What about money? Readers may wonder if local groups were seeded with generous grants from outside funders. Perhaps that has happened in some instances; many local Tea Party websites have "Donation" b.u.t.tons and appeal for sympathetic people to pitch in. But the local groups we visited were not opulent affairs, and members were doing a lot to raise funds of their own. Members set up tables to sell costume jewelry, sweatshirts, DVDs, and books, for which they may get a bit of a take after paying the vendors. Just as in a church congregation, local Tea Parties take collections at the meeting to pay for minor expenses. A volunteer group of ladies usually sets up a refreshments counter-often with their own homemade baked goods and a donation box on the table. Meeting places are usually community halls or public libraries, or else gathering s.p.a.ces connected to churches where one or more of the Tea Partiers is a member. As we noted in both Virginia and Arizona, Tea Parties that regularly meet in restaurants may use a separate room that the proprietor makes available on the understanding that many attendees will purchase meals and drinks.
To transport Tea Party people to regional or DC rallies, or to offer training to local organizers, well-funded outside groups such as Americans for Prosperity often step in. But local Tea Parties may also organize carpools or collect donations to charter their own buses or bring in a top-quality speaker. Meeting costs are usually covered by modest group efforts. And individual members often pay their own way to drive to lobbying days, protests, and meetings of governing bodies they are monitoring. The Washington Post survey of local Tea Parties found that most groups had only small treasuries on hand. This fits with what things looked like on the ground in the groups we visited in New England, Virginia, and Arizona.
Notably, some local Tea Parties have evolved toward establishing a regular system of membership dues, precisely in order to ensure predictable, if modest, resources under direct local control. Tea Parties in Virginia, including the Charlottesville group, inst.i.tuted dues during 2011. This is a significant step toward a voluntary mode of membership-based financing that was typical in cla.s.sic civic America before the era of grants from national foundations and wealthy donors. Today, civic organizers often suppose that it is "easier" on members if funding comes from outside sources. But, actually, citizen control of civic and political groups becomes stronger when members themselves finance their group"s core functions-and that kind of financing is most effective when it comes through regular dues rather than occasional appeals. Carole Thorpe in Charlottesville realized the advantages that dues would bring, and made exactly this kind of case to her fellow Tea Partiers.
Are Tea Partiers Organizing States, Too?
In cla.s.sic U.S. civic life, between early national times and the middle of the twentieth century, local chapters in voluntary a.s.sociations were usually parts of state-level federations-and national federations, too-in which elected leaders ran conventions and orchestrated shared projects and deliberations. The American Legion, for example, once had thousands of local posts, each of which regularly sent leaders and delegates to state and national conventions; and the same was true of dozens of other political, civic, religious, fraternal, veterans", and women"s voluntary membership federations that flourished in America through the mid-twentieth century. In fact, the normal pattern of growth for voluntarily organized federations in the United States involved the very early spread of federations across dozens of states. State-level organizations tended to be founded as soon as there were six to ten local lodges or clubs or posts in a given state and, once inst.i.tuted, the state federation facilitated the further establishment of many more local membership units.23 Local lodges or clubs or posts flourished within the framework of representatively governed state organizations, themselves linked to national organizations with elected volunteer leaders. State and national organizations received a small fraction of the dues regularly collected from local members. That was the formula for successful voluntary a.s.sociations through most of American history.
Overall, the Tea Party does not manifest this cla.s.sic pattern of federated activity, in which local groups elect higher-level leaders. As we are about to see, national organizers involved in the Tea Party are not elected or accountable; these groups are managed and funded from above. But in some states, local Tea Parties have found ways to link themselves together in coordinating arrangements. And in Virginia, the complexity of organization took a significant upward step in September 2009, when the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation was founded. Along with a few collaborators, Jamie Radtke, a Richmond area activist, searched local newspapers across the state to ferret out the leaders of the roughly thirty local Tea Parties that existed at the time.24 Each local group was invited to send delegates to the gathering at which the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation was founded. State-level officers were elected and rules put in place to further a modic.u.m of representative governance.
The Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation orchestrates conference calls, now held every Tuesday night, to allow local Tea Party leaders to share ideas. It runs "lobbying days" in Richmond, convenes quarterly summits of local leaders, and maintains a professionally designed website.25 The Virginia Federation even held its own convention in the fall of 2010. Sponsored by some big names in conservative politics, including the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and several Libertarian groups, the Federation convention brought thousands of Tea Partiers to the state capitol for training and seminars, and also managed to draw big-name speakers, including political a.n.a.lyst d.i.c.k Morris, Representative Ron Paul, former Senator Rick Santorum, and even former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs.26 When Virginia Tea Party Chairwoman Jamie Radtke decided to run for the GOP Senate nomination in Virginia, she stepped down as Federation Chair, and Mark Lloyd of Lynchburg was elected for 2011.27 At the start of his term, about forty local Tea Parties were formally part of the Federation. In its maturity, the Virginia Federation is experiencing some internal tensions, including disenchantment in some local groups as state leaders move toward endorsing GOP candidates and speaking for all Virginia Tea Parties. Local leaders bristle at any loss of control. Nevertheless, Virginia stands out in the Tea Party for its relatively well-articulated local and state organization generated primarily by Virginians themselves.
Tea Partiers in other states may be trying to learn from and imitate the Virginia example. We have noted increasing state coordination starting to take shape elsewhere. The Michigan Tea Party Alliance, for instance, has a dues structure and explicit rules for member and affiliated local Tea Parties.28 Encouraged by Tea Party Patriots, a regional alliance seems to be taking shape in northern California.29 State-level organizers in Minnesota are encouraging coordinated efforts including lobbying the legislature. In most states, gra.s.sroots organization remains largely local or loosely coordinated across metropolitan areas. In Arizona, a dozen or so local Tea Parties cooperate through the citywide Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots, which acts as an information broker, sending out daily alerts about events around the sprawling city. Metropolitan coordination of this sort occurs in many states, but it is not the equivalent of a true state federation with elected leaders.
Gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers see both advantages and disadvantages from organization above the local level. On the positive side, we were told that joining the Virginia Federation was a source of pride and power for the Peninsula Patriots. Especially in smaller and rural places, one Tea Party member told us, involvement in the Federation helps people know they are part of "something bigger than your local community." But if many local Tea Partiers enjoy taking part in conference calls and conventions along with Patriots from other groups, others are wary. Local leaders may resent outside direction, or fret if higher-level leaders try to use their Tea Party"s name for endeavors not approved by the flock. One Virginia leader told us that his group was contemplating withdrawal from the state federation to conserve time and protect local autonomy. And we heard hints of wariness elsewhere, too. Speaking about the array of local, citywide, and state Tea Party ent.i.ties in Arizona, Larry Fisher expressed ambivalence: "We"re still not sure if that makes sense ... I"m not sure that a gra.s.sroots organization needs that much organization."
Even when a.s.sociation-builders in the Tea Party operate authentically from within their states, they face an uphill climb to build organizational layers above localities. Local Tea Parties were mostly well-entrenched before state-level organizers came along. Like the New Leftists of the 1960s, moreover, Tea Party partic.i.p.ants are intensely suspicious of higher authority. They are quick to notice if other Tea Partiers seem to be using gra.s.sroots energy for their own aggrandizement or enrichment-not just at the national level, but in their own state or region. Anxious to guard local autonomy, Tea Party people can be influenced in many ways, as we are about to see, but they cannot easily be corralled into higher-level formal arrangements.
ROVING BILLIONAIRES AND NATIONAL IMPRESARIOS.
The dramatic appearance and sudden spread of the Tea Party did more than energize local conservatives; it also lifted the spirits of national elites and organizations at the rightward edges of the GOP. New effervescence at the gra.s.s roots was electrifying for conservative big-money funders, political consultants, and organizations advocating free-market policy ideas.
Fresh opportunities suddenly beckoned. Organizations that lacked much of a presence in states and localities could reach out to Tea Partiers across the country, offer them support, and build contact lists for future efforts. Political action committees could use the Tea Party label to attract cash infusions and support favored GOP candidates. Advocacy organizations pushing ultra-free-market nostrums could use tableaus of gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers to give the impression that their agendas enjoy ma.s.s support. Ultra-conservatives became more optimistic about attacking the Obama presidency and reshaping the GOP.
A scramble for the head and heart of the Republican Party is an important part of the story for national conservative organizations competing to stoke and use Tea Party activism. From February 2009 on, right-wing organizations and elites scrambled to orchestrate activism where possible, and also tried to leverage the loyalties, votes, and checkbooks of Tea Partiers and their sympathizers. But that was not all. Ultra-conservative elites also wanted to prod and redirect the Republican Party.
Not Your Father"s Conservatives.
Scholars such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson-authors of the astute books Off Center and Winner-Take-All-Politics-have made a powerful case that both major U.S. political parties, and especially the Republican Party, cater to corporate pressures and enact policies that increase inequalities of income and wealth.30 In the pivotal decade of the 1970s, U.S. business interests created powerful new alliances and a.s.sociations and learned to cooperate across industries to channel money and ideas in politics- both at election time and during months of governmental decision-making between elections. Over the past few decades, attentive and well-resourced business lobbying organizations gained enormous influence over what issues came up for debate, and they were able to block or insert critical provisions in legislation making its way through Congress and in rules taking shape within administrative agencies. In the face of this powerful lobbying force, GOP officeholders and candidates have increasingly refused to consider raising taxes, even in the sort of budgetary circ.u.mstances that prompted President Ronald Reagan to accept tax increases along with spending cuts to move toward budgetary balance.
Are today"s right-wing organizations partic.i.p.ating in the Tea Party the same as those that have been central to the GOP as it has drifted ever right-ward in recent decades? In many cases, yes-which may explain why liberal muckrakers tend simply to label proTea Party elites "pro-business," and leave it at that. But this characterization may not be precise enough to get at the particular sorts of wealthy kingmakers and ultra-right-wing organizations involved in the Tea Party phenomenon. They are more extreme, compared to those who counted as "mainstream" in pro-business GOP circles just a few years ago.
Both recent GOP presidents named George Bush, father and son, certainly privileged organized business interests. The same is true of Mitch McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, and John Boehner of Ohio, who served as House Minority leader before he became the GOP Speaker of the House in January 2011. Hardly insurgents, McConnell and Boehner are business-oriented good-old-boys, dull "establishment" Republicans in every way. In policy terms, they are very conservative, as were both Bushes and the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, John McCain. All of these post-1990 establishment Republicans want to gut business regulations and steadily lower taxes on corporations and high-income Americans. But at the same time, these very conservative, business-friendly Republicans believe in some level of responsible government in the United States. They have been wary about seeking the elimination of major ent.i.tlement programs such as Medicare or Social Security, or huge reductions in residual protections for the poor. Prior to 2011, they repeatedly supported raising the federal debt ceiling to allow the U.S. government to meet fiscal obligations. Until recently-indeed as recently as the McCain campaign in 2008-leading GOPers also espoused some interest in cap-and-trade legislation to deal with environmental threats in a market-based way; argued for health care regulations and subsidies that might extend coverage to some of the uninsured; and supported immigration reforms amounting to more than border fortifications and deportations. Establishment Republicans also believed in striking compromises to get legislation pa.s.sed, and the pragmatic GOP strategists who ran their election campaigns were willing to strike an appearance of moderation. Many organized business lobbies also play complex games, supporting both Republicans and pro-corporate Democrats, and pushing for resolution of knotty issues to keep government and the economy going.
But the GOP establishment of a few years ago now looks hopelessly pa.s.se, lapped by hard-liners further to the nether-right. All along, there have been highly ideological right-wing billionaires who just do not see things the same way as regular establishment Republicans. These hard-liners are the ones seizing the Tea Party moment, pushing aside and cowing the GOP insiders. Here the context is important: wealth and income have become so amazingly unequal in the United States that a few hundred billionaire families have the means to push their own worldview in civic and political affairs.31 The top 1% of Americans own more than a third of America"s wealth, a percentage that has increased steadily since the 1970s and appears to have grown even despite the 2008 financial crisis.32 That wealth has accrued disproportionately to the very richest of those very rich people. Especially when it comes to setting agendas for public discussion and policy debates-encouraging entire convoys of organizations or officeholders to move in one direction or another-the super-duper wealthy in America today can make quite a difference.
