This article is a follow-up to my last post, about why the government shutdown is a mistake. This time, I'm going to dig deeper and analyze the underlying problem with the Tea Party movement's perception of reality.
Now before I begin, I feel it's necessary to remind everyone that policy-wise, I agree with the Tea Party at least 90 % of the time. And this is the reason why the Tea Party upsets me so much - we fight for virtually the same thing, but their lack of intellectualism, education and frankly manners makes their fight counterproductive. The Tea Party is hurting the values and ideas that I've believed in since I was 10 years old (that's how old I was when I first got involved in politics).
I used to oversee with the Tea Party's flaws - back in 2010, I defended the Tea Party vigorously on the blog I had back then. I realized that the Tea Party was extreme, but, to quote myself, I thought it was "necessary extremism" - sure, the Tea Party didn't have the most intelligent leaders at the time, but they increased party morale and energized the base, which was necessary after the disastrous 2008 defeat.
Now of course, I didn't think the Tea Party would get to actually pick our candidates. Or at least that if they did, they'd actually think a little before choosing. After all, we all know that as much as we love conservatism, there are a bunch of voters in the middle whom you have to reach out to if you want to win. Especially in the blue and purple states.
I guess I was young and naive. While the Tea Party energized the Republican base, it also destroyed the credibility of the party. In the 2010 elections this damage was concealed by an anti-establishment wave, which the Tea Party took to mean that their methods were working. Of course, anyone with the faintest knowledge of political history understands that outrage against the establishment is hardly a new thing - similar waves have happened before at different points in time, sometimes hurting the democrats, sometimes republicans. The Tea Party really are a strange type of conservatives who refuse to learn from history, given that one of the main tenents of conservatism is to learn from history rather than reject it the way utopian ideologies (like communism) do.
I've been thinking a lot about why this is - how can they not learn from history, how can they think their strategies are going to work? How stupid do you have to get to believe that someone will be convinced to join your side if you demonstrate using a sign that says "Obama is the antichrist" or "Obama is Stalin"? How can you honestly believe that that will do anything except make people think you're a weirdo and give fodder to the late night talk show hosts? How can you think that you'll ever convince anyone by spamming comment fields on Politico with "Obummer is a kenyan socialist"?
I think I might have the answer, and it is what I would like to call The Hollywood fallacy: "The good guys always win in the end"
When you ask a Tea Partier how they are ever going to actually win the presidency, they typically give you an answer like "Well we want limited government and restorating America to its constitutional foundation". That's great of course, but it doesn't answer the question: How exactly are you going to win? What's the game plan?
The truth is that there is no game plan. The Tea Party views itself as the "good guys" and, since they're the good guys, they don't need a plan, because the good guys always win in the end. We all know that - no matter how stupid you are, even if you're Forrest Gump, things will work out for you because you have such a good heart and intentions. You will simply be lucky, because that's what signifies a good guy's life - endless of luck that gets him out of every tough situation (remember how Jesus totally got out unscathed after he was arrested for blasphemy?).
It's ironic because the Tea Party hates Hollywood just like they hate mainstream - I'm sorry, "lamestream" - media. Yet, they think of themselves as the protagonists in a movie, and as such they are bound to win.
The Tea Party loves to point to people whom no-one thought could get elected, or reforms that no-one thought was ever going to pass, but still did. Lincoln was elected against all odds, the 13th amendment passed against all odds, women got the right to vote against all odds, Winston Churchill became prime minister against all odds and so on. Lots of good guys & causes beating impossible odds!
Here's the thing, though - these people, and the people behind all those causes, all had a plan for how to get a majority of the population & congress to agree with them. The woman's suffrage movement didn't win because they were right; they won because their understanding of political strategy was far superior to that of their opponents. Thaddeus Stevens had argued for abolition far longer and far more loudly than Lincoln - he was arguably an even better guy than Lincoln would ever be, as he also supported equal rights for blacks (something Lincoln did not). Yet, Lincoln is the one who was elected president, and Lincoln is the one who got slavery banned. Why? Because he had a strategy, he was willing to compromise and to work across the party lines.
