Who’ll Occupy education?

Posted on March 8, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Protests against tuition hikes and program in public education and service cuts have become more frequent and more intense as state budgets have tightened.  It’s awful everywhere–and worse in California (e.g. ), where an old tradition of the state supporting access to a low (or no) tuition/high quality education for its top students has been eroding for some time.

On Monday, in coordination with a national day of action on education, several groups staged protests in Sacramento about current–and proposed–cuts to spending on education.  Thousands of protesters, including the formal groups representing California students at the community colleges, state colleges, and state universities, as well as labor groups and numerous Occupy groups, participated, bringing shared concerns and sharp differences on long term goals and tactics.  At least 70 students were arrested for refusing to leave the Capitol.

Governor Brown, who has already cut spending for every level of public education in California, sees more cuts on the horizon, as state revenues have fallen below projections.  He expressed sympathy for the students, and tried to turn the protests to his own purposes.  He released a statement pointing those concerned with education to his proposal for new temporary taxes to balance the state budget:

The students today are reflecting the frustrations of millions of Californians who have seen their public schools and universities eroded year after year.  That’s why it’s imperative that we get more tax revenue this November.

Some of the student groups support new taxes, but have rallied behind an alternative proposal which earmarks the new revenue for education.  Others are trying to avoid specific proposals, and just trying to urge the Legislature–as forcefully as possible–to fund education adequately.  Some of the students lobbied legislators, and were pleased to have elected officials speak to them and offer support.

Others, including Refund California and Occupy Education California, were wary about the legislators’ support and politics as usual.  To be sure, polls suggest that approving a new tax, even a temporary one, through a referendum will be an uphill battle.

Occupy brings new energies and new activists into the campaign for education funding, but it does more than that.  By framing the education campaign as part of a larger struggle against inequality, the Occupy protesters make for a more ambitious movement, one that won’t be willing to fund education at the expense of, for example, the already stingy Medical program.  (Governor Brown has been lobbying, unsuccessfully, for the Federal government to allow him to cut Medicaid spending even more sharply.)

Old school interest group politics is based on focusing narrowly on your organization and constituency, letting government sort out competing pressures.  Occupy pushes for a larger political vision, one which seeks to stop their government from playing one vulnerable constituency against another.

It’s a better analysis.  It remains to be seen if it’s a more effective strategy.

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Occupy education: uniting university student protest

Posted on March 2, 2012 by David S. Meyer

University and college student protest returned yesterday (here and here).  Across California, at UC, Cal State, and even some high school campuses, students protested tuition hikes and program cuts, even as schools are raising tuition and cutting programs everywhere.  Now, the student protests are called “Occupy.”

You can see the broad trend in tuition below (from the College Board):

But it’s worse than this.  In public institutions, tuition hikes are accompanied by cuts in services, courses, and faculty, resulting in a, uh, compromised, educational experience.  Students who are working more hours off-campus to fund their educations are finding themselves closed out of classes they want or need, sitting in more crowded lecture halls, navigating reduced library hours and offerings, and seeing greater personal debt and dimmed career prospects on the horizon.

Access to high quality education, higher and otherwise, is a core equal opportunity issue.  Whatever Senator Rick Santorum says about snobbery or liberal professors indoctrinating youth, young people with college degrees are less likely to be unemployed than those without them; they’re still likely to earn more money and enjoy more stability as well.  (Of course, it’s worse for college grads than it used to be.)

When Occupy left public parks, usually not by activist choice, it spilled out into the range of issues and arenas that organize American life.  “Occupy” provided the language for a wide range of campaigns to reduce political and economic inequality.  The campus-based protests yesterday aren’t anything new, but framing them as part of a larger campaign for justice and reform is.

In Santa Cruz, Occupy turned out hundreds of students, made some interesting pictures, and canceled many classes.

