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Dont be sure liberals can replicate the right wings resistance to governmentor that it will benefit them if they can do it.

On Tuesday, Democrats voted lockstep against Betsy DeVoss for secretary of education. It was a sign that the party had moved toward a strategy of obstruction. It is an ironic tip of the cap to Donald Trump and the Tea Party. And it might be a big mistake.

Nothing succeeds like success. Whenever someone does something that works, the natural instinct is to replicate it. This happens in politics, business, and sports. Everybody plays Moneyball now.

Democrats have watched what the Tea Party and Donald Trump, respectively, pulled off, and now they want to seek revenge by mimicking the very tactics used by their adversaries. The problem is that (1) not everyone is positioned to do the same things, and (2) times and situations change. Sometimes fighting the last war works; other times, it doesnt.

Faced with a surprising loss, our carnal instinct is for crude revenge, a tit-for tat. But revenge is a dish best served cold. Many columns describe Democrats as becoming the party of no. To my knowledge, none of these columns were written by someone on the center-right, and that makes a certain amount of sense. It would be easy to suggest that what Im about to say is concern trolling. But what follows is sincere advice.

Before attempting to replicate what conservatives did, its worth asking if it is replicable. There are reasons to believe the techniques and strategies are not transferable.

First, the Tea Party was, as I have lamented, an anti-intellectual movement. Conversely, the Democratic base is full of people who listen to NPR. Whipping up the same kind of fervor that shunts the nuances of governing is unlikely to unify the left. A corollary to this is that a large portion of people on the left actually like government. So how do you get the left to unify around a shutdown tactic?

Second, politics is about choices, and copying Trumps tactics would deprive Democrats of a favorable contrast. Keep in mind, the fundamental choice may not always be left vs. right. Donald Trump has tried to make the choice about insiders vs. outsiders, and (to a certain extent) this strategy has worked. However, that was the last wara war he defined. Maybe the next election will focus on chaos vs. normalcy or incompetence vs. competence.

If that happens, Democrats would be foolish to abandon this unique selling proposition. Politics is about addition, and there could be demand for a rational and thoughtful party in 2020. Democrats would essentially abandon this emerging coalition by seeking to ape Trump.

Its hard to see how a race to the bottomthat serves to further weaken faith in institutions and governmenthelps the brand of big government. Instead, Democrats need to offer an alternative vision of how sensible, thoughtful, nuanced governance is the preferred alternative to Trumpism.

Even if liberals were to replicate everything that happened during the last eight years as Republicans resisted President Obama, theres no guarantee that it would end with a victory for their team. After all, Trump did lose the popular vote. It took a confluence of numerous external events for Trump to win. Adopting a radical strategy of reflexive resistancebased on the assumption that liberals will inexorably win the presidency in 2024seems like an unwise gamble.

But forget about winning back the presidency, there is no guarantee Democrats will even be able to replicate what Republicans did in 2010 and 2014. To be sure, Democrats won the 2006 midterms by essentially running as the party of no against a flailing George W. Bush administration. However, that was year six of his presidency, and the wheels had come off. What is more, while it is not unusual for a presidents party to lose seats in midterms, Democrats will be playing defense in 2018, defending several incumbent Senate seats in states where Trump won.

While whipping up the base is likely to increase midterm turnout, midterms typically skew much older and whiter than do presidential elections. This is all a long way of saying that while its possible Democrats could have good midterms, its a steeper climb.

Its one thing for Democrats to unite in opposition to Trumps cabinet picks; thats easy. What happens when the budget comes this spring? What if it defunds Planned Parenthood? Do Democrats force a government shutdown over that, or do they merely vote against it? There is extensive range between these two strategic decisions. The base will surely be clamoring for a shutdown, butagainthis is an off brand move for the Party of Government that might want to come to the rescue if Trumps chaos finally backfires. Warren Hardings return to normalcy offers us a model for winning after a period of turmoil.

Now, I have no illusions that liberals will heed my warnings any more than conservatives did. Just as Republicans were effectively leaderless for nearly a decade (between George W. Bush and Donald Trump), Democrats now find themselves without a de facto (or de jure) leader. Therefore, the initial instinct is to fight. The heart wants what the heart wants.

The first and most basic form of resistance is to take to the streets (just as the Tea Party did). Marches can be good for morale, but (with a few obvious exceptions) they are overrated in terms of change. The big Womens March was probably more about resolving intersectional racial tensions within the left (emphasizing its nonwhite leadership) than it was about winning the future.

