NewsBusters (blog) | Sudden Respect: CNN Now Enamored by Possible 'Tea Party of the ... NewsBusters (blog) Throughout the day on Friday, CNN touted video of angry protesters at congressional Republican town halls in Tennessee and Utah to prove that it might be the ... |
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Sudden Respect: CNN Now Enamored by Possible 'Tea Party of the ... - NewsBusters (blog)
Demonstrators took part in a protest against President Donald Trumps executive orders on immigration at Copley Square in January.
Never before have so many people protested an American president after just one day in office. Never before did they come back the following week to protest the same president on something else. Never before had technology specifically, social media made it so easy to organize the next protest.
But some historians and political operatives say they have seen this before. Eight years ago, America witnessed the beginnings of what became the Tea Party movement after just a few months of a new president in office. Their protests eventually led to a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican president who is very much a successor to that movement.
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Will these early 2017 protests serve as the basis of the political lefts version of the Tea Party? Among those who study these movements, the answers are mixed.
So far, for example, these protesters dont have a collective name for their resistance movement. The current movement is aligned more closely with one of the two national parties than was the Tea Party, which famously fought establishment Republicans.
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Ron Formisano, a University of Kentucky professor who specializes in American populist movements, contends that what is taking place now to protest President Trump is in line with the populist undertones of the Tea Party movement but there are some major differences that could affect the movements longevity.
Yes, the womens march was largely a white, middle-class demonstration, but so too was the Tea Party, but involving more men, Formisano said. What the Tea Party had eventually was a large media outlet like Fox News and the backing of well-funded groups. Right now it is not clear these groups will have anything like that other than the power of social media.
Heres another key difference: Those in the Tea Party were as angry with the Republican Party as they were with President Obama. They quickly organized into local groups that worked outside of the Republican Party, often to back primary challenges to sitting GOP incumbents with measured success. Not only did the Tea Party oust several members of Congress, but it also pushed the GOP to the right ideologically.
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So far this year, these protesters from the left appear to be working with the Democratic Party instead of against it. In Boston, at the Womens March and the Copley Square immigration protests, US Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Martin J. Walsh were both roundly applauded for their speeches.
In fact, there has been a groundswell of attendance at local Democratic Party gatherings, said Jaime Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic party.
I am seeing a huge amount of people showing up to local Democratic groups in South Carolina and around the country asking what they can do to fight Trump, said Harrison, who is running for Democratic National Committee chairman. The challenge for party leaders is how to best harness this energy and work together.
Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian who wrote a book on the Tea Party movement, said another difference is that movement was largely about one thing: Obamacare. These most recent protests, she said, are about many different things including the right to protest.
[Tea Party activists] had other concerns, of course, but [Obamacare] was at the center of them, Lepore said. Anti-Trump protesters have a range of concerns concerns that include the constitutionality of the presidents executive orders but at the center lies an objection to the Trump administrations hostility toward the judiciary, toward journalists, and, most broadly, to political dissent itself.
To be sure, American political history has often featured a succession of protest movements that rise and fall with changes in leadership (The Boston Tea Party, Shays Rebellion, womens suffrage, the civil rights movement, and more). So far its just too early to say where the anti-Trump protest energy is heading especially with nearly four years until the next presidential election.
It is also possible that the ideological cousin to the Tea Party movement has already happened. Remember Occupy Wall Street?
The Occupy movement, Formisano noted, grew organically out of a populist anger that the political elite did not address income inequality. While fervent, the Occupy movement never had the same impact or lasting power that the Tea Party movement did.
Instead, the message was carried on inside of Senator Bernie Sanders unsuccessful campaign for president.
That [Occupy] movement, no matter what you thought of it, put that issue on the map. That aint nothing, Formisano said. What becomes of the protests right now is just too early to tell.
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The left's answer to the Tea Party? Not exactly. - The Boston Globe
Democrats are desperately hoping that their self-described Resistance to President Trump can take off in the same way that opposition to President Obama launched a new political movement in 2009. As Molly Ball asks, Is the Anti-Trump Resistance the New Tea Party?