At the very highest levels of wealth and disposable income, resources are so stupendous that the personal outlooks, even quirks, of the super-rich matter. Billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates are one example. Their charitable organization has done tremendous good in, for instance, combating AIDS. But the effect of their immense wealth has been to redirect vast swathes of public health policy and educational reform efforts, sometimes with unintended consequences.33 No one elected them; they are not democratically accountable. But the Gates family is not alone in its outsize influence on policy. On the far right of the ideological and policy spectrum lurk politically active super-rich families and a.s.sociated inst.i.tutions named Coors, Scaife, Olin and, above all, Koch.34 With wealth ama.s.sed primarily in the petrochemical industry, the brothers Koch, David and Charles, add up to one of the richest multi-billionaire families in America, indeed in the world.35 They also happen to be the sons of Fred Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society, "known for its highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover"-the same sort of views the Koch sons are pushing today.36 The Koch brothers are very active in politics as well as philanthropy, willing to throw their money around to create and support policy think tanks, foundations, and university programs; to fight political enemies in the media; to support ma.s.sive and sustained lobbying efforts; and to further the careers of the most extreme right-wingers that can win elections.37 As for why they are involved in politics, the Koch brothers do not so much believe in limited government as in almost no government at all: vanishing taxes on the very rich; privatization of Social Security and Medicare; defunding of all but the most residual social programs; and evisceration of regulation of industrial firms, especially in the sectors where they make their fortune.38 In the preTea Party era, the Koch brothers were not as central as they wanted to be in GOP decision-making. The policy organizations they support-such as the ultra-libertarian Cato Inst.i.tute and the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity-did not have, in their view, sufficient sway in shaping public debates and legislation.
After the 2008 election, the Koch brothers and their organizational allies were determined to do all they could to limit, humiliate, and defeat Barack Obama and other Democrats in the U.S. Congress and the states, majority democracy be d.a.m.ned. Even after President Obama ran the successful operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, David Koch was quoted belittling the president and renewing the outlandish claim that Obama is a "socialist."39 Blocking Obama"s legislative agenda and setting up his defeat in 2012 has clearly been goal number one for the Koch coterie.40 But the Koch brothers and their allies also want to remake the GOP, ensuring that the Republican Party does not tack back toward the middle in rhetoric or policy-making. The Koch brothers are fighting not only against Democrats, but against other GOP powerbrokers like Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, who have their own fundraising organizations to promote their preferred brand of Republicanism. As a Politico article put it, Charles and David Koch aim to "reorient the conservative political apparatus around free-market, small government principles and candidates, and away from the electability-over-principles approach they see Rove and Gillespie as embodying."41 The Tea Party eruption in early 2009 was just what the doctor ordered for far-right ideological billionaires like the Kochs, and others of their ideological ilk roving just beyond the edge of the GOP establishment. Suddenly, prospects were better for ultra-free-market funders and affiliated idea-pushers to try to link up with gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers-and in due course to speak in their name. In fact, as we are about to see, some of the key national organizations that leapt into the fray very early, and have stayed the course most effectively, have direct or indirect ties to the Koch brothers. But not only to them, because the Kochs are indicative of a larger coterie of wealthy actors trying for some time to tug the GOP ever further toward the right.
FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity Jump into the Fray.
Just a day after the Santelli rant, the national advocacy organization Freedom-Works dispatched staffers and posted website tips on organizing and locating Tea Party rallies. Soon the organization"s President Matt Kibbe and its Chairman d.i.c.k Armey teamed up to write a book they dubbed a "manifesto" for the Tea Party movement.42 Clearly FreedomWorks was delighted when Tea Party protests started, and did all it could to help conservatives connect with them. But FreedomWorks was hardly some brand-new insurgent ent.i.ty. Indeed, the group had been promoting the "Tea Party" idea for years.
The DC-headquartered organization by the name FreedomWorks commenced in 2004 as a professionally staffed advocacy organization devoted to training citizens and politicians at both the state and national levels on behalf of an agenda that includes reducing taxes and removing regulations on business, privatizing Social Security and reducing social-welfare programs, and furthering tort reform and school vouchers. These are key anti-government goals on the ideological right. The organization"s roots went back even further than 2004-to the Koch-supported and directed think tank, Citizens for a Sound Economy, which operated from 1977 until a breakup in 2003. That breakup gave rise, in turn, to both FreedomWorks and another policy-advocacy group called Americans for Prosperity. During its lifetime, the mother ship Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) received at least $13 million in funding from the Koch family, along with major donations from other right-wing conservatives.43 After the CSE breakup, Americans for Prosperity continued to enjoy direct funding and leadership through Koch Industries and the Koch brothers.44 FreedomWorks switched its funding to other industry sources and staffed up with former lobbyists from corporate sectors interested in deregulation.45 Both DC-based organizations continued to push the same overall anti-government agenda, and the Tea Party moment has been propitious for both organizations.
With the opening provided by the Santelli rant, FreedomWorks built activist connections. It helped to orchestrate the angry town hall protests against health reform in August 2009, co-sponsored Tea Party rallies, and gained new leverage in 2010 with GOPers elected with its endors.e.m.e.nt or the support of other Tea Partyidentified groups. FreedomWorks has, however, remained largely a national operation with only a handful of state-level staffers, while the other CSE off spring, Americans for Prosperity, appears to have gained even more ground during the Tea Party effervescence.
Riding the Tea Party wave, the AFP ballooned its contact lists from about 270,000 in 2008 to 1.5 million in 2011, while also expanding its network of coordinators to reach 32 states.46 AFP staffers and volunteer activists often appear at Tea Party rallies, and the organization regularly pays to transport protestors across the country and even to international events.47 AFP is also building extensive state networks. In Arizona, for example, Tom Jenney, leader of the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers, incorporated his organization as AFP"s Arizona chapter. Jenney"s strong local connections make him quite effective in connecting with and mobilizing local Tea Parties in Arizona. Similarly, in Wisconsin, state-level AFP staffers and adherents were involved in the rallies mounted in early 2011 to support GOP Governor Scott Walker during his efforts to push through state legislation disabling public sector labor unions.48 As this suggests, ideological right-wing billionaires and their advocacy organizations not only want to push their own ideas and values; they want to break the organizational capacities of their political opponents. From their perspective, it is great to be able to turn out local Tea Partiers to counter pro-union demonstrators wherever such battles are afoot.
