The debt debate: Can the Republican Party sell out the Tea Party?

Posted on July 21, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Political parties have to sell out the movements that support them.  First, they exploit the energy, incorporate new activists and ideas, and then find some watered down way to soften the rough edges.

Parties that can’t tame the movements that enliven them, like the Whigs and abolitionism, factionalize, fall apart, and ultimately disappear.  Parties that can, support reforms, generate resentment from the base, but win elections and incorporate new movements.  Think about the Republicans, beginning with Ronald Reagan, and the Christian Right, to whom he was a bitter disappointment.  Think about the Democrats and the nuclear freeze or civil rights.  The concessions were always far less than what the activist base demanded.  But the parties went on.

Right now, we’re watching the Republican Party in government struggle with defining and coopting the Tea Party–and, at least so far, it’s ugly (as discussed before).  The mainstream Republicans, experienced politicians like Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, share the conventional wisdom among professional economists: failing to raise the debt ceiling, in the best case scenario, means higher interest rates for government securities and for anyone else in the United States who wants to borrow.  And they believe it could be much worse.

This is not an odd or idiosyncratic position, even among conservatives.  Big business, as represented by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, shares this view, and has written to the President and every member of Congress asking that, whatever else the government does, it raises the debt ceiling expeditiously.  From the Washington Post:

“The business community in large numbers is saying to our leaders in Washington, ‘Do your job,’ ” said Business Roundtable President John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan. “Failure to raise the debt ceiling would strike an immediate and serious blow to any economic recovery, and failure to make significant progress on long-term debt reduction will continue the uncertainty which is hampering our investment climate.”

Speaker Boehner has repeated his commitment to responsible governance, and he’s tried to bargain hard with a president who’s quick to make concessions.  But he’s had a hard time managing the debt fundamentalists within his party caucus.   Senator McConnell has given up trying to cut a deal, and has proposed giving the President complete authority, then campaigning against him.

True to its rhetoric, however, the Tea Party, or at least the organized part of it that has access to media coverage, has been distrustful of both big business and establishment politicians.  FreedomWorks, the proto-Tea Party organization that preceded and stoked the movement, insists that the debt ceiling not be raised until Congress effects large budget cuts, enforceable spending caps, and an amendment to the Constitution mandating a balanced budget and making it practically impossible to raise taxes.  (Irony alert: Tea Party placards constantly announce fidelity to the Constitution and original intent, even as they plan to change it.)

Tea Party Patriots co-founder JennyBeth Martin sees even the harsh FreedomWorks position as a sell-out.  She’s warned Republican members of Congress that the grassroots Tea Party will punish any member who votes for any increase in the debt ceiling at all.

So far, the Tea Party threat, embodied by politicians like Michele Bachmann and the large and committed freshman class in the House, has pulled the Republican Party further to the Right than it’s been in its 150 year life.  The question is whether the institutional Republicans or the Tea Party fundamentalists will win this tug of war, or whether the rope connecting them will snap.

Whatever else Speaker Boehner says, he’s professional enough as a politician confronting the debt ceiling to see “218” as the most important number of all those numbers bandied about.  That’s the number of votes he needs to find in order to pass the increase in the debt ceiling.  If he can’t get 218 Republicans (out of 242), he needs to find Democrats, who will pull the eventual deal back to the center.  Whatever politicians say to the cameras these days, behind closed doors they are talking about how (and who) to get to 218.

How this deal works out is supremely important to the Republican coalition.  Since the middle-1970s, the Republicans have competed effectively at the national level by joining populist conservative social voters with big business interests.  President Obama, to the chagrin of his own base, has made it clear that business is safe with him.  The Republican struggle now is to sell the Tea Party out and keep the Tea Partiers in.

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Prisoners continue to fast, apparently

Posted on July 13, 2011 by David S. Meyer

News about the ongoing hunger strike in Pelican Bay’s “supermax” prison is leaking out slowly and unreliably.  (We’ve covered the hunger strike a few days ago, as well as the hunger strike as a tactic more generally.)

