement will fade like it does from anything else.”

Those statements are pretty telling about the movement’s overall agenda, if there is such a thing, and their expectations. If we are to believe the grassroots claim for the Tea Party movement, then a lot of members might fall into the politically naïve category and/or the awakening political activist category.

It’s been noted in the past that a large number of tea party protestors are in the aging baby boomer bracket; it’s possible that those folks, at least, started out as one-issue participants when the health care debate appeared to threaten Social Security and Medicare.   It remains to be seen whether they will stay engaged for other issues coming up that strike farther from their immediate interests.

The leadership and organizers of the movement, however, are for the most part, somewhat younger and more social-media-savvy which, in my opinion, could make them more amenable to a large, networked movement rather than one made up of hundreds of small autonomous cells.

Statements like those above, say a lot, I think, about the TP movement’s younger leadership.

A statement like Brian Britton’s, for example:

“People are beginning to become a little bit de-energized — they’re starting to feel like they’re fighting a losing battle, because we send a lot of letters into Washington, D.C., and things like that, and people are saying they’re not listening.”

If what Brian says is in any way representative of TP group-think, I believe the movement is indeed not destined to have staying power. His statement indicates political naivete to me. Just because a lot of people get together and spend the time to write, email or fax form letters or robo-call their representatives in Congress doesn’t guarantee a desired result in a week or a month or even years. This is, after all a democracy; an equal or even larger number of people (and lobbyists, of course) might have done the same to influence an opposite outcome. The need for instant gratification is a sign of immaturity in individuals as well as political movements.

The same goes for Glen Galls’ statement:

“If the tea party movement is going to continue to thrive and to grow and to have influence it must start coming together and coalescing and finding its purpose in life, because if it doesn’t, the excitement will fade like it does from anything else.”

This is a classic “cart before the horse” situation.   Looking backward in time most, if not all, notably successful grassroots movements start with a very specific “purpose in life” a vision, and coalesce around further refining that vision.   Successful, influential movements don’t start out as a search for “a purpose in life.”

And they don’t usually fade out due to a “lack of excitement” – successful movements tend to be more about a sustained, focused passion, a coherent vision, and a lot of hard, thoughtful work, compromise and sacrifice to make that vision a reality. I’m not seeing that, so far, in the TP movement.

The Forces That Be . . .

As if they don’t have enough problems, internally, there is another issue, an external one, looming for tea partiers that could represent the final straw. That is the widening field of those who would like to capitalize on wooing tea partiers into their own wildly divergent camps. There are the quasi-political operatives and lobbyists like Dick Armey of Freedom Works, Grassfire’s Steve Elliott and Rick Scott of Conservatives for Patient’s Rights who like to fly below the radar and can always use some energized “grassroots robots” to carry their message hither and yon.

There are the political pundits i.e., media personalities who, in their never-ending competition for ratings, influence and “mind-share” have found that it’s a very productive stunt to get their audiences to mobilize, act out, act up and be otherwise visibly newsworthy so that their media bosses can film it and prove what a Force they are.

If you doubt that, check out Beck’s and Hannity’s dueling campaigns for the hearts and minds of tea partiers. Becks is called In or Out 2010 and Hannity’s is Top 10 Items for Victory.  I’m sure Bill O’Reilly will come up with something pedantic, if he hasn’t already.

And then, too, there are nascent populist-politicos-in-search-of-a-base like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, the Cheney’s, Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul who all figure it might be worth the trouble to herd cats long enough to get elected.

My guess is that all of these competing external forces, coupled with the internal chaos of the movement don’t bode well for its survival.   If I’m right, I predict that there will be an audible sigh of relief coming from the Republican side of the aisle . . . and me.

Here, in a video-nutshell are the systemic problems that will bring the TP movement down on display:  it is politically ignorant, narcissistic, easily influenced and has a very short attention span.   On November 14 “Robert Erickson” was introduced to the Minnesota Tea Party Against Amnesty as a Minneapolis resident concerned about illegal immigration. Sometimes the devil is in the details, as the supporters of the anti-immigrant Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform (MINN-SIR) slowly learn.

On the other hand, some of them never quite figured out that “Robert” wasn’t on their side.

Tagged as: Bill O'Reilly, Cheney, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, sarah palin, Sean Hannity, tea party, Tea Party Patriots