Using the Tea Party as backdrop, Americans for Prosperity is trying to reshape public discussions and attract widespread conservative support for ultra-free-market ideas about slashing taxes and business regulation and radically restructuring social expenditure programs. Speakers, videos, and articles are offered to Tea Party groups and sympathizers, as they have been provided to gra.s.sroots conservatives for many years. Back in 2008, the Wisconsin branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its "Defender of the American Dream" Award to GOP Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin after he developed a budget "RoadMap" that foreshadowed the radical budget he presented (and that the GOP House supported) in early 2011.49 The Ryan budget entails huge new tax cuts for the rich; major reductions in Medicaid, college aid, and other programs for lower and lower-middle-income Americans; and the phasing out of Medicare"s guaranteed health coverage for the elderly after 2021. The aim is to realize radical policy goals pushed by the Cato Inst.i.tute and other Koch-funded organizations since the late 1970s.50 Starting in the late spring of 2011, all the major national advocacy groups floating around the Tea Party pushed the Ryan budget and encouraged gra.s.sroots partic.i.p.ants and public sympathizers to get behind it.
GOP Politicos Jump on the Tea Party Bandwagon.
Just as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity found in the Tea Party eruption fresh openings for pushing ideas and seeding activism, GOP-linked political action committees quickly found greener pastures, too. Political action committees (PACs) allow their sponsors to raise money and dispatch it to favored electoral candidates. It is also perfectly possible for a PAC, at the same time, to encourage a.s.sisted candidates to buy campaign services from businesses linked to the PAC itself. Money can be raised and deployed to do double duty-enhancing the PAC directors" political clout and buoying their business bottom line. Not surprisingly, Tea Party effervescence has given rise to many PACs, including ent.i.ties set up in the states to let Tea Party leaders such as Jerry DeLemus in New Hampshire collect checks and wield influence.51 We would need another book to track all of the organizations expanded or newly launched to capitalize on the Tea Party.52 But perhaps the most visible example has been a PAC launched in the summer of 2009 called the "Tea Party Express."
Again, once we look closely, we find not a new venture run by true insurgents, but instead, a newly labeled arm of a Republican PAC called "Our Country Deserves Better," based in Sacramento, California, and linked to the GOP political consulting and public relations firm of Russo, Marsh, and Rogers. The key figure is Sal Russo, who has worked to elect Republicans all the way back to Ronald Reagan.53 During the 2008 presidential campaign, Russo"s Our Country PAC achieved some notoriety for a series of anti-Obama campaign commercials deemed misleading by the nonpartisan fact-checkers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center.54 One adfeatured actors pretending to be various foreign leaders, including Iran"s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea"s Kim Jong-il, and Cuba"s Fidel Castro, laughing together about Obama"s willingness to meet without preconditions. The ad concluded "Barack Obama: No Match for America"s Enemies." Other anti-Obama ads trumpeted the controversial views of Obama"s one-time pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and disseminated the rumor that President Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. Obama won election anyway, leaving Russo and friends in search of new openings. When the new Tea Party label gained fashion on the right, Russo teamed up with Howard Kaloogian, a conservative GOP state lawmaker, and Mark Williams, a conservative radio talk show host, to relabel part of their PAC"s activities the "Tea Party Express."
By late 2009 and into 2010, dozens of GOP office-seekers were thrilled to link their fortunes to the new effervescence. This allowed Tea Party Express (TPE) to raise and spend over $2.7 million on candidates across the country, including several of the most prominent Tea Party candidates.55 To the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, TPE supported Scott Brown in his successful and pivotal January 2010 bid to win the Ma.s.sachusetts Senate seat previously held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy. The Ma.s.sachusetts effort notched an early scalp, signaling heft for TPE and establishing it as an electoral difference-maker. Thereafter, TPE went on to help fund Sharron Angle"s campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and also contributed to the campaigns of Tea Partyoriented Republicans who mounted primary challenges against moderate GOP inc.u.mbents. Important instances have included Christine O"Donnell"s 2010 primary campaign against Mike Castle in Delaware; Joe Miller"s primary campaign against Lisa Murkowski in Alaska; and primary challenges in the 2012 cycle by Tea Party candidates trying to displace Indiana Senator Richard Lugar and Maine Senator Olympia Snowe.56 These campaigns have been good business for TPE"s founders; when TPE funds Tea Party candidates, it also promotes and purchases campaign services from Russo, Marsh, and Rogers.57 Beyond electoral activities, Tea Party Express has sponsored bus tours that roam the country to synchronize with other Tea Party events and whip up gra.s.sroots enthusiasm among conservative voters. The first TPE bus tour coincided with the 2009 August recess, when the health care reform debate reached a fever pitch and dozens of lawmakers faced hostile audiences at local town halls. Tours continued over the next year and a half, with locations chosen to bolster other Tea Party efforts to put pressure on embattled moderate or liberal legislators in tight electoral races. One event that received a great deal of media coverage was the 2010 tour stop held in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid"s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada. The tiny town was flooded by thousands of Tea Party faithful-an event described as "Woodstock minus the LSD" by one attendee.58 Apart from the entertainment they provide at rallies, TPE does not have meaningful ties to local activists, and there have been significant tensions between TPE and other national organizations involved in the Tea Party.59
An Umbrella Organization Reaches Out to the Gra.s.sroots.
Last but not least in this roundup of key national players is the Tea Party Patriots (TPP), whose website was up and running within days of the original Santelli rant. Co-founders and key players in Tea Party Patriots are Jenny Beth Martin, previously employed as a GOP consultant and the former head of a Tea Party group in Georgia, and Mark Meckler, a businessman from California who had worked on conservative causes and helped organize a Tea Party in Sacramento.60 Dubbing itself the "official gra.s.sroots American movement," TPP has developed the strongest ties to gra.s.sroots activists.
TPP was originally supported by FreedomWorks, which has launched other nominally gra.s.sroots efforts in the past.61 Email exchanges in 2009 indicate that FreedomWorks had a lot of say about TPP activities, at least in the early months.62 TPP also lines up in lockstep with FreedomWorks on certain issues where gra.s.sroots activists seem to have no say or involvement. In the spring of 2011, for example, the Tea Party Patriots" homepage bore a lengthy statement of opposition to net neutrality, a policy also opposed by FreedomWorks and the telecommunications industry.63 But this issue was literally never raised in any of our Tea Party meetings or interviews. The prominent TPP stance on net neutrality is not attributable to gra.s.sroots mobilization.
