The Tea Party Movement

The Adam Smith Institute has a post up about the Tea Party designed to ask a key question about that movement - and it's this:

Is this the change we should believe in?

Meh. I certainly hope not.

The Tea Party movement is, as far as I can see, just a lot of hype. There is nothing new about the Tea Party movement; not even its name. There have been grassroot campaigns in the USA before - and very successful ones to boot. Such campaigns saw Barry Goldwater being drafted for the Republican nomination in 1964, and the creation of the primary successes of Eugene McCarthy (which, in turn, led to LBJ refusing to stand for a further term) four years later. The Christian Coalition - that pernicious body of Christian Fundamentalists - is a recent example as well. But more often than not such organisations have been the result of one of the two major parties in the USA losing their way. And those movements have ended with their incorporation into the party that had lost its way. And I think that is what has happened with regard to the Tea Party - it was formed because the Republicans have lost their way (remember, people, it was formed when Bush Junior was still President). And it will end when the Republicans take over the Tea Party (probably using the ever cretinous Sarah Palin) and fully incorporate it.

Part of the reason for this is the fact that there is nothing radical in what the Tea Party movement stands for. Look at its Contract From America - this is nothing more than the smaller government agenda that should be, and has been, the bedrock of the Republican party. Sure, we can call this programme Libertarian - and in some respects it is (in the sense that any programme calling for lower taxes is Libertarian). Yet what, as far as I can see, is missing from the Tea Party movement is any sort of commitment to genuine social freedom alongside their admirable commitment to economic freedom. Which is why they would be perfect for incorporation into the Republican party, and why they really aren't as radical as they are sometimes made out to be.

On some levels, I'd love to be wrong - I'd love to see the Tea Party movement breaking the mould of US politics, and becoming a genuine alternative to the two mainstream US parties. But there is nothing in either history or the nature of the Tea Party movement to make me convinced that this can actually happen. As it stands, I think we will see this movement becoming a footnote in the 2012 US Presidential election, and then disappearing into the Republican party forever.