Across California, the LA Times reports, turnouts were vigorous, but relatively small.  It’s a little early in the tuition hike cycle for student protests to take-off.  The challenge for Occupy is to find ways to inspire larger numbers of people to take up specific parts of the cause in the places they know best: housing, finance, work, and certainly, education.  The promise is of a multi-faceted, diverse, and powerful movement.

The risk is that these diverse efforts fail to generate the inspiration and attention of the Occupations.

It’s early yet.

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When the Snowe flies: Tea Party overreach?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by David S. Meyer

When Senator Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican, announced that she would not run for reelection, she demonstrated another of the difficult challenges that movement activists face when they engage electoral politics.  Senator Snowe would cut deals with the Democratic majority, and showed unpartisan flexibility in dealing with process, schedules, and budgets.  At the same time, she voted with the Republican Party almost all the time, and certainly on matters of organizing the Senate.

Apparently her vision of pragmatic conservative politics was compatible with Maine voters; experts, like 538’s Nate Silver, saw her reelection as extremely likely.   She had raised plenty of money already, and was hugely popular in the state.  (Silver notes, however, that the seat is now extremely likely to go to a Democrat, jeopardizing the Republican effort to take control of the Senate.)

For social movements, putative allies judged insufficiently resolute are attractive targets.  Conservatives call their more pragmatic members “RINOs,” that is, Republicans in Name Only, and have targeted them in primary campaigns.

Attacks on the least doctrinaire Republicans, like those who can win in swing districts, was one of the critical stories of the 2010 elections.  Sometimes, as in Utah (Mike Lee) and Kentucky (Rand Paul), conservatives replaced the choice of party regulars with more conservative alternatives and won.  In other cases, however, including Nevada, Delaware, and Colorado, they succeeded in nominating very conservative candidates who lost winnable races against Democrats.

Pragmatic politicians want numbers, and can work out details about loyalty later.  They understand that majorities organize the legislature and make policy, while resolute minorities can make statements and try to stall their opponents.

But primary challenges can have additional effects, and not only on those directly challenged.  Fearing a primary challenge, moderates are more likely to protect their flank, eschewing compromise and votes that might later need to be explained to a fundamentalist core that turns out to vote in primaries.

Senator Snowe was facing a primary challenge from a Tea Partier (Scott D’Amboise), like her colleagues Richard Lugar (Indiana) and Orrin Hatch (Utah).  Unlike Senator Snowe, Senators Lugar and Hatch would never have been called anything but conservative until this odd moment in American life.  They did, however, try to govern.  But the primary challenges worked: all three tacked to the right legislatively, paying attention to winning the support of their party first.  Senator Hatch even warned that if the Republicans gained the majority without him, Olympia Snowe would be chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

The primary challenges play out differently, depending upon context.  While Maine now seems primed to elect a Democrat to the Senate, Utah is virtually certain to elect a Republican senator, even if their candidate isn’t Orrin Hatch.  And Indiana is somewhere in between.

Few professional politicians would prefer to be part of a disciplined and unified minority than to participate in a broader coalition that governs.  Republican Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina) is one of them.  Politico quotes Senator DeMint:

I don’t want to be in the majority if we don’t have bold ideas and that we’re going to reform government…I think the problem we have as a party is when we are so afraid of losing elections that we’re afraid to do the right thing. That’s what hurts us as Republicans. I think it’s the principles that people relate to.

The challenge we have is not that there’s not room in the party for different people, but there has got to be a party that recognizes that somehow we need to transition toward a smaller, less expensive government…And if there are people in the Republican Party who don’t think we have to do that, there’s probably not room for them.

If Republicans lose this election, Senator DeMint’s position on the longstanding purity versus pragmatism debate will become less and less popular.  Tea Party enthusiasm will have cost the Republican Party a seat in the Senate, and compromised its prospects for winning the Senate.  In the halls of Congress, Republican legislators are muttering about the need for activists to grow up and get realistic.

Voters, of course, face the same choices that movements do.  Holding your nose and voting for the “lesser evil” is another way of saying that you’re making pragmatic choices.  (Occupiers looking at President Obama in the Fall will face exactly that purity versus pragmatism choice.)  It’s not always pretty or appealing, but this is also what democracy looks like.