Despite their ties to FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots presents itself as a gra.s.sroots-run umbrella group. From the start of activism in 2009, TPP steadily increased its connections to local groups and individual gra.s.sroots adherents. As of May 2011, the leaders of Tea Party Patriots claim that more than 1000 local Tea Parties are part of their flock, a number that almost certainly overstates their reach.64 About 150 Tea Party sites in our database are clearly tied to Tea Party Patriots, using TPP branding or logos. Another 300 refer to Tea Party Patriots on their websites.
Since early 2010, Tea Party Patriots has orchestrated weekly conference-call webinars that attract the partic.i.p.ation of as many as several hundred local Tea Party leaders in any given week.65 Local leaders discuss problems, try to define shared issue priorities, and swap ideas about programming for regular local meetings. In early 2011, Tea Party Patriots held its first national summit, a three-day event in Phoenix, Arizona, that brought together Tea Party partic.i.p.ants from across the country to share information and organizing strategies.66 In addition, leaders of the Tea Party Patriots have tried to get local organizers to turn over their local contact lists to the national organization in order to increase their own nationwide capacity to orchestrate campaigns and to raise funds from Tea Party partic.i.p.ants.67 Organizationally, TPP has built a staff of modest size, with various "coordinators" in different regions.68 Finances for the organization have always been murky, and TPP evades public reporting. In September 2010, the TPP coordinators announced receipt of a $1 million anonymous donation. Local Tea Parties were invited to apply for grants to improve websites, mount educational or training efforts, and pursue other nonelectoral projects of local choosing.69 But it is unclear how much funding ever made it to local organizers; a number of gra.s.sroots supporters, including some state coordinators who had previously been heavily involved with TPP, have distanced themselves from the organization and criticized its financial practices.70 Like other national Tea Partylinked organizations, TPP appears to have channeled considerable sums to long-standing GOP consulting organizations.71 The legal status of Tea Party Patriots precludes endors.e.m.e.nts of particular candidates in elections. Coordinators proclaim that endors.e.m.e.nts are best left to local and state Tea Party groups, if done at all. This stance allows TPP to stay out of local and state fights over the relative conservative purity of different GOP candidates; it also protects TPP when particular candidates lose elections. Equally strategically ambiguous are TPP stands on specific parts of the federal budget. Tea Party Patriots pushes the notion of immediate, huge budget cuts, but when asked about particulars, TPP leaders mouth generalities or simply repeat the group"s motto, "Fiscal Responsibility, Const.i.tutionally Limited Government and Free Markets" (a motto nearly identical to that of FreedomWorks). Questioned about tax and health care measures at a forum at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in April 2011, TPP Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin proclaimed that there was no need to discuss the actual content of legislation because good proposals are always to be found at think tanks such as the Cato Inst.i.tute or the Heritage Foundation. GOP Congressional representatives can just adopt those, she said.
Martin"s answer confirms that TPP is in the business of leveraging popular support for predetermined far-right policy proposals. Her evasiveness also underscores how a.s.siduously national groups endeavor to keep "Tea Party" aims vague and general. "Eliminating the deficit" sounds fine to regular citizens, but specifics such as the abolition of Medicare are not popular at the gra.s.s roots, even with Tea Party people. In Congressional budget battles, Tea Party Patriots uses its national website to urge local groups to pressure GOP representatives against accepting tax increases or agreeing to lift the national debt limit, but TPP never lists specific programs to go on the chopping block. Free-market organizations supported by billionaires find it easy to urge gra.s.sroots people and GOP officials to take rigid stands. After all, these groups and their wealthy backers are not democratically accountable. Nor are they responsible for actually governing.
NATIONAL AND LOCAL IN THE TEA PARTY-A MUTUAL LEVERAGE STORY.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, was sunny and cool in eastern Ma.s.sachusetts, a perfect day for a Tea Party rally. Surrounded by a ring of media vans, a crowd of a few thousand a.s.sembled on the Boston Common. The Greater Boston Tea Party had originally planned its annual Tax Day protest for April 15, but had been contacted by Tea Party Express and convinced to hold its rally a day earlier to coincide with the arrival of a multistate bus tour and a speech by Sarah Palin. The short notice ruffled some feathers in New England, but the gra.s.s roots quickly adapted. Media coverage would be a.s.sured for such a well-funded, splashy event, so local Tea Partiers provided volunteers, applauded road show speakers, and set up a booth to enroll new members.
At 7 P.M. on Tuesday, November 30, 2010, members of the Buffalo County Tea Party gathered in the Sunroom at the Northridge Retirement Community in Kearney, Nebraska, to hear a talk about legislative issues at stake in the lame duck session of Congress-the last session with Democrats in control of the House before the much-antic.i.p.ated arrival of the new GOP majority in 2011. The speaker was Jeremy Jensen, a former Tea Party leader who had moved on to work as Field Director for the Americans for Prosperity of Nebraska.72 This state branch of the national advocacy organization bills itself as "on the front line in the fight against big government" and sends regular "Action Alerts" to tens of thousands of Nebraskans to inspire them to push local, state, and federal representatives in desired directions.73 In the fall of 2010, the co-organizers of a local Tea Party in Maine posted an encouraging announcement on their group"s blog: "Sue and Jane are happy to announce that York County Const.i.tutionalists have received a grant from Tea Party Patriots as a result of a $1,000,000 anonymous donation" to that organization. "We will be using the grant to further our outreach and educational efforts." Months later, only eighteen people attended the April 2011 meeting of the York Const.i.tutionalists, so the visiting speaker from New Hampshire could hardly compliment his Maine neighbors on a high turnout. But he did make a point of praising their snazzy new website and Facebook page, recently up and running with support from the grant.
At the end of a March 2011 meeting, the Surprise Tea Party in Arizona discussed various Tea Party sites and came to the consensus that everyone at the meeting should join the Tea Party Patriots mailing list. Around the same time, members of the Jefferson Area Tea Party Patriots in Charlottesville, Virginia, recommitted themselves to local autonomy. A new const.i.tution, bylaws, and yearly membership dues would ensure that all local members have "skin in the game," explained group chair, Carole Thorpe. Dues of about $20 a year (with discounts for couples and students) will allow the group to continue its long-standing refusal to take funds or apply for grants from outsiders. Early on, Carole remembers, the Jefferson Area Tea Party was "a line" on the TPP website. But the relationship never deepened, and she does not partic.i.p.ate in TPP conference calls or webinars.