No, it isnt. Theyve been trying this ever since 2010, when some cloyingly earnest young lefties tried to start a Coffee Party that was launched with great fanfare and a lot of mainstream media publicity and never heard from again.
The Left never really tried to understand the Tea Party movement and what drove it, so they have no idea why it actually took off, and they are using vain hopes of a massive popular movement of their own to avoid confronting their real, underlying problems.
What people dont realize about the Tea Party is the extent to which it was driven by much deeper structural political forces. Specifically, it was driven by a huge mismatch in congressional districts between constituents and their representatives. There were two factors behind this.
First, in 2006, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rahm Emanuel, recruited a bunch of conservative Democrats, particularly in the South, and used them to gain 28 seats in the House and win back a majority for the Democrats. They then promptly elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House, who used these conservative Democrats as cannon fodder. They got elected in right-leaning districts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and went off to Washington DC, where they were expected to rubber-stamp an agenda designed by a far-left leadership that came out of Boston (Barney Frank) and San Francisco (Pelosi).
Something had to give, and boy did it ever. By the time the 2014 congressional elections were over, the last white Southern Democratwhich is not quite the same thing as the last conservative Democrat, but its pretty closehad been kicked out of Congress.
The second factor behind the Tea Party is that Barack Obama had such a big surge of popularity in 2008 that he not only forestalled the reckoning for Pelosis conservative Democrats but got a bunch of solidly leftist Democrats elected in marginal districts. I saw this up close in Virginias Fifth Congressional District. Its got a big left-leaning university town, Charlottesville, but also includes Jerry Falwells Liberty University down in Lynchburg and continues to a big swath of rural Southside Virginia. In that district, Tom Perrielloliterally fresh off running a George Soros-funded NGOgot elected in 2008 by a margin of 800 votes. That just wasnt going to last.
That was the context for the Tea Party movement. In a bunch of states and especially in a bunch of House districts, there was a fundamental imbalance between right-leaning constituents and left-leaning members of Congress.
The Tea Party was a big success insofar as it won two wave elections for the House GOP and kicked out a few Democratic senators. But this explains why it was less successful in the Senate: on average, the imbalance between senators and their constituents was less pronounced. Thats partly because of the staggered schedule of Senate elections, so that not every senator was swept in during the anomalous years of 2006 and 2008, and its partly because the larger and more diverse composition of states makes them less prone to wide ideological swings.
This also explains why the Tea Party fizzled out. It won enough elections to correct the basic political imbalance, and youll notice that the Trump phenomenon hasnt yet marked a change of course in that respect. The GOP representatives elected in the Tea Party wave were re-elected, and with greater margins than Trump had. If you ask what happened to the Tea Party movement in Charlottesville, for example, the answer is: Robert Hurt beat Tom Perriello in 2010 and managed not to offend the Tea Party for three terms. (He decided not to run again in 2016, and VA-5 elected another Republican.) It took a lot of the political urgency out of the movement.
My own district, by the way, is VA-7, where we kicked out Eric Cantor. Thats another part of the Tea Party story, but a much smaller one. Kicking out incumbent Republicans who werent far enough to the right for their constituents did happen, but much less often, because most incumbent Republicans were not as complacent as Cantor.
The other big political wave of the Tea Party era was in the state houses, where we can see similar forces at work. Its not just that the Democratic Partys move to the left on the federal level has been a millstone around the necks of state-level Democrats. It that congressional Democrats have actively undermined conservative Democrats in state politics, forcing them to back policies like transgender bathroom laws and persecution of Christians who wont bake the cake for a gay wedding.
In effect, the Democratic majorities of 2006 and 2008 were a false paradise, an inherently unstable arrangement just waiting for some trigger to set off a backlashand ObamaCare, a big and intrusive new government program, provided that trigger.
For the Left to mount its own equivalent of the Tea Party movement, there would have to be an equivalent political imbalance behind it.I dont see any such thing. To begin with, the Republicans who swept into Congress in the Tea Party waves of 2010 and 2014 are all still there and were recently re-elected. They werent supported by the coattails of a popular presidential candidate, because they won by much higher margins than Donald Trump did. So theres little reason to believe they are mismatched to their constituents.