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Leaving the Tea Party (Patriots)?

Posted on February 29, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Mark Meckler has just resigned from the leadership of the Tea Party Patriots, an organization he and Jenny Beth Martin, started in 2009.  Because Meckler was the most visible exponent of a fundamentalist grassroots orientation to political activism within the movement, it’s hard not to read these tea leaves to discover something larger about the movement.

Meckler tells a story of his activism that starts with him as a lawyer and small businessman in Northern California, generally disaffected from politics.   Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC inspired him to take his family to an early Tea Party rally shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, and then build an independent non-partisan national organization to support grassroots activism.  It’s a good story.

But it’s not a complete story.  It edits out Meckler’s paid work as a political consultant for Republican candidates for office both before and during the Tea Party.  It also edits out his successful career as a distributor–and recruiter–for Herbalife, a nutritional supplements company that subsists through multi-level marketing.  (See Stephanie Mencimer’s 2010 profile at Mother Jones.)

Meckler’s role in the Tea Party was always to emphasize the grassroots.  Tea Party Patriots was the national organization that provided affiliations for local Tea Party groups, and promised support as well.  The TPP model was all about initiative from below, and working hard to avoid being coopted by the Republican Party or demanding Washington-based groups.  The vision of sustained democracy from below, explained very well by Jonathan Rauch, promised independence, autonomy, and true authenticity.  (In the article, Rauch quotes me as someone skeptical of this promise.)

Oddly, Meckler’s resignation coincides with the publication of his book, Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution, co-authored with Jenny Beth Martin,  and the requisite publicity tour.

[Perhaps it’s less odd that it follows Meckler’s plea to “disorderly conduct” for trying to carry a gun and ammunition on a plane at LaGuardia airport.  Meckler declared the weapon, which he was licensed to carry in California–but not New York.  So much for local control.]

The Tea Party Patriots refused to work with Tea Party Express on candidate forums that included Mitt Romney, and criticized John Boehner for compromising with Democrats in the Senate and the Oval Office, most notably on raising the debt ceiling.  Perhaps it’s not surprising that Meckler and Martin survey the current Republican field of candidates and find them wanting.  From The Blaze:

“Nobody is satisfied with the candidates out there,” says Martin. “They’re all losers.”

Her other cofounder, Mark Meckler, doesn’t feel any different. “They’ve caved on every single point of principle since the Republican majority has taken over,” he says.

So why leave the grassroots-oriented group?

At the Daily Caller, Alex Pappas reports the Meckler was frustrated that the group was abandoning the grassroots, and that he had lost a leadership struggle to his co-author, Martin:

…Meckler told the state coordinators of Tea Party Patriots on Thursday night that he “fought long and hard” to maintain the group “as an organization that is run from the bottom up, with the intent of serving the grassroots.”

“Unfortunately, it is my belief that I have lost this fight,” Meckler said. “I probably fought the internal fight longer than I should have, but I wanted to give absolutely every possible effort to preserving what I believe was the unique nature of the TPP organization.”

Since the organization’s founding, Meckler has shared the role of national coordinator with co-founder Jenny Beth Martin. But Meckler wrote in the email that he had lost “influence in the leadership of the organization, and it has been that way for quite some time.”

Meckler said the board granted Martin “almost complete power over the day-to-day operations” in November 2011 after a “protracted fight in which I was complaining about the direction, operation (top-down) and finances of the organization.”

Details followed over the next few days.  Meckler charged that the national had become successful at raising and spending money, but not at supporting the grassroots groups.  He was angry in particular about $250,000 spent to co-sponsor a Republican primary debate, which–in addition to misusing funds, made it appear that TPP was hardly non-partisan or independent.  TPP, he said, “…felt like it had become much more a top down organization.”

I suspect more is on the way.

In the meantime, our first read is that the biggest promoter of the Tea Party as a decentralized grassroots movement has left the organization he started because it had become more focused on party politics and organizational influence–at the expense of the grassroots.