Much ink and many keystrokes have been spent on issues of "control" in the Tea Party. Are national, billionaire-backed organizations controlling the Tea Party, or are gra.s.sroots folks in charge? These are the wrong questions to ask about a field of loosely interconnected organizations. Everyone is trying to leverage something they want from others in the network. The fruitful questions are: What do local Tea Partiers want from the national advocates and impresarios? What do the national organizations hope to get from various sorts of ties to gra.s.sroots groups or protesters? What tensions flare up as some actors step on the toes or offend the sensibilities of others? And are relationships shifting over time?
Loose Ties of Mutual Convenience.
Consider, for example, relationships between local Tea Parties and the national political action committee called Tea Party Express (TPE)-the California-based group responsible for a media-friendly bus tour and the funding of many Tea Party candidates. Unquestionably, public rallies that gain lots of publicity can be a win-win for all concerned-including the Tea Party partic.i.p.ants who attend, the local groups that pitch in, and of course the national organizations that help to fund and sponsor the rally. Any local irritations of scheduling and coordination, as we saw in one of the opening vignettes for this section, can usually be soothed by publicity and the potential for new members in the bargain. Tea Party Express, in turn, took control of the media imagery and content in the Boston protest, with a convenient backdrop of local, gra.s.sroots volunteers.
The relationship between big national funders and small gra.s.sroots groups appears to be one of mutual convenience, with little shared knowledge or joint investment, particularly when it comes to Tea Party Express. Quite a few of the Tea Partiers we interviewed in different places had attended events involving Tea Party Express, but no one at the gra.s.s roots reported feeling closely tied to that organization. Several people in Phoenix said they had driven north to Searchlight, Nevada, for the bus-tour rally there. But speaker Sarah Palin received mixed reviews in Arizona and Virginia, as well as in Ma.s.sachusetts. The president of the Greater Boston Tea Party dismissed TPE as a group of "entertainers," and other Tea Party activists have complained that Tea Party Express is not gra.s.sroots.74 From the perspective of Tea Party Express, the lack of much gra.s.sroots interest and close attention may be a good thing. Gra.s.sroots supporters provide a colorful popular backdrop for TPE to attract media attention and collect more contributions to spend on candidates and affiliated business operations-without any pesky accountability to local leaders. And TPE leaders are surely content that certain aspects of their work have remained off the radar of most Tea Party activists. After a series of offensive remarks about Islam, TPE spokesman Mark Williams was eventually cashiered for writing a blog post suggesting that black people would prefer to be re-enslaved rather than have to do work.75 Though the incident was widely covered at the time by the mainstream media, Tea Partiers we spoke to were unfamiliar with it, and thus it did not affect their views of TPE, to the degree they had any.76 For TPE, the avoidance of close gra.s.sroots ties, and the scrutiny that might accompany such ties, may be a wise strategic choice.
Virtually all of the national organizations we have discussed have tried to link local Tea Party people with their public events.77 The dynamics are usually the same. The local Tea Party people get added publicity when the event is nearby; Tea Parties further afield may get help paying for transportation if they are willing to take outside money. Not all groups are willing to use buses funded by FreedomWorks or Americans for Prosperity or any other outside organization. The Charlottesville Jefferson Area Tea Party took up subscriptions to charter buses of its own; and we also heard regularly about local groups putting together volunteer car-pools. But many Tea Parties take advantage of offers of resources that seem free of strings, and in return sponsoring organizations earn a measure of good will from the gra.s.sroots folks, and perhaps a few more names for their email lists.
Idea Pushers and Takers.
Rallies and bus tours make for mutual back-scratching, but they do not necessarily foster deep relationships between gra.s.sroots people and the national organizations fishing in Tea Party waters. What about other kinds of relationships? Particularly fascinating to us are the ties forged to local Tea Parties by national and state-level advocacy groups pushing hard-right values and policy ideas. How do groups like Americans for Prosperity, or gun rights groups, or libertarian organizations form useful relationships with local Tea Partiers? Such professional idea-pushers want to disseminate everything from worldviews to very specific legislative plans-plans that realize free-market goals, or undo progressive policies, or defund rival groups, such as public sector unions, connected to the Democratic Party. But how do right-wing advocacy organizations manage to get local Tea Party people to listen to what are often abstruse-or implausible-ideas?
Some of the ideas of these free-market advocacy groups circulate through blog networks and get forwarded through email chains. Many Tea Party members we met are avid email forwarders, sending on to a long list of acquaintances everything from budget reports to political jokes, often several messages per day. Over time, the most successful ideas bubble to the surface through the right-wing blogosphere and into the mainstream media-a dynamic we will discuss in detail in Chapter 4. In addition, many local Tea Parties have their own well-designed websites with notices about webinars, reports, and videos disseminated by this or that rightwing advocacy group.
Indeed, by the middle of 2011, many of the almost 1000 local Tea Parties whose websites we examined in our national survey included references or links to national advocacy organizations. We define a reference broadly: some are simply links in a long list of trusted information sources, while others are reports, articles, or calls to action reposted in their entirety. Though the results are only a snapshot of Tea Party activity in the spring and early summer of 2011, they are nonetheless quite illuminating. The libertarian Cato Inst.i.tute was far less popular than the more generally conservative Heritage Foundation, appearing on only 126 sites, compared to Heritage"s 345. Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks were cited relatively equally, with FreedomWorks receiving 267 mentions and Americans for Prosperity 206. As we"ve already seen, Tea Party Patriots far outstrips the compet.i.tion in terms of its connections to actual local Tea Parties. TPP is mentioned on 498 sites, almost half the total set of Tea Party groups we found, and almost 150 of those sites have adopted Tea Party Patriots" online branding or logos.78 But professionally run advocacy groups also reach Tea Parties directly. Many of them offer training sessions for gra.s.sroots Tea Party organizers and members, who may learn about policy ideas as well as organizing strategies. Several Tea Party members we spoke to in Ma.s.sachusetts had taken part in workshops organized by American Majority, a conservative activist-training group founded by Republican insiders, including a former speech-writer for President George W. Bush and the former political director of the California Republican Party. Along with discussions of the Const.i.tution, their workshops cover the typical local organizing bases, including primers on government structure, advice on "the most effective ways to contact elected officials," and guidance on using new media like Twitter. Americans for Prosperity and Tea Party Patriots have provided similar training opportunities to other Tea Party groups we spoke to.