There is certainly a warning here to congressional Republicans not to be the conservative Democrats of 2006 and 2008. Dont be Bart Stupak, the pro-life Democrat from Michigan who negotiated a compromise that allowed abortion funding in Obamacareand was promptly shown the door by his constituents. Congressional Republicans shouldnt allow President Trump to browbeat them into backing policies the folks back home will find unacceptable.
There may well be a public backlash against Trump this year, but for the most part, I think thats already priced in. This is a guy who won with only 46 percent of the vote and three weeks into his administration has an RealClear-Politics average approval rating of 44 percent. Hes pre-backlashed. Barack Obama, by contrast, came into office with 70 percent approval. Trumps negatives were known and very well advertised before Election Day. They are far less likely to come as a surprise to the average voter and therefore less likely to lead to a sudden reversal.
As I said, though, Democrats never really understood the Tea Party. In fact, they avoided understanding it because they preferred their own narrative to the facts. Most of them remain convinced, for example, that the Tea Party was not a real grassroots movement but was astroturfed with money from the Koch Brothers. I saw my local Tea Party on the ground level, and nothing could be further from the truth. Most of our local organizers were people who were not highly politically engaged before 2009, and there was nary a Koch dollar in sight, which is why everything was done with volunteer labor on a shoestring budget. Its the closest thing Ive ever experienced to the Norman Rockwell vision of old-fashioned town hall politics.
They are trying to build their own movement to serve a political agenda that is even more out of step with the voters they need to win back.
But if the Left still thinks the Tea Party was all just astroturfed, then theyre going to think that they can astroturf their own movement. Thats what strikes me about all this talk about The Resistance. Its still early, but so far, a lot of this seems to be coming from people who were already activists, who were already highly politically engaged. Its not spontaneous grassroots outrage. Its the revolutionary vanguard trying to herd the proletariat into following them.
More fundamentally, in trying to make the revolution happen, theyre actually taking the political imbalance that produced the Tea Party movement (and, to some extent, the Trump campaign) and theyre making it worse. They are trying to build their own movement to serve a political agenda that is even more out of step with the voters they need to win back.
A very interesting election analysis at RealClearPolitics concluded that by moving farther to the leftfarther toward the politics of Bernie Sander and Elizabeth WarrenDemocrats have managed to build up their majorities in urban and coastal enclaves, at the expense of wiping themselves out everywhere else. This hurts the Democrats chances in the Electoral College, and kills them in the House and Senate. The only way to reverse this is the way Rahm Emanuel did it: revive the conservative Democrat.
But thats the opposite of what the Resistance is trying to do, which is to make things like gay marriage and transgender bathrooms and abortion into even more intransigent litmus tests. The destruction of the conservative Democrat was not just some careless accident. For a lot of the activists on the Left, it was a deliberate goal.
Think of it this way. The most successful conservative Democrat in American politics right now is: Donald J. Trumpthe very man the Resistance was formed to resist.
Thats why there wont be a Tea Party movement for the Left. Theyre not trying to take advantage of an ideological imbalance between members of Congress and their heartland districts. Theyre trying to throw their own party even farther out of balance with the rest of the country.
Dont worry, Republicans will still have many opportunities to sabotage themselves, and they have just the man in the Oval Office to help them do it. But that damage, if or when it comes, will be self-inflicted and have little to do with the current Resistance.
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Why The 'Resistance' Won't Be The New Tea Party - The Federalist
Joy Stroup never really got involved in politics until Donald Trump was elected president.
A homemaker and substitute teacher from Plymouth, Stroup felt disgusted and defeated when Trumps Electoral College victory sent him to the White House. Galvanized by that feeling, she demonstrated at the Womens March in St. Paul the day after inauguration, along with her 14-year old daughter and about 100,000 others.
The experience left Stroup with energy and passion to spare, but no obvious outlet for it. After the march, she said, its sort of like, OK, now what do we do?
