Jonathan Rauch spoke with NPR this morning about who the Tea Party "really is."
NPR: Let's start with an obvious question that I guess doesn't have an easy answer. Who is "the Tea Party"? Is there a short answer?
Jonathan Rauch: No, there's no short answer. That's one reason why this phenomenon is so baffling to journalists like me. We keep looking for the leader of the Tea Party. It's a fantastically decentralized movement. It consists of basically anyone out there who calls themself a Tea Partyer. And it's pretty hard to generalize.
NPR: Do you have any idea how big it is?
JR: Well, they claim, depending on how you read the polls -- you know, 17 million Americans -- but that can be anyone who's ever answered a question saying they're sympathetic to the Tea Party. We know that the largest of the national Tea Party groups -- which is called "the Tea Party patriots" -- has almost three thousand local organizations that are registered on their website. And if you figure that's anywhere from 20 to 100 people per organization, you can do the math. We're talking about, at a minimum, tens of thousands of activists.
NPR: What do you know about "the Tea Party-er"? Who is that person?
JR: "Tea Party-ers" are white, bright and Right on average. The minority presence is relatively small. I don't think that's because they're racist. I don't think they are. I think it's because they're conservative and conservatives tend to attract more white voters than minority voters. They are bright. They are well-educated. Finally, they are -- many of them -- de-branded Republicans. That is to say, they look and talk and sound like Republicans. They often vote like Republicans. But many of them think of themselves as independents. That's one reason they're so unafraid to vote for Republican candidates in primaries who might lose to Democrats. They say it's not about party. And in their minds, it really isn't.
NPR: Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Tea Party is that it seemed to occur suddenly, that it's very modern in that it uses the internet and apps and free conference calling -- as you point out in an article in the National Journal -- to do some very, very up-to-date political organizing.
JR: You know, this movement could not have started as recently as, say, ten years ago. Before social networking. Before free conference calls. I've just finished doing a deep dive for the National Journal on the Tea Party Patriots. They're not the group you hear most about because they're not out there trying to swing elections and dropping money into political races. But in a way they're much larger and much more radical. They're trying to build a decentralized, headless but national organization with no hierarchy at all. And they just do things. It's like a hive or a network. They call it "open source structures." So if you hear people say that Tea Partyers are "troglodytes," think again!
NPR: But ultimately do you think that not having a head means that it will be difficult for them to be of service to their issues?
JR: It poses very big challenges. For instance, who defines you? Tea Partyers don't want anyone else speaking for them. Their view is that every Tea Partyer is his or her own spokesperson.
NPR: Kind of libertarian in that way...
JR: Exactly! They're trying to live by their libertarian ideals. The trouble with that is, what happens when some nut raises some kind of crazy sign or racist sign at a rally and claims to be a Tea Partyer? And there's no one who can speak for a national organization and say, "This person doesn't speak for us. They're excommunicated." Or how do you cut a deal if you're actually trying to influence the passage of legislation to reform things in Washington? You need a seat at the table. You need to make bargains. That's how the system works. With the Tea Party, there's no one to bargain with because there's no one in charge. Tea Partyers will tell you, "Well, we're trying to do something different here. We reject that whole model of the world -- where people do deals in back rooms."
NPR: Can they define what "something different" is?
JR: Yes. That was what turned out to me to be the most interesting and the hardest to get my mind around. The most important thing that they will tell you they're trying to do is a cultural movement, not a political movement. They're trying to reeducate the whole country, change the way Americans think about their relationship to government, move us back to a more self-reliant, independent, sort of watch-dog-against-government mentality. They will tell you if you just try to change an election result, you have to come back every two years and do it again. If you can change the hearts and minds of the people, make them more skeptical of big government, then you do that forever.
NPR: You can kind of see what's happening in two ways. You can say that this is a very energized version of the conservative side of the Republican party. Or you can see that this could be something that could just fracture the Republican party, tear it into fiscal Republicans, social Republicans, and whatever there is left of old mainline Republicans.
JR: It could do both, and indeed it already is doing both! That's the paradox of this movement. The people involved are very fiscally conservative. They are not afraid to challenge moderate Republicans. And they are not afraid, if necessary, to elect Democrats if that's what they have to do to make their point. But remember: Their goal in their mind is not fundamentally about taking power. It's about changing the way Americans think about politics.
NPR: I still am having difficulty with the idea that you could do that without a leader.
JR: Most movements do. Or eventually get one. And indeed when I talked to sociologists about it, they said this is very hard to sustain because you're trying to do two contradictory things at once. On the one hand, you're trying to be radically decentralized and leaderless. On the other hand, you're trying to have a national impact. I talked to one sociologists, David Meyer at UC Irvine, who said in his opinion the Tea Party's influence is peaking right about now, in the current Republican primaries and that one of two things will happen. Either they'll dissolve into a bunch of local groups and disputes -- without much concentration or focus -- or, in five years time they'll be a Washington interest group with a CEO and staff and a press person whom I'll call up to get quotes from... Tea Partyers, when confronted with that, say, "Well, he's a traditionalist. He would say that, wouldn't he!"
