Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category
Monkey Cage: The tea partys anti-Washington consensus
By Erin K. Jenne October 19 at 2:01 PM
The following is a guest post by political scientistErin K. Jenneof Central European University.
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The tea party movement has been called out for many things, not least of which is championing positions that would make Barry Goldwater blush. This begs the question: What separates the tea party from Republicans or from the conservative movement at large?
Analysts have conducted surveys of self-identified tea party members to ascertain whether they differ in any important ways from the American voting population at large (or from Republicans), concluding that they are overwhelmingly white, middle-aged to old, slightly more educated and slightly higher income than the median American voter. There are also indications that tea party members have somewhat more negative views of minorities than the median voter. For example, they are more likely on average to associate welfare programs with low-income minorities believing that government programs that the broad American middle class depends on (Medicare and Social Security) are legitimate but that those they believe minorities disproportionately use (food stamps and Medicaid) are not. These programs, they believe, should be cut because they foster a culture of dependency on the government.
The positions adopted by self-defined tea party candidates may resemble core conservative values, but, in fact, an analysis of the transcripts of Republican Party presidential primary debates in 2008 vs. 2012 suggest that presidential candidates appear to have moved further to the right in the era of the tea party movement.
Juraj Medzihorsky, Levente Littvay and I recently published a piece on the effect of the tea party on the Republican Party since the formers inception in 2009. Our article, Has the Tea Party Era Radicalized the Republican Party? Evidence from Text Analysis of the 2008 and 2012 Republican Primary Debates, was published in the October 2014 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics.
Using a text analytic technique, we examine the transcripts of statements made by every major presidential candidate in the 2008 and the 2012 pre-Iowa Caucus debates (the pre-Iowa debates were selected to identify the original ideological positions of the candidates, before election period jockeying). In our study, we extracted positions of each of the candidates for the two primary periods on a latent dimension (more on this shortly), which is given below.
Figure 1 shows that not only did Republican presidential candidates in the 2012 primary elections stake out positions further to the right than Republican presidential candidates in the 2008 elections, but that those who ran in both elections (Ron Paul and Mitt Romney) adopted positions further to the right in 2012 than they did in 2008! This strongly suggests that the party has moved further to the right, most likelyin response to the rhetoric and political activism on the right embodied by the tea party movement.
Candidate positions. Figure: Medzihorsky, Littvay and Jenne, 2014
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Monkey Cage: The tea partys anti-Washington consensus
The Fix: Whither the tea party in 2016?
As the GOP approaches the 2016 presidential primaries -- which, we would remind folks, are set to begin in earnest in about three weeks -- the Republican field is about as wide open as it has ever been.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Mitt Romney, who is not running (probably?), leading the field, with former Florida governor Jeb Bush in second place. As we've written before, though, the GOP hopefuls are so jumbled that the margin of error renders these kinds of polls pretty meaningless. Throw in Romney's non-candidacy, and they are even less revealing of anything.
But one thing the polls do show right now is quite interesting, and that is that the tea partytrails.
Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that the most tea party-friendly candidates in the potential 2016 GOP primary field are Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), along with neurosurgeon Ben Carson. These three, more than the others, appear to be aligned with that movement, even as someone like Paul is far more complex than the "tea party" label.
And despite a reasonably high profile for all three men -- at least among the GOP base -- they take a grand total of 17 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, more establishment-oriented Republicans such as Romney, Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) combine to take 43 percent.
Now, again, these polls don't shed a ton of light this early. And Romney's showing certainly skews things because he's basically the one guy who is extremely well-known.
Even if you exclude him, though, the story is similar: the tea partyers take 22 percent, while the establishment takes 30 percent. (That also excludes people such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who combine for 12 percent and are probably more establishment than tea party.)
And if there's one Republican in the field who best embodies the tea party, it's probably Cruz. After polling as high as 20 percent in GOP primary surveys last year, he's at just 3 percent with Romney in the race and 4 percent without him.
This is hardly the first developmentto suggest a waning influence for the tea party. The movement was unable to upend an incumbent senator for the first time in three elections in the 2014 primaries. Meanwhile, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed that 19 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the tea party -- a new low -- and that 6 percent had a "verypositive" view of it. An additional 46 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of it.
That 19 percent, if you just look at the GOP base, still looks pretty formidable, but it's clear that about half of that base isn't on board with the tea party anymore. And the fact that only 6 percent of Americans feel "very positive" about the movement -- also a new low -- suggests that its true adherents number very few Republicans.
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The Fix: Whither the tea party in 2016?
Whither the tea party in 2016?
As the GOP approaches the 2016 presidential primaries -- which, we would remind folks, are set to begin in earnest in about three weeks -- the Republican field is about as wide open as it has ever been.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Mitt Romney, who is not running (probably?), leading the field, with former Florida governor Jeb Bush in second place. As we've written before, though, the GOP hopefuls are so jumbled that the margin of error renders these kinds of polls pretty meaningless. Throw in Romney's non-candidacy, and they are even less revealing of anything.
But one thing the polls do show right now is quite interesting, and that is that the tea partytrails.
Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that the most tea party-friendly candidates in the potential 2016 GOP primary field are Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), along with neurosurgeon Ben Carson. These three, more than the others, appear to be aligned with that movement, even as someone like Paul is far more complex than the "tea party" label.
And despite a reasonably high profile for all three men -- at least among the GOP base -- they take a grand total of 17 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, more establishment-oriented Republicans such as Romney, Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) combine to take 43 percent.
Now, again, these polls don't shed a ton of light this early. And Romney's showing certainly skews things because he's basically the one guy who is extremely well-known.
Even if you exclude him, though, the story is similar: the tea partyers take 22 percent, while the establishment takes 30 percent. (That also excludes people such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who combine for 12 percent and are probably more establishment than tea party.)
And if there's one Republican in the field who best embodies the tea party, it's probably Cruz. After polling as high as 20 percent in GOP primary surveys last year, he's at just 3 percent with Romney in the race and 4 percent without him.
This is hardly the first developmentto suggest a waning influence for the tea party. The movement was unable to upend an incumbent senator for the first time in three elections in the 2014 primaries. Meanwhile, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed that 19 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the tea party -- a new low -- and that 6 percent had a "verypositive" view of it. An additional 46 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of it.
That 19 percent, if you just look at the GOP base, still looks pretty formidable, but it's clear that about half of that base isn't on board with the tea party anymore. And the fact that only 6 percent of Americans feel "very positive" about the movement -- also a new low -- suggests that its true adherents number very few Republicans.
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Whither the tea party in 2016?