Tea Party Movement Research Articles

Aquarius and Beyond: Thinking through the Counterculture

Aquarius and Beyond: Thinking through the Counterculture

Social Movement Theory and the “Modern Day Tea Party”

AbstractThe rise of the Tea Party movement took many political observers by surprise, but social movement theory can help us to understand how the Tea Party began. Frustration with the federal government's plans for economic recovery, combined with opposition to President Obama's election, morphed into nationwide protests and a vocal presence in the 2010 midterm elections. This paper uses the Tea Party as an example to illustrate social movement life cycles, explaining relevant theories, their application to the movement in each phase of its development, and areas in which the Tea Party challenges current literature on social movements. Social movement theory is discussed as a tool that is constantly being honed as new research increases our understanding of how movements develop and function.

A four-party view of US environmental concern

Research on US public concern about environmental issues finds ideology or political party are the most consistent background predictors. Party is commonly defined by three groups: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Here, using statewide New Hampshire survey data, we elaborate this approach to distinguish a fourth group: respondents who say they support the Tea Party movement. On 8 out of 12 science- or environment-related questions, Tea Party supporters differ significantly from non–Tea Party Republicans. Tea Party supporters are less likely than non–Tea Party Republicans to trust scientists for information about environmental issues, accept human evolution, believe either the physical reality or the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, or recognise trends in Arctic ice, glaciers, or CO2. Despite factual gaps, Tea Party supporters express greater confidence in their own understanding of climate change. Independents, on the other hand, differ less from non–Tea Party Republicans on most of these questions—although Independents do more often accept the scientific consensus on climate change. On many science and environmental questions, Republicans and Tea Party supporters stand farther apart than Republicans and Independents.

Tocqueville's nightmare: the administrative state emerges in America, 1900-1940

The French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that insufferable despotism would prevail if America ever acquired a national administrative state. Today's Tea Partiers evidently believe that Tocqueville's nightmare has come true. Between 1900 and 1940, it seems, radicals, seduced by alien ideologies, created vast bureaucracies that continue to trample on individual freedom. Tocqueville's Nightmare, shows, to the contrary, that the nation's best corporate lawyers were among the creators of commission that supporters were more interested in purging government of corruption than creating a socialist utopia, and that the principles of individual rights, limited government, and due process were designed into the administrative state. American statebuilders rejected the leading European scheme for constraining government, the Rechtsstaat, a state of rules, in favor of the Anglo-American notion of the rule of law as a rule of courts, in which judges aggressively reviewed administrators' decisions. Soon, however, even judges realized that strict judicial review shifted decisions best left to experts to the courts. The most masterful judges ultimately decided that a day in court was unnecessary if individuals had already had a day in commission, in which fundamentals of due process had been observed. Not only did this procedural notion of the rule of law solve the judges' puzzle of reconciling bureaucracy and freedom; it also assured lawyers that their expertise in the ways of the courts would remain valuable and professional politicians that executives would not use administratively distributed largess as an independent source of political power.

Anti-minority attitudes and Tea Party Movement membership

In 2009, shortly after the election of the United States’ first black President, a new protest movement emerged. When some supporters of this new Tea Party Movement (TPM) expressed their ire with race-laden messages various commentators suggested that racism may be a major motive for TPM activism. Accordingly, this study draws on national survey data to examine the extent to which racial attitudes and conservative ideology are associated with self-declared membership in the TPM while controlling for contextual factors that have proven influential in other rightist movement research. Key findings reveal that aside from conservative political ideology, racial resentment is indeed among the strongest predictors of TPM membership. Supplemental analyses explore the extent to which conservatives differ from TPM members. The results show that very conservative individuals and TPM members evince similar attitudes. The findings are discussed in terms of contemporary race relations and the implications for future social movement research.