Democrats have the chance to emerge as a serious and competent opposition party. However, scorched-earth tactics are not going to accomplish that goal. An economic populism that brings together working-class whites and African-Americans and Hispanics is within their reachbut the partys internal interest groups and actors each have a perverse incentive to stoke anger. Republicans spent a decade dealing with the tragedy of the commons problem. Now, it is the Democrats who are up at bat.

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The Left's Lame Tea Party Play - Daily Beast

February 7, 2017 11:56 PM By Shirin Rajaee

SACRAMENTO Its a step-by-step online handbook for resisting President Donald Trump and his agenda.

Its called the Indivisible Guide and it was written by former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the tea party.

It started as just a Google Doc that was posted on Twitter about a month after the election, but it soon started making its rounds online.

And since then, its been downloaded over 1 million times and groups all over the country are adopting it.

What were finding is the Indivisible Guide is actually a road map because most people who are getting involved right now have never been activists, theyve never protested, said Tracie Stafford, one of the organizers of the Sacramento Womens March.

The guide is based on the practices that the tea party used in getting Congress to listen during President Obamas administration.

Theyve taken the lessons that theyve learned from the tea party, and what they did as a party. The tea party disrupted the members of Congress, and they were visible, they were active, said Barbara Dehart the co-founder of Indivisible Women Nevada County.

Deharts group is one of hundreds putting the guide into action.

Its about resistance and your local communities rising up, she said.

The key tea party strategies being used to resist the Trump Agenda are building small local groups in your community and focusing on defense.

According to the guide, this means demanding that your local members of Congress be the voice of opposition on Capitol Hill. Its also about constantly saying NO to the Presidents agenda.

Grass Valleys Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the tea party weighed in via Skype.

The idea that theyre imitating tea party methodology, well theres no fixed or regular tea party methodology. So theyre claiming to imitate something that doesnt exist, said Meckler.

He adds Theyre doing it from the top down, telling people this is how you do politics, this is how you do a grass roots movement, but the idea of trying to recreate something organic in an inorganic way by trying to recreate it from the top down, simply doesnt work.

The guide goes in depth about how to write letters, how to protest, how do make phone calls to local congress members.

And while many of the groups are adopting it, some also say theyre making it their own.

More:
Groups Taking Lessons From Tea Party For Resisting Trump - CBS Local

MORRISTOWN, N.J.

For weeks, a swelling group has been showing up every Friday at the local office of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen to demand that he hold a town-hall meeting to answer concerns about his fellow Republicans plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

After weeks without an answer, the congressmans staff replied that he would be too busy, that such gatherings took considerable planning and that just finding a meeting place could be tough.

So the group, NJ 11th for Change, secured venues in all four counties that Frelinghuysen represents for times during the congressional recess this month and constituents plan to show up even if he does not.

With congressional phone lines overloaded and district offices mobbed across the country, it is beginning to look a lot like 2009. That year, horrified by a new president they saw as a radical, activists took to the streets under the Tea Party banner to protest government bailouts, then stormed summer town-hall meetings held by congressional Democrats to fight legislation that would become the Affordable Care Act.

With methodical door-to-door campaigns in the next years midterm elections, the Tea Party ended the careers of some of the nations most senior lawmakers. It pushed the Republican Party to the right, stymied the Obama agenda and paved the way for an outsider to win the White House.

This year, it is that new president, Donald Trump, who is cast as the radical. And as the resistance to him on the left tries to turn the large protest rallies of the last two weeks into political power, it is borrowing explicitly from the Tea Party playbook. The early result has been the biggest outpouring of constituent anger on Congress since the Tea Partys rise.

We borrowed the organizing and taking to the streets from the left. Theyre borrowing the showing up outside offices and doing legislative contact from us, said Brendan Steinhauser, who helped organize and train Tea Partyers as a staff member of FreedomWorks, a libertarian group in Washington.

Many of the new groups are embracing as their bible Indivisible, a 27-page guide written by former congressional staff members that advises Tea Party-like tactics to resist the Trump agenda. Just as groups like FreedomWorks used Google maps to help expand local Tea Party groups, the website for the guide helps Trump resisters find Indivisible groups near them.

Last week, groups that organized the nationwide womens marches in January announced local Next-Up Huddles to plan more local political actions, starting with crowds at town forums during the congressional recess beginning Feb. 20. And another group, the Town Hall Project 2018, is keeping a list of where members of Congress will hold meetings that week, encouraging constituents to show up the way Tea Partyers did in summer 2009.