While there’s little in the mainstream media about the story, Bay View features an alert from Marilyn McMahon, executive director of California Prison Focus.  She writes that circumstances are urgent, and some prisoners are on the edge of death.  Citing an anonymous medical source, she notes:

“The prisoners are progressing rapidly to the organ damaging consequences of dehydration. They are not drinking water and have decompensated rapidly. A few have tried to sip water but are so sick that they are vomiting it back up. Some are in renal failure and have been unable to make urine for three days. Some are having measured blood sugars in the 30 range, which can be fatal if not treated.”

A few have tried to sip water but are so sick that they are vomiting it back up.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has suggested that the strike is winding down, affecting far fewer than the 6600 inmates across 13 prisons that participated this past weekend.  Because prisoners are refusing medical evaluation, a CDCR spokesperson suggested, they might be surreptitiously drinking water and/or eating items from the prison canteen.

Reporters have been unable to get into the prison, so the information that emerges is coming from relatives of the prisoners, activist groups, and the CDCR.  Some stories report that prison officials have told hunger strikers that the demands have been met, so the strike can end, and that some prisoners are now on intravenous feeding.

The only leverage the prisoners have in getting response will come from those on the outside engaging the political process.  Absent reliable reports about what’s going on inside the prison, this will be tougher to do.

Some of the prisoners have reaffirmed their commitment to fast to death for their demands.  And, of course, fatalities will be much harder to conceal or explain away.

The lack of reliable information on the strike is a big problem for the hunger strikers, whose only influence will come from reaching a broader audience for their claims.  It’s also a big problem for the rest of us, as citizens.

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Who’s to blame for increased California university tuition?

Posted on July 12, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Tuition at the public universities in California, including the University of California, Irvine, which pays my salary, continues to skyrocket, even as operating budgets in the University of California and California State Universities erode.  The president of the University of California, Mark Yudoff, has asked the Board of Regents to approve an increase of nearly 10 percent, the eleventh tuition hike in the last ten years.  (Cal State is considering a tuition hike of more than 12 percent.)  The UC administration has announced that these hikes will cover roughly a quarter of the last round of budget cuts from the state.

Students are, rightly, angry at paying more for less.  The protests about this latest round of budget increases have already begun.  Last week, a group of about 100 protested outside the offices of La Opinion, whose president, Monica Lozano, sits on the Board of Regents.  When the Regents meet, she will hear President Yudoff say something like: these tuition hikes are awful, as are the budget cuts coming with them.  We’ve been raising tuition and making cuts for years now, and we’re also increasing the number of international and out-of-state students, who pay much more.  Now, it’s more important to preserve the quality of the university than to maintain low tuition.  Tuition can be lowered in the future; at least in the land of hypotheticals: all it takes is money.  Restoring quality and reputation will be harder and take longer.

Talk like this is a gross provocation to students, who are working more hours, taking out more loans, and having a harder time getting the courses they need.  That doesn’t mean Yudoff isn’t telling the truth.

The twin mantras of access and excellence that public university administrators chant really operate at cross-purposes.  (We’ve discussed this before.) Great libraries, active and engaged researchers, and accessible and committed teachers cost money.  If the state won’t pay, someone else has to.  If students have to pay the full cost of what they receive, access will certainly be compromised.  (Let me stipulate: if you throw a rock in any direction on my campus–or any other–you’ll hit something someone regards as wasteful spending!)

If the past is a guide, Yudoff and campus administrators will take more flack from students than the state legislators who refused to put a tax extension on the ballot.  In effect, one of the president’s jobs is to absorb the flack from students when someone else hands them an awful deal.

But how to explain the costs of excellence in populist politics?  Days earlier, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece on the “brain drain” that university faculty and administrators fear, focusing on three cancer researchers leaving the University of California, San Diego, for Rice University.  Rice offered the faculty members raises of more than 40 percent (and they’re currently earning $180,000-$330,000!), plus commitments for research funds, lab space, and work loads that would allow them to focus on their research.  They’ll be taking their labs, their post-docs and students, and their millions  of dollars of grants to Texas.