Epilogue: What 2012 nomination contests tell us about the future of the Republican Party

Analysis of Tea Party activists within the Republican Party illustrates the “good-news, bad-news” aspects of intra-party factionalism. The good news is that nomination contests between Tea Party and establishment Republicans, divisive as they appear, do not necessarily undermine support for the party's nominees in the general election. Support for Tea Party candidates among its activists in the 2012 presidential nomination fight produced increased support for Romney–Ryan in the general election. At the same time, however, activism for Tea Party candidates contributed to increased negativity towards the Republican Party among Tea Party activists, suggesting that the factionalism within the party is unlikely to be soon resolved. Finally we find that negativity towards the Republican establishment is playing an even greater role than negativity towards President Obama in producing continuing or increased Tea Party movement activity. This suggests that the movement has the potential to survive beyond Obama's presidency.

The Tea Party and the 2012 presidential election

Using both the 2012 American National Election Study and the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we examine the Tea Party movement's role in crystallizing attitudes and shaping voting behavior in the 2012 elections. The data show that, compared to other Republicans, Tea Party sympathizers were notably more hostile to Obama, more receptive to bogus notions about his origins and religion, and more conservative across a broad range of issues and issue dimensions—including those related to racial and ethnic minorities. Voters' opinions of the Tea Party were linked to their presidential vote choice directly as well as through their association with the core values, opinions, and attitudes that underlie opinions of the Tea Party. Tea Party sympathizers form the Republican coalition's largest, most loyal, and most active component, so their opinions and beliefs help to explain why national politics in the United States is currently stalemated on so many major issues.

Has the Tea Party Era Radicalized the Republican Party? Evidence from Text Analysis of the 2008 and 2012 Republican Primary Debates

ABSTRACTMuch ink has been spilled to describe the emergence and likely influence of the Tea Party on the American political landscape. Pundits and journalists declared that the emergence of the Tea Party movement pushed the Republican Party to a more extreme ideological position, which is generally anti-Washington. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the ideological positions taken by candidates in the 2008 and 2012 pre-Iowa caucus Republican presidential-primary debates. To establish the positions, we used the debate transcripts and a text-analytic technique that placed the candidates on a single dimension. Findings show that, overall, the 2012 candidates moved closer to an anti-Washington ideology—associated with the Tea Party movement—and away from the more traditional social conservative Republican ideology, which was more salient in the 2008 debates. Both Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, the two candidates who ran in both elections, shifted significantly in the ideological direction associated with the Tea Party.

The Tea Party Movement and the 2012 House Election

ABSTRACTThis article examines Tea Party candidates for the US House of Representative in 2012. Tea Party and Tea Party–endorsed candidates are similar to other Republican candidates. Although they have served in the House for a shorter period, they have approximately the same financial resources, prior political experience, and reelection rate as other Republicans. Multivariate analysis finds that Tea Party membership and endorsement have no impact on electoral outcome when other political factors are controlled for (e.g., incumbency, running for an open seat, quality of opposing candidate, prior political experience, financial resources, and Obama’s vote). Consequently, the success of Tea Party candidates depends on acquiring the traditional political resources, having weak opponents, and running in favorably disposed constituencies rather than identification with this highly visible political movement.

When Fringe Goes Mainstream Again: A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Tea Party Movement's Contract from America and the Republican Party Platform

Successful social movements gain an inside voice and reshape the larger system from within. Knowing the extent to which the Tea Party movement has gained a voice within the Republican Party is vital to understanding the current state of party politics in America. This study analyzes the presence of the goals contained within the Tea Party movement's Contract from America in the Republican platform, finding that each plank of the contract was represented in the 2012 Republican national platform. Increased emphasis on the constitution and fiscal responsibility did not come at the expense of the inclusion of social conservatism or religion. Placing fiscal conservatism within a context of morality and responsibility to God, the 2012 platform reveals a move toward the fusionism popularized by Reagan. The incorporation of Contract from America goals indicates assimilation of Tea Party ideology within the GOP, potentially precipitating the movement's decline. By adopting Tea Party movement compatible ideology, the Republican Party shifted further right, possibly alienating moderate voters in the 2012 election.

