Quote:In New York last week I was struck by the startling shift of mood since my
last visit, during Barack Obama's first year in office. This phenomenon took
varying forms, of course, depending on the political orientation of my
interlocutor, but the underlying theme of despair and disgust was almost
universal. Liberal Democrats (who hugely outnumber most other factions in
that city) were despondent and disappointed with the collapse of Obama's
popularity. A few of them (remarkably few, actually) were ready to blame
this on a "Right-wing conspiracy" of vaguely racist motivation.
But most of them were frankly critical of the strategic mistakes they
believed the White House had made, and the baffling inability of their
President to connect with the people in an engaging way. His shocking lack
of emotional expression during last month's commemoration of 9/11 – a point
of particular significance to New Yorkers – was remarked upon by a number of
people I met.

Quote:My Republican friends, perhaps surprisingly, were not gloating. They were too
furious. But contrary to the superficial British assumption (heavily
promoted by the BBC), they were not devoting their excoriation exclusively
to the Obama Administration – or even to its clique of Congressional
henchmen, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. That they were opposed to the
Big State, European social democratic model of government which Obama had
imported to Washington went almost without saying. But they were at least as
angry with the leadership of their own party for having conceded far too
much of the argument.

And this anger – again, contrary to the general understanding in Britain – is
not new: it goes all the way back to the Bush presidency. It was widely
known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more,
Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood
was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over
government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with
the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central
government.

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the
establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And
this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the
plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are
not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of
the official Opposition as well.

Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which
has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were
plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were
just a new incarnation of the gun-totin', gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom
they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge
political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the
Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic
political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and
fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the
grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican
party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government:
the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which
governs least.

Quote:As some astute commentators have observed, the ascendancy of the Tea Parties
has meant that fiscal conservatism can replace social conservatism as the raison
d'être of the Republican cause. So rather than being a threat to
Republicanism, the election of Tea Party candidates might be its salvation.
It represents a rank-and-file rejection of what many Americans see as a
conspiracy of the governing elite against ordinary working people. All of
which makes clearer the appeal of even the naivety and inexperience of some
of the Tea Party contenders who have challenged incumbent Republican
candidates. If what you are rebelling against is a generation of smug,
out-of-touch professional politicians, then a little dose of amateurishness
or innocence might strike you as positively refreshing. (In a poll last
week, more than 50 per cent of voters said that they would be more willing
this year than usual to vote for someone with little political experience.)

Ayiekie Wrote:Yep, they pretty much were. Also, people have the attention span of goldfish. Most Americans don't even remember anymore that the bailout was a (strongly bipartisan supported) Bush initiative, not the baby of Obama and the Democrats.