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Do movements own their crazies?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Meredith Lowell, a self-styled animal rights activist, was arrested Tuesday in Cleveland for contracting the murder of someone (almost anyone!) wearing fur.

Ms. Lowell made the initial solicitation on Facebook, offering somewhat less than $1,000 for a murder that would lead to her trial, an opportunity to make a public indictment of the fur industry, and the chance to move out of her family home, where parents and siblings ate meat and wore wool.  Apparently, she thought prison would be more congenial.

The FBI, which has directed some of the “war on terror” at direct action environmentalists and animal rights activists (see here and here), investigated a tip about the Facebook posting, and assigned an agent to follow up.  In a series of email exchanges, the agent negotiated payment for the murder.  Police arrested Lowell and she was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

These events are not good news for animal rights activists.  At ABC News, Alyssa Newcomb reports:

Jennifer Kaden, co-founder of the Cleveland Animal Rights Alliance, said she checked her membership records and found that no one in her organization had ever dealt with Lowell, who she called “misguided” and “dangerous.”

“We’re all about advocating for peace and nonviolence,” she said. “We extend that to humans and animals.”

The energy, passion, and possibility of a vital social movement draws all kinds of people up in its wake, including troubled people who are using the cause to work out other issues.  Ms. Kaden and other animal activists don’t want to be discredited by an individual claiming identification while engaging in heinous acts.  Opponents of animal rights activism, however, have found their new poster child.

The problem isn’t peculiar to animal rights activism.  Tea Partiers saw people bringing guns and racist signs to their rallies.  Occupiers watched a picture of a self-identified Occupier pooping on a police car go viral.  Their opponents saw guns and racism were integral to the Tea Party appeal, and public defecation a clear expression of Occupy values.

And it gets even worse: Anti-abortion activists have been forced to explain how their efforts to preserve life have inspired a few men to bomb clinics or shoot doctors.

Social movements in America have a hard time exercising internal control.  The name and cause aren’t trademarked and solo actors can try to appropriate them–and movement rhetoric–to justify their choices.  Political opponents will hang the radical fringe on movements, and activists face the difficult task of disowning the crazies while promoting the cause.

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Movement influence: it’s not forever

Posted on February 10, 2012 by David S. Meyer

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted to license two new nuclear reactors in Georgia, the first new licenses in more than 30 years.  Activists can’t count on social movement victories to be permanent, and activists that leave the field cede political advantage to their opponents.

The antinuclear movement in the United States, aided by a reactor accident at Three Mile Island, drove up the costs and difficulties of building new reactors so much that new licenses were so unattractive as to become almost unattainable.  (But most of the reactors operating in 1978 continued–and continue–to generate power and waste.)

Meanwhile:

concerns about global warming have undermined some of the opposition to nuclear power (which doesn’t generate greenhouse gases);

fears of rising energy costs have made nuclear power appear more viable economically;

an horrific reactor accident at Fukushima, Japan, has scared publics around the world;

and Germany has committed to end nuclear power within the decade.

It’s not clear how all this added up to licensing new plants in the US–and it’s completely unclear that the plants, estimated to cost the Southern Company another $10 billion–on top of the $4 billion it’s already spent–will actually be built and commence operations.

Much will depend on whether the antinuclear power movement, which has been mostly quiet in America for the past three decades–will re-emerge and mobilize.  The movement of the 1960s was led by local activists staging campaigns against specific plants.  We’ll watch to see who picks up its banner in Georgia.  Will Georgians organize to oppose the plant and the rising energy bills they’ll be saddled with?  Will national groups, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, give a campaign against nuclear power some space on its broad agenda?

The first step in a battle that will surely span many years will be a lawsuit, already promised.  Mass politics and mobilization will follow only when organizers think it necessary–a last resort.

Movement victories are generally partial, often ambiguous, and almost always reversible.