Political and Cultural Dimensions of Tea Party Support, 2009–2012

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) burst onto the political scene following the 2008 elections. Early on, the movement attracted broad public support and seemed to tap into a variety of cultural concerns rooted in the changing demographic, political, and economic face of the nation. However, some observers questioned whether the Tea Party represented anything more than routine partisan backlash. And what had started as a seemingly grassroots movement that changed the face of American politics in the 2010 election was reduced to being mainly a caucus within Congress by 2012. In this article, we examine the cultural and political dimensions of Tea Party support over time. Using polling data from North Carolina and Tennessee and quantitative media analysis, we provide new evidence that cultural dispositions in addition to conservative identification were associated with TPM favorability in 2010; that these dispositions crystallized into shared political positions in 2011; and that by 2012 little distinguished TPM adherents from other conservatives.

Mama Grizzlies and Guardians of the Republic: The Democratic and Intersectional Politics of Anger in the Tea Party Movement

Tea Party activists have proudly embraced anger and outrage as a distinguishing mark of patriotic dissidence, and have successfully exploited the contemporary politics of anger in the United States. Although much democratic theory casts anger as a hazardous impediment to democratic politics, these theories and the progressive critiques based on them participate in troubling efforts to discipline or even expel anger from the public sphere. Instead this article theorizes public anger as an agonistic, performative, and intersectional practice. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, it also demonstrates how intersectional formations of gender, sexuality, and race have played a central role in making Tea Party performances of anger politically intelligible and powerful. The analysis highlights not just how white men and white women are able to enact public anger, but also how some Tea Party activists of color have surprisingly circumvented contemporary affective norms that usually render racial minorities' public anger politically suspect. The article concludes with a discussion of the democratic implications of an agonistic approach to anger for democratic theory and practice.

Black Tea, Green Tea, White Tea, and Coffee: Understanding the Variation in Attachment to the Tea Party Among Members of Congress

The Tea Party is the most significant political movement in 21st century American politics. First, it has had an extraordinary effect on the Republican Party. A boon to conservative Republicans, it has made life difficult for moderate Republicans, particularly those who are elected officials. Somewhat surprisingly, given the burgeoning literature on the mass-level Tea Party, the Tea Party in government has generated relatively less interest (or scholarship). And what research there is on the Tea Party in government suggests that the foundations of the movement in the mass public are not easily translatable into Tea Party legislators’ incentives or their actions (see, for example, Arceneaux and Nicholson 2011 and Gervais and Morris 2012). One reason for the dearth of research on the Tea Party in government is the difficulty associated with identifying which legislators are “true” Tea Party members. While Tea Party Caucus membership has been used to identify Tea Party members, it is a flawed measure, and now that it is dormant, it has lost even the limited usefulness it once had. In this paper, we address this limitation of the current literature. We use an array of different types of data to tap into a politician’s connection to the Tea Party. This data include campaign contributions from organizations explicitly tied to the Tea Party movement, endorsements from Tea Party organizations, and the prevalence of joint media references to individual politicians and the Tea Party. These data suggest that Tea Party attachment is a multi-dimensional variable. We label the various types of Tea Party supporters as Black Tea, Green Tea, White Tea, and Coffee, and we demonstrate that the ideological dispositions and institutional positions of members vary according to their type of Tea Party attachment. We conclude with a discussion of our future research and the significance of organized variation in Tea Party attachment for legislative policymaking.

The Tea Party in Local Politics

Since 2009 the Tea Party has disrupted and deeply influenced American politics. The force of the movement has been felt not only in the three election cycles since then, but also in the development of public policy. One area where Tea Party influence has been said to be significant is in the area of environmental sustainability. As local governments have moved toward adopting environmental measures aimed at promoting sustainability, there have been some cases where local Tea Parties have emerged as aggressive and strident opponents of related policy changes. How widespread this behavior has been is unclear. In this paper we look broadly at the Tea Party movement across the country and systematically assess its influence in urban America. Based on evidence we’ve gathered for a number of different databases, we find that the Tea Party has not had a measurable impact on city policymaking in the area of sustainability. Moreover, we find that local Tea Party chapters generally have very limited organizational capacity to engage in advocacy. Across 50 large American cities, our findings indicate that the typical Tea Party chapter is at best a modest presence in local politics.