Even as those salaries are a fraction of what a top professional athlete or hedge fund manager earns, they’re much (much!) higher than what most faculty earn, and much (much!) higher than the salaries of most Californians who worry about paying taxes–and tuition to the University of California.  How to justify?

The University of California could hire people to teach their classes at a fraction of the cost.  They could take away tenure, research support, and health benefits, and still find someone to stand in front of the  room and run powerpoint slides.  Would the courses be the same?  Would it be the same university?

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Unemployment politics and the organizational deficit

Posted on July 11, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Slid into the Business section of Sunday’s NY Times, Catherine Rampell notes that the number of unemployed in the United States has climbed over 14 million, but that the unemployed are politically invisible:

In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting.

Nor are they voting — or at least not as much as people with jobs. In 2010, some 46 percent of working Americans who were eligible to vote did so, compared with 35 percent of the unemployed, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. There was a similar turnout gap in the 2008 election.

No wonder policy makers don’t fear unemployed Americans. The jobless are, politically speaking, more or less invisible.

It wasn’t always so. During the Great Depression, riots erupted on the bread lines. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, angry workers descended on Washington by the busload.

And we know it’s worse than these numbers would suggest.  The numbers include some of the young college graduates who can’t find work in their fields, but not those who are marking time in part-time service jobs.  The numbers include the middle-aged workers laid off in the last two years, knowing that they won’t be able to get the kind of salary, benefits, and even security that just disappeared, but not those who declared early retirement to access pensions, hoping, desperately, that something big will change.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill the talks about the budget and the deficit focus on bond holders, not the unemployed and underemployed.  As Rampell suggests, for the politicians this make sense.  Why pay attention to a group that isn’t demanding attention?  Squeaky wheels don’t always get greased, but politicians respond to pressure.

Republican plans for job creation are familiar: reduce taxes so that people with money can invest–in creating jobs; and, in Rep. Ryan’s budget, lay off state workers to drive down salaries–and create jobs.  Although these strategies would be a hard sell to anyone actually looking for work, the unemployed are not an audience that matters politically–at least not yet.  And Democrats haven’t offered much of a response.

So where are the angry crowds demanding work?  Awful conditions don’t, by themselves, organize and mobilize people, formulate political demands, and create politics.  (We’ve talked about this myth of spontaneity before.) Focusing on the character of contemporary unemployment, its demography and psychology, helps explain the organizing challenges (see economist Nancy Folbre’s blog entry at the Times), but not the organizational deficit.

For the unemployed to emerge as a potent political force, even as part of a larger social movement, someone has to invest in organization.  Historically, organized labor has taken up the concerns of the unemployed, but not as much in the United States as elsewhere in the wealthy world, and not so much in recent years.   American unions are now taking another round of terrible attacks that punctuate a fifty year decline in size and political influence, hands full trying to protect teachers and other public employees who are already organized and, at the moment, employed.  They fight layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, and even more significantly, orchestrated–and often popular–campaigns to blame them for America’s ills.

Here’s the thing: without Labor, it’s not clear anyone else will take up the cause.

And it’s not just unemployment.

Across the United States, state budgets are forcing cuts in public school funding, for example, leading to shorter school years with fewer teachers and textbooks.  Teachers unions are engaged on this issue, but students and parents….not so much.

Until something better comes along, we’re dependent upon unions to lead the campaigns for employment and public services generally.  No many how op-eds you lay end to end, nothing happens until we see political mobilization.

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Prisoners protest by fasting

Posted on July 8, 2011 by David S. Meyer

What are we to make of the hunger strikes spreading through California’s prison population?  Starting in Pelican Bay, a “supermax” prison for inmates convicted of the worst of crimes, it has reportedly spread to thirteen prisons; at least 6,600 prisoners have refused meals.