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What courts can/ will do

Posted on February 7, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Today’s news provides more data on the extent and limits of the judiciary as a venue for social movements:

A federal appellate panel (9th district) has upheld District Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s decision to strike down California’s ban on same sex marriage, passed by referendum in 2008 (Question 8).  Implementation of the ruling, which would again allow same sex couples to wed in California, has been suspended, pending certain appeal to the Supreme Court.

Also in California, an animal rights group, PETA, has filed suit seeking the release of orcas held in captivity by Sea World (in San Diego and in Orlando, Florida).  Attorney Jeffrey argued that keeping the whales violated the 13th amendment’s prohibition of slavery.   Federal District Judge Jeffrey Miller was, apparently, unimpressed, and concerned about the precedent of extending Constitutional protections to non-humans.

The text of the 13th amendment, passed after the Civil War, reads:

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

You’ll note that the text of the amendment doesn’t specify citizens–or persons, but the argument requires a very sympathetic and adventurous judge.  If the orcas, forced to perform for paying customers, are found to be slaves, then what of cows herded into slaughterhouses?  or even my cat, kept inside when she’d prefer to go out?

Activists always maintain the hope of finding a friend on the bench who can obviate the political obstacles that all causes face.  As we’ve discussed here, they’re invariably disappointed.  Judges try to rule on the law and the Constitution, not morality or the wisdom of a policy.  Activists are often creative in stretching the language of the text or ignoring precedent to try to argue for what they want.  Even if judges rule as they prefer, they are still dependent upon the cooperation of other branches of government.  (Thus, you can’t count on the courts….)

Marriage equality advocates will celebrate this ruling, even acknowledging its limitations (it does not find a Constitutional right to same sex marriage).  But tomorrow, they’ll be busy preparing for the appeal–and continuing to lobby, demonstrate, organize, and vote for marriage equality across the states, while they counter the hostile rhetoric of presidential candidates taking offense at the ruling.  If all goes well, a long and difficult road lies ahead.

PETA and animal rights advocates, at best, face a less hospitable landscape, although the court case does provide a chance to make their arguments to a broader public.  The legal filing gives media the chance to present an entertaining and dramatic (if Constitutionally, uh, suspect) argument along with a picture of an orca.  It’s a good story.

Both activist groups will ultimately have to depend upon convincing Americans to agree with the merits and justice of their positions.  Recall that in 2008, when 52% of Californians votes to end same sex marriage, 63% of Californians voted to mandate more humane treatment of farm animals.

Of course, whales don’t vote.

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A protest is a threat (the Komen debacle)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by David S. Meyer

It’s never just the demonstration that brings about change.  Rather, it’s the larger actions that demonstrators promise (and authorities fear) that lead to concessions.  Demonstrators threaten to storm the barricades, stop paying taxes, or vote, or contribute money.  Their targets assess how credible those threats are and how damaging such action would be.

The recent rapid reversal of a new funding policy by Susan G. Komen for the Cure demonstrates how this works very clearly.  It also shows the different strategies that opposing social movements can employ to try to get what they want–little bits at a time.

Komen raises and spends about $93 million a year to fight breast cancer.  It runs races, promotes pink, funds researchers and service providers, and maintains a large bureaucracy to keep the machine moving.   (Just over 1/5 of its budget goes to fundraising and administration.) It is explicitly non-political.

Last week, Komen announced a decision made weeks earlier, not to fund organizations that are under investigation.  This excluded 1 of the groups it funded, Planned Parenthood, which received just under $700,000 a year to provide breast examinations and referrals for mammograms.  (Jezebel has covered this flare-up comprehensively.)

Among other things, Planned Parenthood also provides birth control and abortion services.

The investigation rationale was, at best, an obvious bow to political pressure.  Congressman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) launched an investigation to discover whether Planned Parenthood was using federal funds to support abortion services (No public evidence on this).  It’s very easy for any member of Congress to launch an investigation.