Quality Controlled: An Ethnographic Account of Tea Party Messaging and Action

What strategies do Tea Party movement organizers use to achieve frame alignment, that is, uniformity of grievance, purpose, and action, with their participants? Evidence to answer this question is gathered from a year‐length participant‐observation case study of one city‐based Tea Party organization, primarily through the meetings of its localized grassroots chapters. Principal findings are that Tea Party organizers employ quality control of off‐message grievances, for example, abortion, as well as any action or communication that would or could be perceived as racially prejudicial, or otherwise inflammatory. Formally, these findings demonstrate the influence of organizational hierarchy on grassroots practice. Substantively, they demonstrate the complex relationship between a broader conservative ideological repertoire as empirically deployed by participants, and the more focused frame alignment attempts of a particular social movement organization. In short, the findings elucidate the importance of interaction and organizational structure as they influence social movement messaging and action.

From Bretton Woods to the Global Financial Crisis: Popular Politics, Paradigmatic Debates, and the Construction of Crises

How do popular values shape constructions of crises and paradigmatic debates? In this paper, I offer a constructivist framework highlighting the popular bases of paradigmatic ideas and policy interests. In historical terms, I then trace the evolution of values, ideas, and polic]ies across three crises—the Bretton Woods-era inflation and currency crises of the 1960s, the South Korean and Long Term Capital Management crises of the 1990s, and the global financial crisis. In concluding, I stress implications for tensions not only between intellectuals and populists, but also among populists themselves—as in the affective divides between Tea Party and Occupy movements.

“Taking Back Our Country”: Tea Party Membership and Support for Punitive Crime Control Policies

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) emerged shortly after the 2008 election, with members rallying behind the call to “take back our country.” Many observers suggest that the movement represents, in part, a racialized backlash against the election of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, motivated by perceived threats to the racial hierarchy. Racial threat theory predicts that if the TPM is motivated by and reinforces racial concerns, racialized support for punitive crime policies that disproportionately impact blacks should be higher among Tea Partiers. Drawing on recent national survey data, this study tests this prediction. The results show that TPM membership is positively associated with punitiveness and that this relationship is mediated, in part, by Tea Partiers’ animus toward blacks. We discuss the import of these findings for competing accounts of the TPM, racial threat theory, and the argument that the United States has become a “post‐racial society.”

Tea and Sympathy: The Tea Party Movement and Republican Precommitment to Radical Conservatism in the 2011 Debt-Limit Crisis

We examine an increasingly common political tactic: the self-binding pledge whereby lawmakers assure a constituency, social movement, or interest group that they will take a particular position on an upcoming vote or policy issue. An empirical analysis of novel data on the 2011 debt-limit crisis shows that pre-commitment by legislators to the Tea Party's "Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge" was the joint product of grassroots pressure and ideological sympathy. Highly conser-vative early pledgers opposed fiscal compromise that fell short of the Tea Party's position, while a number of less conservative later signers reneged by voting for the Budget Control Act that resolved the debt-limit crisis. The case of the pledge sug-gests that social movements are well positioned to collaborate with true believing insiders to promote policy change but have difficulty persuading fence sitters to take their side.

The Shot Heard Around the World Wide Web: Who Heard What Where About Osama bin Laden's Death

This study investigated what sources were relied on to find out about Osama bin Laden's death and whether perceptions of credibility and political party affiliation influenced these media choices. The most striking difference in media reliance for bin Laden news was that whatever sources Tea Partiers relied on and thought credible were those that Democrats did not rely on or see as credible. Despite the clamor about how quickly news flows through social network sites and Twitter, only about 5% of respondents first heard about bin Laden through these sources and a slightly larger percentage spread the news via these tools. Moreover, social network sites and Twitter were the least relied on about the aftermath of bin Laden's death.

Playing Patriots: The Role(s) of Child Protestors in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Movements

This article considers the role(s) of child protestors and activists in both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. Both of these movements and activist communities engage with notions and performances of patriotism, as well as with American history and/or their movement’s place in it. Both movements also seek to imagine/manipulate/engage/educate youth about the nation and patriotism in interesting, and often contradictory, ways. I look closely at the ways in which each movement has represented itself to the outside world, as well as the ways the media has represented each movement in newspapers and online forums such as blogs. I explore the ways in which both movements offer opportunities for their young members, as well as their adult counterparts, to engage in “playing patriots” as part of their protests and their more purely educational offshoots.