Another dynamic to keep an eye on is the desire of local and state Tea Party groups for a constant flow of programming. Let"s say you are a local Tea Party organizer interested in finding something interesting to do for each monthly meeting, and you do not have a lot of money to spend. Where to turn? Local organizers explained to us that many of their members (such as the older men and women who attend as couples) want to watch a show or hear a speaker each month. For an attractive lecture, they may show up and even put some money in the collection box. But they may be less interested if a group discussion is the only thing scheduled, or if they think the main purpose is to ask them to volunteer for tasks. Local organizers, if they are any good, want to have group discussions and inspire real partic.i.p.ation, but they may need to make membership activities just part of a meeting, with an entertaining speaker or visual presentation scheduled for the rest of the event. A local Tea Party also needs to advertise programs that may attract drop-ins-to keep adding new recruits as some earlier partic.i.p.ants drop out. After the 2010 election, one local leader explained, some people did pull back, "patting themselves on the back" for displacing Democrats from office. But others kept arriving to check out the group, enabling this local Tea Party to sustain membership and energy. Given the need to come up with attractive events months after month on a low budget, national and state organizations that offer speakers are a G.o.dsend for local leaders. In fact, a lot of ultra-conservative advocacy organizations are trying to place their speakers, so local Tea Party programmers can pick and choose. They can go with issues that seem hot in their region and engage speakers who have earned a good reputation as they make their way from one local Tea Party to the next.
These outside speakers, we think, are one way for politically consequential ideas-including some very strange ones not grounded in facts-to circulate among local Tea Parties. They are also how ideological organizations like Americans for Prosperity form closer links with local citizens-as in the opening vignette about Nebraska, where the Buffalo County group meeting in Kearney heard from a state-level organizer for Americans for Prosperity. During our visit to Arizona, that state"s coordinator for Americans for Prosperity was also making the rounds, and so were speakers from the Second Amendment Sisters, a pro-gun group.
When we visited the Peninsula Patriots in Virginia in late January of 2011, the invited guest was Donna Holt, Executive Director of the Virginia Campaign for Liberty. For an audience of about sixty members, Holt presented an elaborate PowerPoint lecture connecting local sustainable planning efforts (bike paths, for example) to what she portrayed as a grandiose, decades-long, UN-hatched conspiracy to use environmentalism as a ruse for imposing a "globalist totalitarian dictatorship" on America. Conspiratorial visions of this sort may be too fantastical to survive broad public scrutiny, but they can percolate quietly in networks of local Tea Parties.79 After listening to the Campaign for Liberty speaker, the Peninsula Patriots got a lot of takers for a subcommittee to focus on fighting sustainable development.80 Other Virginia Tea Party groups scheduled events on the same topic in early 2011; and local groups worked together against sustainable development legislation in Richmond. The Campaign for Liberty obviously got its message out.
The need for a steady flow of programming allows national ideological organizations to provide a welcome service to gra.s.sroots Tea Parties, whose members offer a warm and largely unskeptical reception to ideas ranging from practical policies to conspiratorial visions. Often the ideas pushed by ideological elites are abstruse enough that local people will accept them uncritically. The conspiratorial talk given to the Peninsula Patriots by the Campaign for Liberty representative, like talks by other guest speakers we have heard at Tea Party meetings, provoked not a single criticism during the question-and-answer session. Instead, audience members appreciated the overarching sentiment of the presentation, which emphasized intrusive bureaucrats-a reality local people feel they understand from dealings with irritating business regulations or local zoning rules. By invoking strong feelings and providing easy-to-digest worldviews linked to specific policy goals, the national ideologues have much more impact than they likely would if they formally "controlled" local groups.
But what happens when Tea Partiers have direct, favorable personal experience of matters criticized by national ideologues? Or when gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers already have different or more mixed beliefs than those articulated by national advocates? In Chapter 2, for instance, we found that rank-and-file Tea Partiers have considerable affection for Social Security and Medicare, even as they pay lip service to extreme views about slashing federal spending. Gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers have a different take than the policy-makers at right-wing ideological think tanks, for whom Social Security and Medicare are anathema. National groups such as Freedom-Works and Americans for Prosperity have long been committed to privatizing these huge, popular U.S. social insurance programs, taking funds out of them so that taxes on business and the wealthy can be reduced. Right-wing ideologues also hope to boost for-profit businesses that manage savings for retirement. So what happens when Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and other ultra-free-market advocacy groups push these privatizing plans in the name of gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers, most of whom are either on Social Security and Medicare already, or expect to be soon? Will local Tea Partiers become skeptical of advocates claiming to speak for them-at least on matters where Tea Party people have concrete experience and views of their own?
To some degree, perhaps. The reason that Congressional Republicans backed away from Paul Ryan"s Medicare voucher plan soon after the House GOP voted for it in April 2011 may have been a spreading realization in Washington DC that this plan was not playing well beyond the Beltway, even in Tea Party circles.81 GOP leaders decided to soft-peddle the drive for privatization until the 2012 election. But no one should expect real fireworks between elite free-market advocates and local Tea Partiers. The national groups will keep their messages vague. They will continue to talk about "America going broke" and the "need to slash spending" and "cut taxes," without getting overly specific until just before they seize the chance-if one presents itself-to push through major restructurings of Medicare and Social Security. Until then, ideological advocates and GOP politicians working with them will try to fudge the truth on policy specifics and keep the focus on hatred of Obama and his allegedly "socialistic" plans. They will try to do this all the way until the critical 2012 election-when they hope to use gra.s.sroots fears and fervor to help push Obama out of the White House.
Local Tea Partiers will continue to consume ideas, speakers, and other kinds of programming from the advocacy groups, taking much of what they hear on faith. Even where Social Security and Medicare are concerned, Tea Party people may come around to ultra-free-market nostrums, if phaseout legislation includes a long timeline, so that older people today and tomorrow believe they will be held whole in federal programs, while big cuts are put in place for younger cohorts. National ideologues can make use of Tea Partiers" sense that younger Americans are not working hard enough, not "paying their dues." Generational tensions contribute to gra.s.sroots Tea Party activism, and the national ideological organizations and their DC allies may figure out how to exploit such divisions.