Much more likely, however, the investigation rationale was a transparent ruse.  After all, Komen ditched it quickly.  Numerous reports noted that Komen’s new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, had pushed for an end to its association with Planned Parenthood.  Handel, who had served as Secretary of State in Georgia, and run an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for governor, is staunchly anti-abortion.   The decision was in the works months ago.  Last December, when Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush, was interviewing candidates for a high level public relations position for Komen, he made it clear to candidates that Komen would be cutting its connection to Planned Parenthood.

Once the decision was announced, the reaction was intense and viral, aided by social media.  Runners, contributors, and many many others announced that they were done with Komen, tweeting and posting facebook notifications of their decisions.  (Social media allowed all of this to happen very quickly.)

They also started sending checks to Planned Parenthood.  Most visibly, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $250,000 matching grant for new money Planned Parenthood raised to make up the difference.  In short order, Planned Parenthood raised $3 million.  Politicians who supported Planned Parenthood weighed in, publicly pressuring Komen to scrap the new policy.

Komen held the line on its policy, very briefly, shifting rationales and explanations quickly.  In short order, however, Komen’s founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, announced that Planned Parenthood would get the money and would continue to be eligible for grants in the future.

Komen executives realized that their offices, their jobs, their reputation, and their cause were dependent upon public support.  It was all to easy to imagine women foregoing the Race for the Cure and for Planned Parenthood (or someone else!) to start raising its own money to fight breast cancer.  They couldn’t back peddle fast enough.

But it’s not over.  Opponents of abortion are angry that Komen caved to the political and financial muscle of Planned Parenthood supporters.  Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich released statements of disappointment, while grassroots activists announced their own boycott of Komen.  Komen executives will now have to assess how credible those threats are and how damaging those boycotts might be.  It’s awfully hard to be non-political on abortion when people start paying attention.

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Methods and movements: how to study social movements

Posted on February 3, 2012 by David S. Meyer

I was part of an online roundtable of researchers discussing how to study social movements.  It’s at The Society Pages, and includes Jeffrey Alexander (Yale), Neal Caren (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Nathan Clough (University of Minnesota, Duluth), Myra Marx Ferree (University of Chicago), Sarah Gaby (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Fabio Rojas (Indiana University).

Thanks to Sinan Erensu, Kyle Green, and Sarah Lageson for putting it together.

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How the Tea Party produced candidate Romney

Posted on February 2, 2012 by David S. Meyer

This essay is part of a larger dialogue at Mobilizing Ideas, which also includes pieces by

Neal Caren, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tina Fetner, McMaster University
Richard Lloyd and Steven Tepper, Vanderbilt University
Chris Parker, University of Washington
Jenni White, Tea Party activist, R.O.P.E

Protest movements sometimes have perverse effects, hastening outcomes they don’t want. The contest for the Republican presidential nomination has to be scored as a disappointment for the broad Tea Party movement, and perhaps a sign of its dissolution. Social movements capture the imagination of participants and audiences, engaging and enlarging our sense of the possible. But, particularly in liberal systems, movements that succeed in reaching mainstream public discourse are ultimately consumed by it.

The American political system makes lots of space for social and political movements. It’s set up to enable challenges, then to water down, distort, and tear them apart. When Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, we saw just how the system works to dissipate the energy of a social movement, in this case, the Tea Party.

The Tea Party, a powerful movement that captured the imagination, for good and ill, of Americans during the first two years of the Obama presidency, exercised visible influence on political debate, public policy, and politics. It grew and developed in the wake of a Democratic rout in 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency and his party control of both houses of Congress. Conservatives lacked a visible institutional route to influence, and took to the streets in an attempt at redress. An alliance between populist and plutocrat dissatisfaction with President Obama, the Tea Party coalesced just after Obama took office, and focused early on opposition to his effort to reform and extend health insurance in the United States. Proposed health care reform provided a focal point for economic and social conservatives who had been trying, for many years, to advance their vision of limited government, regulation, and taxation.