People protest, in general, when they believe it’s both necessary and potentially effective in helping them get what they want.   In choosing to protest, and in choosing how to protest, they make decisions about what’s possible, and the risks that they are willing to engage.

Risks and resources vary depending upon who you are and who you face; it’s hard to think of many worse-positioned for effective collective action than prisoners.

The inmates in Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) are confined to their cells for up to 23 hours a day, some for more than 20 years.  There are currently just over 1,100 inmates in the unit, almost all of them there for indefinite terms.  One way out, apparently, is to renounce gang membership and implicate others.  (See Emily Hartley’s report at California Watch.)

Inmates, convicted of heinous crimes, are hardly a group that inspires broad public sympathy.  But prisoners in California suffer from thirty years of populist criminal justice policies.  California has unusually long sentences, buttressed by a “three strikes policy,” the highest recidivism rate in the country, and insufficient funding to pay for what Federal courts consider basic humane treatment.  California politicians, however, have learned that harsh sentencing without adequate budgets, as long as the corrections officers are well-paid, is an easy way to garner support.   Opposing the sentences, the prison guards, or calling for taxes to fund mass incarceration, in contrast, are sure political losers.  Several rounds of court orders from federal judges have generated little in the way of reform.  In May, the US Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its prison population by 30,000.  Resistance, even to the Supreme Court, and general foot-dragging is the easy political strategy; you don’t win elections by releasing prisoners.

But what can the prisoners do?  They certainly can’t march and rally, produce television ads, or make large contributions to electoral campaigns.  They can stop cooperating, at least in ways that don’t generate even harsher treatment.

Demonstration outside state office building in San Francisco

Just how the inmates were able to organize a collective refusal remains a question.  It’s very clear that organized groups outside prison have been critical in passing information, both between the prisoners, as well as information about the strike to a larger public.  This has been critical, as information about prisoners’ actions has been tough to come by.  Initially, officials at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had reported that fewer than two dozen inmates were involved in the strike.

California Prison Focus has publicized both the strike and the inmates’ five core demands:

1. Eliminate group punishments.  Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race….

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners… can escape these tortuous conditions only if they “debrief,” that is, provide information on gang activity. Debriefing produces false information (wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, in an endless cycle) and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement...

4. Provide adequate food.  Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations….

5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.  The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities…”  Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves.  Examples of privileges the prisoners want are: one phone call per week, and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps…

The CDCR has both denied the charges and defended its policies.

Most of the thousands of inmates have fasted for a few days or a few meals, but some of the Pelican Bay inmates have announced that they are willing to starve themselves to death.  The CDCR can forcefeed inmates incapacitated enough that they can’t refuse treatment.

The strike has succeeded in getting the prisons in the news, and putting the inmates’ concerns on the same crowded political agenda that includes fee hikes at the University of California, the closure of state parks, and significant cuts to California public schools–and much else.  What happens next is largely about how involved people outside the prisons get.

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The end of nuclear power in Germany

Posted on July 6, 2011 by David S. Meyer

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government announced late last month that it would phase out nuclear power by the end of 2021.  The last few months had seen several shifts in policy, as well as a great deal of public outcry.

The Social Democratic/Green coalition government that Merkel’s conservative followed, had announced a similar timetable for the end of nuclear power, but last fall Merkel put that decision on hold.  After the tragic Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, protest against nuclear power revived all over Europe.

Merkel’s government responded to the protests, the accident, the increased costs and political difficulties of continuing nuclear power, and a broad public concern with nuclear safety.

Although German protesters against nuclear power surely wanted more than a decade-long phase out, this is a clear victory for the movement against nuclear power.  To understand how, however, we need to go back much further than the last round of protest or the Fukushima disaster–or even the last government.

The movement against nuclear power in Germany dates back, at least, to the fledgling movement’s effort to occupy a site proposed for a reactor at Wyhl.  That reactor was never built,  and activist success inspired the antinuclear power movement across Germany–and in the United States.  Training for antinuclear actions at Seabrook, New Hampshire, I learned about the campaign in Wyhl.  (Oddly, however, in the early 1980s when I stayed at a protest camp outside a missile base in Germany, activists told me they knew about Seabrook–but not so much about Wyhl.)

