As reward for all your hard work, expect to almost immediately suffer a mind-boggling wave of division and rancor, opportunism and betrayal.
You will be opposed by party moderates, while simultaneously hounded by an insufferably never-satisfied hardcore. Vainglorious media-celebrities will pander to your ego and appetites, as (ever more) kooks and crackpots slink into the hot-tub looking for a good time.
Every candidate and campaign from this point forward will be devoted to co-opting you, while special-interest groups brainstorm how to exploit your passion and activist-email lists for their own pet cause. Professional fundraisers have already begun ordering Federal Election Commission donor records, which will soon be fed into a mountain of supercomputers and then parsed to develop direct-mail lists. Nearly a dozen privileged white kids from the suburbs of Virginia will have their Ivy League tuition bills paid-off as a result.
No point whining about it, as none of this is preventable in the slightest. Besides, storming the beaches at Normandy was tough too, right? Take a day or two to savor the weeping and gnashing of teeth of your political enemies, run some errands Friday and Saturday, then wrap-up your weekend with a little church and some football. Come Monday, November 8, you’ve got plenty of work to do.
The most significant fault line I see emerging for the Tea Party movement is the classic “fiscal versus social” conservative split. In the hope of encouraging a united front—both to achieve Tea Party aims in the short-term, as well as successfully defeat Obama in 2012—I’d like to share a few thoughts, for everyone’s consideration.
Without locking-in on any one survey or data-point in particular, what we generally know about the Tea Party movement (both “active members” and “sympathizers/supporters”) is that they are:
- First and foremost conservatives;
- Only secondly (but still overwhelmingly) Republicans or strongly-Republican-leaning Independents;
- Unified in anger and opposition to the reckless fiscal policies and massive expansion of government by the Obama administration and an (incredibly) even-more irresponsible Democratic-controlled Congress.
At the risk of being stripped of both my Professional Political Consultant and Blogging-Pundit credentials—both of which are seemingly premised on an ability to convince others to part with their time and money in exchange for creatively restating the obvious—it seems to me that whatever the Tea Parties do from this point forward, they should largely stick with what has worked thus far.
And that means putting EVERY other social, cultural or ideological issue—from abortion to gay marriage, illegal immigration to eminent domain, the War on Terror to public-education reform—on the back of the bus.
Republicans need not abandon these issues, and conservatives don’t have to compromise their principles, but we all ought to move forward thoughtfully and realistically. Mature minds recognize there is a time and a place for everything. The 2012 election cycle is the time, and the Tea Party movement is the place, for a focus on conservative opposition to Barack Obama’s reckless fiscal policies and massive expansion of government. Everything else should either wait for later, or—if it truly can’t wait—is someone else’s job, not the Tea Party’s.
In an effort to help folks on both sides of the “fiscal vs. social” debate see things with fresh eyes, I’d like to use a tertiary issue, that of support for a strong U.S.-Israel partnership, as an example.
Without detailing every particular, by domestic political standards I am about as hardcore a Zionist as they come. This stance is premised both on my identity as a proud Jew committed to our full-equality among the nations of the world, as well as a solid grasp of America’s best long-term strategic, military and existential interests. In combination, it is fair to say that the United States standing firmly with Israel in response to Arab aggression, Islamist terrorism and a nuclear-armed revolutionary Iran are issues at the core of my political being.
None of which has anything at all to do with the Tea Party—nor should it.
For one thing, some segment of the TP-grassroots no-doubt disagrees with me. A small number may be flat-out anti-Semitic kooks; a larger faction is likely opposed to foreign aid and overseas “entanglements” in principle.
Now as it turns out, there is polling data that indicates the vast majority of Tea Partiers are in fact pro-Israel. This is perfectly natural, given the broader affinities for the Jewish State among the American public in general and the Republicans and conservatives who make up the bulk of TP-members in particular.
But even your average church-going, older, white, suburban pro-Israel Tea Partier is more likely to give $10 dollars, write a letter to the editor and gather on a street corner with a sign to oppose Obamacare thanAhmadinejad.
And that’s OK. We already have groups like AIPAC and CUFI to do that job, and neither of them is expected to organize forums to pressure candidates on the individual healthcare mandate, or lobby elected officials on taxpayer-funding of embryonic stem-cell research. Similarly, it is not the job of the King Street Patriots or Tea Party Express to prevent technology transfers to the Saudis that would erode Israel’s qualitative military edge. Different issues, different purposes, different roles.
Which doesn’t of course mean I’m not concerned about where the leadership (to the extent it ever emerges) and base of the Tea Party movement stands on Middle East issues. I want everyone who wields any degree of power—Republicans and Democrats, businessmen and educators, environmentalists and NASCAR fans and the cast of Jersey Shore and Elvis impersonators—to all share my position on Israel. And I will absolutely and unapologetically fight to promote those Tea Party factions and individuals who also happen to share my views over those that don’t.
But at the end of the day, I don’t expect my “other” issue to be their “primary” one. Social conservatives who want to use the Tea Party movement as a vehicle to advance a values-agenda are asking for exactly that.
I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not far away from the world headquarters of Harley-Davidson. As anyone with two eyes who has been to a mall in recent years can attest, it is now possible to purchase and consume an extraordinary number of products and services with a Harley-Davidson theme, from cake candles and cat toys, to desk-lamps, baby-clothes and cologne.
All of which is fine, unless CEO Keith Wandell ever wakes up some cold December morn thinking about anything other than manufacturing the finest damned motorcycles known to man. Because at its core, Harley Davidson is about making bikes. Lose that focus, and your hog is on the path to slaughter.
Congress-critters didn’t flee town-hall meetings last summer in fear of gay marriage opponents. Rick Santelli didn’t rant on CNBC in opposition to atheistic arrogance in public school science classrooms. Democrats will not receive an epoch-defining beating at the polls today because they pushed and passed an immigration amnesty. And (to indulge an anachronism), the East India Company’s ships were not stormed in 1773 to protest partial-birth abortion.
All worthy causes, better pursued elsewhere, by other means.
The Tea Party should be brewing for a different battle entirely.
David Benzion is a strategic research and communications professional with extensive experience providing polling, focus-group and opposition-research services to Republican candidates in senatorial, congressional, gubernatorial and state-house campaigns, as well as for ballot initiative committees, corporate, trade association and public affairs clients.
As founding editor and publisher of LoneStarTimes.com, for five years Benzion led a group blog whose conservative Texas perspective on politics, pop-culture and current events was cited by the Houston Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Dallas Morning News, Governing Magazine, The Hotline and Associated Press. He is a former executive producer and host with Houston talk-radio station AM 700 KSEV, where he remains a substitute host.
Opinions expressed by Benzion are his alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of his former, current or future employers or clients.