I want to take our country back, said Katie Farnan, a member of Indivisible Front Range Resistance, which is among the groups calling, writing and showing up weekly with bagels and protest signs at Sen. Cory Gardners district offices to urge the Colorado Republican to hold town meetings. I hate to say that because its so Tea Party-ish, but it feels like weve lost it.

I dont embrace the tactics so much that I want to say lets go to the extreme, Farnan added. But I do embrace the idea that if your congressman wakes up worrying that hes not going to be re-elected, its a good thing. I want him to wake up worried.

The goal is to shake Republicans away from voting the party line for Trumps agenda, and to stiffen the spines of Democrats who might be inclined to go along with it. Its too early to say whether this new movement will start challenging Democrats from the left the way the Tea Party pushed primary challenges to Republicans from the right. But it is putting pressure on Democrats in states that Trump won.

In Missouri, for example, members of the new Indivisible group have been showing up every Tuesday at the office of Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, as well as her Republican counterpart, Sen. Roy Blunt. In New York, they have mobbed the district offices of Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats leader, and even cursed him at demonstrations outside his Brooklyn home.

There is some circularity here: The Tea Party loudly borrowed from the left, using as its guide Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky, considered the father of modern community organizing. It urged followers to adopt the Alinsky playbook to block health care reform at the town halls of 2009: freeze it, attack it, personalize it, polarize it, as one widely circulated email advised.

Like many of the initial Tea Partyers, many of the resisters on the left say they had never been involved in politics. They simply got frustrated yelling at their televisions and wanted to do more than sign online petitions.

Now, they organize on social media, and download apps, like Countable, that allow them to track lawmakers votes and to contact them. Some are running for long-vacant Democratic precinct leadership positions as a way to gain access to voter information that they plan to use in door-to-door canvassing.

And just like many Tea Partyers, the resisters of 2017 are getting what Elaine Patterson, a constituent marching on Frelinghuysens office, called a big civics lesson.

A friend asked me, Does Congress have any say in the presidents appointees?' Patterson recalled. I didnt know. I learned it was the Senate.

The resisters insist theirs are more polite protests. We send thank-you notes to members of Congress after we show up, said Hillary Shields, a paralegal who helped start Indivisible Kansas City. But the Tea Partyers say they did the same thing.

And like the Tea Partyers, members of the resistance declare that the soul of the nation is at stake.

Having watched the results of the presidential election with mounting gloom, Farnan, in Colorado, said she had to act, for her children. I dont want them to say, What did you do when this happened?' she said. Im making a paper trail. Youre going to see we did stuff.

But while it took the Tea Party months to register as serious opposition, the resistance on the left has already rattled Capitol Hill. Congressional offices report being overwhelmed by calls, letters and faxes about Trumps Cabinet appointees. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she had been persuaded by constituents when she announced she would vote against Trumps nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.

The women are in my grille no matter where I go, Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., told an audience last week. They come up, When is your next town hall? And believe me, its not to give positive input.

Continued here:
Tea Party looks better to left, as model to prod lawmakers - MyPalmBeachPost

LAKE CITY The North Central Florida Tea Party will begin meeting again on Thursday with KrisAnne Hall providing a lesson on State Sovereignty.

C-SPAN will also be in attendance to film the presentation for future broadcast.

Hall, a Wellborn resident, created the lesson at the request of a state legislator in Utah after he attended her Roots of Liberty presentation. In her State Sovereignty lesson the origin of the Constitution and the Federal government is explained.

The North Central Florida Tea Party will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Jackie Taylor Building, 128 SW Birley Road, Lake City.

The Tea Party meets on the second Thursday of the month and strives to keep its members up-to-date on the issues facing us in local, state and federal government. For more information, please call Sharon Higgins at 386-688-9402. Find more information on Hall at http://www.krisannehall.com.

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C-SPAN to film Tea Party meeting Thursday | News ... - Branford News

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Left Wing 'Tea Party' Growing in Chicago | Chicago Tonight | WTTW Chicago Tonight | WTTW It's being dubbed the tea party of the left. A new movement has bubbled up in Chicago and around the nation in response to the election of Donald Trump. Arlington Group Borrows Tea Party Tactics to Oppose Trump ...ARL now Turning Tea Party tactics on Trump: National organizer gives pep ...Morristown Green all 3 news articles »

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