In Germany and in the United States, perversely aided by reactor accidents at Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) and Chernobyl, activists were able to slow the growth of nuclear power.  It’s not that nuclear power was ever banned, but protests led to increased government regulation (to ensure safety) and increased costs.

By the 1980s, campaigns against nuclear power had shifted to campaigns against nuclear weaponry.  In Germany, local activists developed into a national party, the Greens, explicitly concerned with the environment and peace.  The establishment of the Greens as a minor party made it possible for the Social Democrats to govern with a coalition that extended left, rather than right, and to announce a phase out years ago.

Over time, antinuclear activists had worked successfully to change public opinion about nuclear weapons, to encourage the development of alternative energy, and to build political institutions that could mobilize around new political opportunities.  Their efforts slowed the development of nuclear power.  When Chancellor Merkel approaches the phase out of nuclear power in Germany, she must look to replace roughly 25 percent of Germany’s electric power.  That’s a little bigger share of the electricity grid than in the United States, and a little less than in Japan.  It’s much much less than in France, where nuclear power generates roughly 70 percent of the electricity.

By fighting a war of position, over a very long time, the antinuclear movement confined nuclear power to a slice of the electricity grid that the government could ultimately replace.  Each small, often invisible, victory on the margins added up to a larger whole that made a bigger victory possible, dependent upon all kinds of awful contingencies.

It’s hard to think that the activists at Wyhl, offered the promise of shutting down all nuclear power in Germany nearly fifty years later,  in the wake of a terrible nuclear accident elsewhere, would have seen such an outcome as a victory.  But it is.

That’s how movements work.

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Breaking up the Tea Party: Raising the debt ceiling.

Posted on July 5, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The unfolding debt ceiling standoff is exacerbating divisions within the Tea Party movement that have been visible from the outset.  (Confession: I started writing about this end of the Tea Party on election day, 2010.)

The United States has to raise the debt limit by the beginning of August or risk: defaulting on its debts and collapsing this economy and others (worst case, I think) and scaring creditors and increasing the interest it has to pay (likely best case).  Every mainstream politician knows that this increase has to happen, but most would like someone else to take responsibility for doing it.  The preferred alternative is to vote against raising the debt ceiling, knowing that it is going to pass anyway.

But with a Republican House wagged by a freshman Tea Party tail, it won’t be easy, quick, or pretty.

Speaker Boehner

It’s a great situation for negotiating with President Obama, who has consistently demonstrated the willingness to try to find the center no matter how far to the extreme his opponents stake out their opening position; he generally projects the willingness to give away the store, in this case, severe and long term budget cuts, along with more tax breaks.

This, however, is not enough for those Tea Partiers at the grassroots, who oppose any more borrowing or any more taxation.  A collapse or crash of any sort would, paradoxically, vindicate their certainty on this matter.  The last thing they want is a deal.

But the large business interests who bankrolled the Tea Party at the outset have a stake in keeping the government functioning and maintaining existing  credit arrangements.  They want to extract all they can from President Obama and MAKE A DEAL.

At The Hill, Erik Wasson, provides a scorecard for both sides.  The absolutists who oppose any new debt are represented by the Tea Party Patriots, the national group with the strongest grassroots orientation, and the weakest financial infrastructure.  Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, the established groups underneath the Tea Party, and Tea Party Express, the electoral group run by consultants, envision some kind of deal raising the debt ceiling, cuts in spending, and ultimately a budget cap; in Capitol Hill shorthand, this is “Cut, Cap, and Balance.”

Right now, the absolutists give the Congressional insiders a negotiating advantage.  They can say, we’d like to take this deal, but we’ll get killed by the base.  Can’t you do more, Mr. President, to cut this budget?  But they are unlikely to deliver near enough to satisfy that base once they’ve generated enough votes to raise the debt ceiling.