A friend pushed her to start putting calls in to Rep. Erik Paulsens office, the Republican who represents her district. That led to paying close attention to Paulsens votes on key bills in Congress, which led to Stroup hosting people at her home to write postcards to Paulsen, expressing their opinions on Trump and the issues.
Its pushed her out of her comfort zone. But it feels like youre doing something, Stroup said. When you hear theres thousands of people doing the same thing, you dont feel silly for doing it.
Indeed, there are lots of Joy Stroups in Minnesota: people who didnt really engage in political activism before the election who now feel like they have to do something to stop Trump and his GOP allies in Congress.
It is natural that Paulsen is a top target for Democrats and Trump foes looking to turn the heat up on the GOP.
The mild-mannered former state legislator from Eden Prairie has represented the 3rd Congressional District since 2009, winning reelection handily each time. Democrats thought they had a shot to knock him off in 2016, but he dispatched former state Sen. Terri Bonoff by 13 points.
But Hillary Clinton bested Trump in these largely affluent, west metro suburbs by nine points. Paulsen himself declared he would not support Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes were released, but some people here are watching to see how closely the congressman hews to the presidents agenda.
Stroup and others have participated in activism with local chapters of a group called Indivisible, which aims to organize grassroots resistance to Trump. Indivisible picked up steam after its organizers posted a guide to Tea Party-style resistance that went viral after the election.
There is an Indivisible chapter for the 3rd District, and members have been active in spearheading protests, such as a February 4th event outside Paulsens Eden Prairie office, where demonstrators demanded he hold a town hall meeting open to the public.
Thats a major sticking point with activists, who say Paulsen hasnt held an in-person meeting where constituents could openly ask questions since 2011.
A Paulsen spokesman did not confirm or deny that claim, simply saying that Paulsen has held over 100 town hall events reaching hundreds of thousands of constituents since taking office.
MinnPost file photo by Brian Halliday
Rep. Erik Paulsen
In the past, Paulsen has held so-called telephone town halls, in which constituents are called randomly (by ZIP code) and can ask questions directly on a phone call.
He has done two so far this year; the calls typically last an hour, with the bulk of that time reserved for questions. Paulsens office says he gets to as many questions as he can, and that several thousand people can listen in to the call, even if their questions arent handled.
This is not enough for CD3 activists, however, who hope to get Paulsen in front of constituents to answer their questions. Its a key element of the Tea Party playbook: put members of Congress before angry audiences and make them explain what's going on in this case, Trump's initiatives and the GOP's designs on programs like the Affordable Care Act.
Already, rowdy town halls in Colorado and California have led to bad press for Republican congressmen, some of whom snuck out of forums to avoid questions or got escorted out by police details.
A strong majority of 6th District Rep. Tom Emmers constituents back Trump and the GOP, but some constituents are promising to give him an earful at an upcoming town hall later this month. (Emmer is a prolific holder of town halls, with 24 in his first term alone.)
The Facebook page advertising Emmers town hall features numerous comments from constituents angry with Trump and with Emmers enthusiastic backing of his agenda, including his executive orders. Several people expressed they plan to go, to register their displeasure with Emmer in person.
The front lines of resistance to Trumps agenda, of course, arent in the House of Representatives, but in the Senate, which has the power to debate and vote on the presidents selections for cabinet positions and the Supreme Court.
Encouraged by celebrities, politicians and advocacy groups, people have flooded the phone lines of U.S. senators since Trumps election, registering their opinions on a variety of topics, such as presidential appointees and his executive orders.
Minnesotans find themselves on the backburner of Senate drama: those receiving the most calls have been potential swing votes, like moderate Democrats who could plausibly vote with the GOP such as North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp or moderate Republicans who could provide Democrats a crucial no vote, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
MinnPost file photo by Devin Henry
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are not considered key swing votes. Neither has been among the most hard-line Democrats in opposing Trumps picks, only voting against his more high-profile nominees.
Klobuchar and Franken voted against Secretary of Education pick Betsy DeVos, Secretary of State pick Rex Tillerson, and Attorney General pick Jeff Sessions; Franken also voted against CIA chief pick Mike Pompeo. They approved the remainder of the eight nominees who have come to the floor thus far for a vote.
