The pundits, left, center and right, are still frantically casting about trying to explain the success of the Tea Party movement. Most of them are trying to spin that success as harmful to anyone who would benefit from it. But some break out of the murk and demonization to get closer to the truth.
Peggy Noonan may have come the closest in Why It's Time for the Tea Party:
She finds two central reasons for the movement’s rise which she calls the “yardstick” and the “clock”. On a 36” yardstick, with liberal ideology way over at the 36” mark, political negotiations now start at the 28” mark rather than the central 18” mark.
For conservatives on the ground, it has often felt as if Democrats (and moderate Republicans) were always saying, "We should spend a trillion dollars," and the Republican Party would respond, "No, too costly. How about $700 billion?" Conservatives on the ground are thinking, "How about nothing? How about we don't spend more money but finally start cutting."
What they want is representatives who'll begin the negotiations at 18 inches and tug the final bill toward five inches. And they believe tea party candidates will do that.
As to the “clock”:
The second thing is the clock. Here is a great virtue of the tea party: They know what time it is. It's getting late. If we don't get the size and cost of government in line now, we won't be able to. We're teetering on the brink of some vast, dark new world—states and cities on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government too. The issue isn't "big spending" anymore. It's ruinous spending that they fear will end America as we know it, as they promised it to their children.
So there's a sense that dramatic action is needed, and a sense of profound urgency. Add drama to urgency and you get the victory of a tea party-backed candidate.
Ms. Noonan asks “Will the center join arms and work with the tea party? That’s a great question of 2012.”
I submit that much of the center already has.
From Conservative America Ready to Take Control:
These conservatives are an overwhelming majority of America. In responding to Question D3 of the latest Battleground Poll, which asks respondents to describe themselves ideologically, these are the responses: "very conservative," 22%; "somewhat conservative," 36%; "moderate," 6%; "somewhat liberal," 24%; "very liberal," 8%; and "refused/unknown," 4%. Fifty-eight percent of Americans describe themselves as "conservative," and when those who are "moderate" or "refused/unknown" are removed from the pool, conservatives outnumber liberals by 64% to 36%. Moreover, conservatives are much more likely to describe themselves as "very conservative" than liberals are to describe themselves as "very liberal."
I think we can be reasonably sure that the growth of the conservative ranks didn’t come from the left but from the center. But we also need to be careful of equating a positive response to the term “conservative” with the same level of positivity for the Tea Party movement. Rasmussen in Calling Someone a Tea Party Candidate Has Bigger Impact than Traditional Labels:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds that 70% say their opinion of a candidate would be influenced by the Tea Party label. Sixty-one percent (61%) say the same about calling someone a conservative. Fifty-nine percent (59%) respond to calling a candidate liberal; 57% respond to the progressive label, and just 42% respond to calling a candidate politically moderate.
Democrats react more to the Tea Party label than to any other. Democrats also react to the Tea Party label more strongly than Republicans or unaffiliated voters.
Overall, on a net basis, conservative remains the most positive label, while liberal is the most negative. See toplines for the specifics. Platinum Members get a deeper look at the numbers.
If a candidate is described as a “Tea Party member,” 32% see that label as a positive, while 38% hold the opposite view. That’s a net rating of negative six, making it less positive on balance than calling someone a conservative, moderate or progressive.
Ms. Noonan issues a warning to the Tea Party movement that really hits home. that we need to carry with us:
A movement like this can help a nation by acting as a corrective, or it can descend into a corrosive populism that celebrates unknowingness as authenticity, that confuses showiness with seriousness and vulgarity with true conviction. Parts could become swept by a desire just to tear down, to destroy.
The potential negatives in that paragraph are precisely what the counter Tea Party pundits, from the left, center or right, are using to demonize us now. We know that they are mostly wrong and we need to keep it that way!
And we need to vow that we are a movement that is here to stay, that we put principles over politics, that we are and will continue to be “America’s conscience” for many election cycles to come!
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