In the final a.n.a.lysis, the loose relationship between professional idea-pushers and local Tea Parties is mutually useful enough to enable advocates to set agendas and disseminate general arguments, without becoming any more answerable to local groups than Tea Party Express is accountable to the people who attend its bus-tour rallies. Free-market advocacy groups can provide programming to local Tea Parties and add tens of thousands of Tea Party members to online networks, without ever engaging in discussions or answering for the specifics of policies pushed in Washington DC and state capitols. Tea Partiers at the gra.s.s roots are not sufficiently questioning of free-market ideologues to raise tough questions. If an organization seems to be against Obama and liberals, Tea Partiers are trusting to the point of gullibility. Their outlook exemplifies that old adage in politics: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The Attempt to Weave Tighter Ties.
Like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, the umbrella organization Tea Party Patriots reaches out very actively to local groups. From its founding in 2009, TPP adopted a folksy, volunteer pose on its national website. The national organization loudly proclaimed that it wasn"t trying to control anything and allowed local Tea Parties to register themselves on the TPP website. In addition to helping manage national rallies and coordinating local groups on a weekly conference call, TPP offered some small grants to Tea Parties to enable them to upgrade their local websites and educational activities. No doubt, the applications enlarge TPP contact lists and allow for tighter links between national and local conservative organizations-and may have helped TPP raise funds from local groups.82 Without seeming bureaucratic, TPP"s activities facilitated gra.s.sroots organizing and encouraged communication about and among local and state-level Tea Party efforts.
Yet coordinating a political phenomenon steeped in the rhetoric of "states" rights" and local control remains a major challenge. Local Tea Parties and their leaders have responded in diametrically opposite ways to TPP"s efforts at orchestration-as suggested by the vignettes about Maine, Arizona, and Virginia at the start of this section. With limited involvement of Tea Party Patriots, Virginia Tea Partiers launched a state federation in early 2010. Although some local Virginia Tea Party leaders now partic.i.p.ate in TPP conference calls, others do not-and we heard suspicions from several Virginia leaders about TPP efforts at control and direction. Arguably, the success the Virginia Tea Partiers had in creating supra-local linkages through their own state federation has made local Tea Parties in that state less amenable to involvements with Tea Party Patriots. One Virginia leader was especially caustic, dismissing Tea Party Patriots as merely engaged in "building a donor base." He called three national organizations "frauds"-including TPP along with and FreedomWorks and Tea Party Express-and suggested that all three are trying to aggrandize themselves off gra.s.sroots efforts.
Tea Party groups clearly differ about the value of ties to Tea Party Patriots. Our interviews in Arizona showed that rank-and-filers could evolve favorable views of TPP in a state where it has achieved a concrete presence. In February 2011, Tea Party Patriots sponsored a summit in Phoenix, enabling us to ask for impressions from some of the gra.s.sroots people in that area. "As a matter of fact, we weren"t too sure," said Gloria Ames. "We don"t know too much about [TPP coordinators] Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler." Given their "political background," Gloria was uncertain whether the two were trustworthy. In this regard, Gloria seemed to have accurate information about the careers of Meckler and Martin, both of whom had been involved in GOP politics prior to becoming coordinators for Tea Party Patriots. But Gloria"s concerns were eventually a.s.suaged. At the 2011 summit, Martin and Meckler surveyed Tea Party members on various issues, and when an issue got a mixed response from local activists, they decided not to take a position on it. "That made me feel better," Gloria concluded. Larry Fisher, who partic.i.p.ates in the weekly TPP webinars, was similarly impressed with TPP"s commitment to "coordinating" not "leading."
Even the most engaged local partic.i.p.ants in Arizona were not entirely clear on how Tea Party Patriots fits into the national scene, however. In response to a question about how he came to get involved with Tea Party Patriots, Larry Fisher could not recall. "How did we find out about the national group? I don"t know if I remember ... No, they did not come around with the bus ..." He consults with his wife, but comes to no conclusion. In short, even though Larry partic.i.p.ates weekly in the Tea Party Patriots webinars, he could not readily distinguish TPP from Tea Party Express. Clearly, Tea Party Patriots has made headway in weaving ties to and among local Tea Parties in many states, but it has had to proceed with a light hand to avoid antagonizing locals. The result is widespread but hazy knowledge about TPP, which remains for many local Tea Partiers just one of several national organizations floating through their movement world.
The Initial Strength of Weak Ties.
As we have spelled out in this chapter, the Tea Party involves loose ties of mutual convenience among vibrant actors pursuing their own purposes at local and national levels, with each set of actors trying to leverage help from the other. If this is how the Tea Party surge has worked, what is the bottom line? Have loose links among Tea Party organizations helped or hurt conservatives?
In the earliest phases-during the heady days of protest and early organizational efforts in 2009 and 2010-the Tea Party eruption benefited greatly from the loosely interrelated activism of local Tea Partiers, on the one hand, and the cheerleading of national advocates and politicos, on the other hand. Gra.s.sroots enthusiasm was encouraged by the sense that people could get their own act together-at most facilitated, but not directly controlled, by any official elites. And elite efforts to orchestrate and leverage gra.s.sroots activism, touting the Tea Party label, were not significantly impeded by the fact that national organizations rode as well as stoked gra.s.sroots activism. Loose ties were not a problem, even when various national advocacy groups went off in different directions, and even when their efforts sometimes hurt rather than helped the established Republican Party (a matter we discuss further in Chapter 5). The thrust of local and national Tea Party activism through the November 2010 elections was maximized by loosely connected organizational efforts. Tea Party efforts moved forward in mutually encouraging ways, within and across the edges of the GOP but not under party control.
The overall point, after all, was to free conservatism from the tainted "Republican Party" label in order to maximize the election of conservatives in 2010. Tea Partiers of all stripes shared that broad goal, and they were going to make greater headway through loose connections than they would through centralized management. Because there was no one center of authority and resources, the fate of the Tea Party was never inextricably linked to the political fortunes of any one candidate or organized ent.i.ty. When particular candidates were defeated or particular organizational leaders discredited by scandal or racist episodes, gra.s.sroots activism was not discouraged and elites who escaped trouble could just keep operating. No one had to take responsibility for mess-ups.