The two are almost certain to vote against controversial upcoming nominees, like EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt and Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price. But Minnesotans are flooding their offices lines with calls anyway.
Frankens D.C. office, which typically receives no more than 1,000 calls a month, got over 12,000 calls in January. Over half of those calls were to express opposition to the confirmations of DeVos and Sessions. Klobuchars offices in Minnesota and D.C. received close to 20,000 calls in January.
Jena Martin, a pathologist from Minnetonka, has been putting in calls to both Franken and Klobuchar. She even went to the senators Minnesota offices to deliver monkey wrenches to, symbolically, throw into the confirmation process.
To Martin, its especially important to hold Democrats accountable to a party base that is hungry to see Trumps agenda blocked at every turn. The Tea Party strategy, after all, was more focused on pushing Republican officials toward extreme opposition to Barack Obama than it was about confronting Democratic politicians.
We want A-plus representatives, not B-minus one, she says. The days of settling for B-minus Democrats is over.
Martin said she is calling Klobuchar in particular because shes disappointed with her votes so far. Klobuchar is not holding firm, she said, though she understands that the senator is up for reelection in 2018. Shes better than Mitch McConnell, but no, Im not happy.
Anti-Trump activists have ambitious goals, such as defeating Republicans like Paulsen and laying the groundwork to take back Congress.
The Tea Party they are emulating ultimately ended Democratic control of Congress, but it was unable to stop Obamacares passage. Democratic-aligned activists hope they can do more to block specific GOP policies in Washington.
For now, though, the Trump administration and 115th Congress are only a few weeks old, and making elected officials squirm is a desirable and achievable enough objective for the nascent movement.
Even if Paulsen doesnt hold a public forum, Nancy McRae, a marketing consultant who lives in Excelsior, wants to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the congressman.
She is new to activism, but in the past few weeks, she has called Paulsens office several times to register her concern over GOP plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, among other things.
McRae said she hopes Paulsen never for one day feels comfortable that hes got this sewn up in his district. If he refuses an open town hall, she said shell help put a cardboard cut-out of Paulsen front of his office. That might get a rise out of him.
Getting involved is bittersweet for these new activists, though: there's no small amount of guilt that it took Trump's ascension to the presidency to get them in the street and on the phone.
Its a shame we werent more vocal before the election, Joy Stroup said. Were at where we are because we werent vocal.
So many people were so divided, people stopped talking about it because it was ruining relationships, she said. I think it would have been worth ruining a few relationships to not have Trump in office.
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Better late than never? Opposing Trump, Democrats take lessons from Tea Party - MinnPost
WASHINGTON It was the summer of 2009, and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) was sitting in a restaurant in his home state of North Dakota, eating breakfast, when a waitress came to his table and handed him a bag of tea.
This was peculiar, since Pomeroy hadnt asked for tea. Nor, for that matter, had the waitress brought him a cup in which to drink it just the bag.
Pomeroy quickly surmised that this was about politics, and not some ploy to enhance her tip. That summer, tea party protests had erupted at town hall meetings where he and his colleagues met with constituents. Those had been bad, forcing him to nix the in-person meetings in favor of less troublesome dial-in phone calls.
Now, however, he was being targeted while eating his eggs a sure sign that even voters, even those with North Dakota nice dispositions, were agitating for change.
In retrospect, that was the beginning of the end, Pomeroy said of the encounter. You didnt have to be a genius to know something was up.
After 18 years in Congress, Pomeroy was ousted in the Democratic bloodbath of 2010. But he remains in Washington, D.C. emerging in the greener pastures of the firm Alston & Bird LLP.
And as Pomeroy looks over at his old stomping grounds on the Hill, hes starting to see signs of the kind of discord that led his waitress to turn a tea bag into a symbol of protest eight years ago.
There is no question there is currently a widespread level of engagement that Ive not seen in many, many years, he said of his Democratic brethren.
As for the Republicans, he offered advice: Listen respectfully to what is being said and agree when you can find areas with agreement. Because over the years, the Democratic Party did not do a good enough job of that itself.