Some Tea Party purists will gulp and try to get more from their Republican allies next time.  Some will be so disgusted that they’ll go home, angry and frustrated by the people they’ve worked so hard to empower.  And some will get angry and active within the Republican  Party, trying to punish deal-makers of all sorts and enforce a vigorous commitment on the elected officials who  purport to represent them.

The relative share of each of these factions will determine not only the future of the Tea Party, but also the longer term prospects of the Republican Party.

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Motorcycle helmets, protest, and irony

Posted on July 4, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Philip Contos drove a 1983 Harley-Davidson with a group of bikers protesting mandatory helmet laws in New York.  Living the world they wanted to see, the protesters weren’t wearing helmets.  Contos died when he lost control of his bike and was thrown over the handlebars.  New York State troopers say that a helmet would have saved his life.

It’s ironic, and also sad.  Sometimes protesters take to the streets knowing that they risk their safety and well-being, but it’s hard to think that Contos imagined he was risking his life by engaging in a choreographed protest ride.

And it’s really not the point that a helmet would have saved his life.

Opponents of mandatory helmet laws don’t argue that helmets can’t save lives.  Rather, they claim that helmets also carry risks.  More significantly, they say, the rider should decide on the risks and precautions he wants to take.  They say that drivers of cars concerned about their liability insurance–or anyone concerned about health care costs and others’ safety–should drive more carefully.

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The Tea Party and the Bachmann challenge

Posted on June 30, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Representative Michele Bachmann (Minnesota) embraced the Tea Party enthusiastically as it first arrived, seeing it as the expression of the conservative populist sentiments she means to embody.  After the Republican victories of 2010, she started the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and has been remarkably adept at cultivating media attention and raising money.  She’s an asset to the movement, energetic, telegenic, disciplined and focused.

Rep. Bachmann’s early success in campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination (campaign site) presents the movement with the dream/nightmare scenario that exemplifies–and extends–the purity/pragmatism dilemma inherent in electoral politics.  Bachmann chose the Tea Party, early and without ambivalence, but her candidacy leaves the movement with the nagging question of whether to choose her back.  What she brings to the table–and what she doesn’t bring–will define the movement in the next year, unless activists work very hard to stop it from happening.

While Rep. Bachmann is articulate and charming, and much better on the stump and in crowds than Sarah Palin, her profile does not demonstrate anything in the way of legislative accomplishments or mastery of inside politics.  Indeed, she has focused her efforts in Congress on the outside, refusing to cut deals of any kind, voting no on budget matters repeatedly, allowing her colleagues the responsibility of making something happen.  At the same time, she’s got a nose for the camera and the quick quote, articulating strong stands passionately and effectively.

Despite her extraordinary success at fundraising, her Republican colleagues have kept her out of any institutional position of power.  (In this regard, she is similar to the recently departed Democratic congressman, Anthony Weiner [New York].)  And, while she has generated early support at the grassroots, no national Republicans have been rushing to sign onto her campaign.  When those who should know your work best are reluctant to support you, it’s a sign that there may be trouble in the profile somewhere.  [Note, for example, that none of John Edwards’s Senate colleagues endorsed his presidential run.  Whether or not they knew of troubles in his personal life, it’s worth observing that they saw nothing in his Senate term that merited support.]

Elections turn movement causes into candidates, and Rep. Bachmann’s candidacy may have as many deficits and mistakes as other candidates for office.  More will certainly come out about her light legislative experience, and her family’s contracts with government agencies for farms and foster children.  Another potential problem is her repeated flubs about historical detail, which are amusing, but probably not fatal.  (There were books about Ronald Reagan’s misstatements.)  This all can lead to a distraction from Tea Party issues.