Beltway groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, funded primarily by large corporate interests, most famously the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, needed Barack Obama as president and the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act to reach a broader audience. Of course, the Tea Partiers at the grassroots had many grievances beyond Obama and health care reform, but the proximate provocation of an ambitious reform that would affect virtually all Americans provided the leading edge and unifying issue for their efforts.

Grassroots mobilization, in conjunction with funding and direction from national groups, and in the context of a severe recession, allowed the Tea Party to shape the public debate in 2009 and 2010. After the Democrats (and only Democrats) passed a health care bill, Tea Partiers shifted their attention to debt and taxes.

Although many Tea Partiers shared socially conservative views, the national leadership of the movement urged them to focus on economic issues to avoid divisive debates. Taking advantage of the relatively frequent legislative elections built into the American system, Tea Partier worked with—and through–the Republican Party. Tea Party energies helped the Republican Party make huge gains in the midterm elections, picking up 63 seats to win control of the House of Representatives. (Ah, but the Tea Partiers also beat several mainstream Republican candidates in primaries, nominating candidates less suited for the general election and undermining Republican chances to win the Senate.)

As the Tea Party entered campaign politics, the dramatic, costumed, confrontational, and Constitution-quoting events of its heyday disappeared, as Tea Partiers watched Republican legislators carry their program—or at least one version of it. The American political system, however, makes it hard to get anything done, and what the House leadership wanted to do, mostly obstruct the President and make strong statements against taxes and borrowing, wasn’t enough for the Tea Party—but far too much for many Americans. Once in office, the Tea Party became a target and provocation for an opposing movement, saddled with the responsibility of governance, but not the capacity to govern. (This is a recurrent American movement story.)

Now, another irony of American politics, Obama’s most likely opponent in the general election signed the legislation on which Obama’s health care reform is based. Mitt Romney, who has campaigned the longest, raised the most money, and led in most polls, is preparing to run a campaign in which he will advocate taking health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans–but not the residents of Massachusetts, whom he’s already taken care of. Tea Partiers, and many Republicans, are understandably uneasy about this prospect.

The potentially viable alternatives to Romney also represent, at best, a partial and distorted vision of the Tea Party’s claims. Indeed, the Republican primary field now offers three distinct personifications of Tea Party politics. Representative Ron Paul has hewed to a libertarian line for decades, and appears as a sincere and consistent advocate of extremely limited government. But a government that doesn’t criminalize drugs or engage in active foreign and military policies is an anathema to most Republican voters. Former Senator Rick Santorum consistently articulates the social and religious conservatism of many Tea Partiers, but not their vision of limited government, nor a focus on the fiscal. His long record offers ample evidence of a willingness to use government to promote and police Christian values. And former Speaker Newt Gingrich, an inconsistent advocate for conservative economic or social policies, has captured only the Tea Party attitude, vigorously expressing a sense of anger and entitlement. Any of these three offers only a partial version of a Tea Party platform, and none is likely to be stronger in a general election than Romney.

But it’s worse than that. The Tea Party captured the imagination of conservative activists around the country, and was an immense aid in firing up Republican voters in 2010. It buoyed up the aspirations of several prospects who proved far from ready for presidential prime time, crowding out more mainstream–and credible–candidates for office. Thus, the Republican field came to include Representative Michele Bachmann, a vigorous campaigner and fundraiser, but a back bencher in the House Republican caucus, and Herman Cain, a radio host who had never won an election. It did not include Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels, who had served as governors of Midwestern states (Minnesota and Indiana). Republicans who were dubious about Governor Romney, including Tea Partiers, flirted with a series of alternatives who, for various reasons, were found wanting: Bachmann, Governor Rick Perry, Cain, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the last of which has turned into an intermittent attraction/repulsion relationship. A longer list of prospects could include flirtations with Sarah Palin and Donald Trump as well. And it may not be over yet. Tea Partiers seeking both a strong advocate and a strong candidate are likely to find neither.

So, the successful mobilization of the Tea Party has produced exactly what most Tea Partiers didn’t want. It’s a common movement story in America.

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