Only three weeks into Donald Trumps presidency, Democrats are dreaming of an inverse of the tea party wave of 2010. People who were previously indifferent or foreign to the political process are taking to the streets in millions to march against Trumps inauguration, or going to airports to rally against his ban on refugees and immigrantsfrom seven Muslim-majority countries. Theyre hitting the phones, overwhelming House and Senate offices with displeasure over Trumps Cabinet choices. Their anger over the potential repeal of former President Barack Obamas health care law has forced several members to literally fleetown hall meetings.
For Pomeroy and others, its provided a dash of optimism just when the party is hitting its modern-day nadir. For Republicans, it hasnt yet caused panic. But its forced them to begin contemplating the need for inoculation.
I think theres no question that the Democrats are synchronized, coordinated and animated. And the use of misinformation ...leading to false conclusions has empowered their side and brought the public almost to a frenzy, said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
There is a lathering effect thats happened on the left that will have possible powerful implications going forward, he added. It will be our responsibility to defuse it with truth and good information.
Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
On Tuesday, the House GOP held a strategy session to discuss how demonstrators have disrupted their town hall events. Republican leaders told members to be gracious and not create a scene, according to aides.
But some lawmakers at the session had quirkier remedies. Along with basics like developing a safety plan and keeping an open line of communication with local law enforcement, former sheriff Rep.Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) said he tries to offer protesters donuts.
I have 33 years of law enforcement experience, so House leadership asked me to share some security recommendations for other members of the conference to consider implementing in their district offices, Reichert told The Huffington Post.
Republicans didnt expect theyd be in this position so soon after Trumps election. But their need to quickly shift gears from celebrating an election triumph to addressing heated protests is not without precedent.
The Obama White House was first besieged by questions over the Tea Party protests in mid-February 2009. And its initial response, like the Trump administrations after it, was to dismiss them. Then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs famously mocked CNBCs Rick Santelli as over-caffeinated and inauthentic. Later, he called the tea party movement astroturf.
It was probably the biggest mistake we made as a White House: not taking seriously that we had to engage that fight, a former Obama administration official conceded. On the inside, it wasnt clear that this was the spark for a fundamental shift in politics.
The next few months will show whether the current protests represent a fundamental shift or something less tectonic. But their intensity is unmistakable(the town hall eruptions in 2009 didnt really start until the summer) and theyve left Republicans struggling to anticipate the fallout.
Any time that you have a group that is willing to get out and spend their Saturday for a cause, [it] shouldnt be ignored, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said of recent protests.You have to take any grassroots movement serious, he added.
And for some Republicans, including those intimately involved in the 2010 wave, faint echoes are apparent.
Oh my gosh, yes, there are a lot of parallels [between 2010 and now], said Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman during the 2010 elections. Put it this way: The parallels are potentially there. The question is, will the Democrats, in some respects, try to force it? Because that just wont work.
But not everyone is convinced that 2018 will be a 2010 redux. Liberal populist movements have sprouted up before, only to dissipate over time. Some observers, including members of the Trump administration, argue that the current discord has the distinct flavor of orchestrated chicanery.
Theyre trying to put huge political pressure on us, said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), indicatingthat he and other Republicans believe demonstrators are being funded by Democratic interest groups. Theyre busting into our offices. Our staffs across the nation are having to call security agencies, he said.
Brat called Democratic backers efforts to organize people the biggest news story probably in the country right now, but one that no ones reporting on it because it comes from the left.
For now, the GOP is pressing ahead with its agenda, hoping that protests simply dissipate. Repealing Obamacare remains a priority. And rarely, if ever, do members publicly rebuke Trump at least, not in harsh terms.
House Rules Chairman Pete Sessions, whose Texas district went for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump 48.5 to 46.6, is now in the crosshairs of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He suggested that the best way to respond to the new pressure is to deliver results.
We all have pressure on us to deliver an agenda that gets more people back to work, that is fairer for people literally to make America great again, he said.
Mike McAuliff contributed reporting.
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Democrats Were Blindsided By The Tea Party Wave. Now ... - Huffington Post