And those issues are likely even more important than the personal background of the candidate.  On the issues, Rep. Bachmann is a Tea Party fiscal stalwart, railing against all sorts of government spending and the deficit, and proposing the elimination of much of the government.  Rep. Bachmann is a committed populist Christian conservative, comfortable in talking about God and quoting scripture.  Her public career, even before elected office, offers ample evidence of her evangelical drive.  She cut her political teeth as a sidewalk counselor against abortion in the 1970s, and left the board of a charter school she helped start when parents complained about the promotion of Christianity in the curriculum.  Today, evangelical candidates demonstrate their props by fighting hard against abortion and same sex marriage.  Bachmann’s record is strong and solid; she fights hard against both.  And she adds a bonus: Bachmann claims to be an agnostic on evolution, and supports teaching intelligent design (read: creationism) in the public schools.

There are, to be sure, many Tea Partiers at the grassroots who share these positions.  But the big money organizations animating the movement do not.  And even at the grassroots, there is a large libertarian strain in the movement.  Folding the movement into the Bachmann campaign risks losing those libertarian supporters, while branding the Tea Party as a fundamentalist Christian movement.

Like most social movements, the Tea Party has been a coalition comprised of different interests and opinions that agree on a few key principles.  Filling out the movement with a candidate threatens that broad tent–and the movement’s future.

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The Tea Party’s electoral dilemma

Posted on June 29, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Our Constitution presents a recurring dilemma for social movements: routine elections.  Right after the Republicans won massive gains in the 2010 elections–and the Tea Party claimed a great deal of credit for those victories–conservative activists shifted their attention to the 2012 elections.

For the Tea Party, this means working to influence the selection of (mostly) Republican candidates for office, turning away from demonstrations and house meetings to the normal stuff of electoral politics: raising money, organizing candidate forums, contributing money, and turning out voters.

At Roll Call, Janie Lorber reports on the shift in strategies within FreedomWorks, one of the key organizations underneath the Tea Party movement:

FreedomWorks, a nearly 20-year-old grass-roots advocacy organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), will take on a deeper and more sophisticated role in the 2012 elections than ever before. The organization has its eyes on 15 Senate seats, including Utah, and will target both Democrats and Republicans. The group aims to raise $10 million through a new super political action committee called FreedomWorks for America…

“We’re not a protest movement anymore,” said Matt Kibbe, the group’s president. “It is a protest movement morphed into a get-out-the-vote movement. We are here to think nationally but act locally.”

On one level, this makes sense.  Elected officials make policy.  Putting politicians who agree with you in office is the most direct way to get what you want from government.  On the other hand, this means ceding both the drama and moral clarity of movement activism for the trade-offs inherent in electoral politics.

So, Lorber reports on FreedomWorks activists attacking the Republican Party’s Senatorial Committee, warning it not to support Utah Senator Orrin Hatch’s re-election campaign.  Senator Hatch has a long career in office, and in any other environment he would be seen as a strict conservative.  But Hatch is also a professional legislator, who has cut deals with Democrats to govern; for FreedomWorks, Hatch’s recent sins include supporting the financial bailout under President George W. Bush, and previously voting to raise the debt ceiling to keep government operating.

In any other world outside of Utah’s Republican primary, Tea Partiers would find more important targets than an experienced and very conservative Republican senator.  And in Utah, it may all be fine, for it’s unlikely that any Democrat could beat any US Senate candidate with an “R” after his name.

But Republican regulars are well aware that Tea Party activists were critical in getting Republican Senate nominations for strong advocates (and weak candidates) who cost the party several seats.  Read: Joe Miller (Alaska), Sharron Angle (Nevada), Ken Buck (Colorado), and Christine O’Donnell (Delaware).  (The purity versus pragmatism dilemma discussed here.)

The 20-30 percent of the populace who claim support for the Tea Party, mobilized and active, are a critical resource for conservatives.  Using movement strategies, including protest, they can command political attention and advance ideas.

But they can’t win general elections without appealing to the center of the political spectrum.  They can, however, be extremely influential in Republican primaries, including the long slog toward the Republican presidential nomination.  They may knock off some likely winners to nominate stronger Tea Party advocates.  They are quite likely to pull regular Republicans further to the right in seeking primary support.

All of this may be very good news for Democrats–and bad news for the Tea Party’s continued influence.

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