Other good guys - like Churchill - were in fact quite lucky. But how did things end for Churchill? He was voted out of office just a few months after World War II ended, and because of that, the UK became a socialistic welfare state. Why? Well, churchill didn't really get his office by being good at politics - since WWII was going on, appointing a man who had been first lord of the admirality as prime minister made sense after the previous PM had to resign. Churchill did a great job during WWII and enjoyed high support, but still, three months after Victory in Europe day, voters rejected him. What went wrong?
Since Churchill made it to PM without any political strategy, he figured he'd never need any political strategy, ever, for anything. After all, everyone had united behind him during the war - that must mean they like him, right? Surely that would carry him to victory in the post-war elections.
As it turns out, Churchill's temporary popularity during the war was more of the "national unity" type that George W Bush enjoyed after 9/11. When Churchill, in the following election campaign, compared the Labour party with the Nazis, he sealed his fate. The British parliament has a total of 602 seats, and in the election following the war, conservatives lost 189! Turns out even war heros need to watch their mouth, refrain themselves from insulting their opponents with farfetched parallels, and just in general think before they act.
If Winston Churchill couldn't get away with calling the Labour party nazis, then why would some uneducated inexperienced never-won-a-world-war Tea Party candidate be able to get away with comparing Obama to Hitler? Oh, and the Labour party in Britain was and still is a lot more left-winged than the Democrats in the US.
If Churchill had won, Britain may never have become a welfare state. The course of history was changed because one good guy who fell victim to the Hollywood fallacy: He thought he would win just because he was "the good guy".
Tea Partiers like to make claims like "Once everyone hears our message, they'll join us" and "If we weren't silenced by the lamestream media all americans would know what we stand for and agree with us". This is a common trait shared by pretty much all radical movements: "Once they understand our point of view, they will have to agree with it" - and by extension, anyone who disagrees is uninformed. Again this is a theme often seen in Hollywood movies - the misunderstood hero who gets his revenge once he can get people to see beyond his looks/background/other superficial negative trait and see him for whom he really is.
Vegans tend to act the same way - "if people only understood that animals have to suffer for humans to eat meat & dairy, they'd join us". Personally, I understand that animals have to suffer for me to get my pork chops and sausages, but I eat them anyway. Vegans claim that my actions mean that I can't possibly have "fully" understood their philosophy, just like those who disagree with the Tea Party must not fully have understood the dangers of deficit spending and the benefits of low taxes. Just like many vegans think they can convince people just by screaming "meat is murder" and other simplistic vegan slogans, Tea Partiers believe that screaming "Obama is a communist" and "Obamacare is genocide" - after all, the only reason why someone wouldn't agree that Obamacare is genocide is that they haven't been informed that it is, right? Screaming at them solves that problem. It's not like someone could understand the issue, and yet disagree. At least not in the perverted universe of a Tea Partier.
However, there is another reason why the Tea Party prefers screaming to arguing: They simply don't know enough to argue for their cause. They got their hearts in the right place, but they don't understand why they have to read about the issues. The Tea Party movement is by nature anti-intellectual, and that is its biggest weakness. While the conservative movement that gave us Goldwater & Reagan embraced intellectualism and higher education, the Tea Party instead celebrates the hillbilly who didn't graduate high school. They will even choose him in a primary over his master's degree-holding opponent! Just like in a movie; the hero is poor and uneducated (like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic) while the antagonist is a rich Ivy league graduate.
The minute the Tea Party understands that the real world isn't like a movie, they can actually become an asset to our party.
This is it for today - my next post will deal with the fallout that the government shutdown (in my opinion) will have on the Tea Party. Thanks for reading.
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22 comments:
"The minute the Tea Party understands that the real world isn't like a movie, they can actually become an asset to our party."
For starters, I did not know that 'Our Party' was Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
Fianna Fail? Fine Gael? What are you talking about? I'm not a member of either of those parties, Irish party politics is screwed up. I'm a member of UKIP, and while as a non-American I can't register as a Republican, I identify as one.
And I'm a better republican than any american tea partier.
"And I'm a better republican than any american tea partier."
With such blithering non-sense, you have lost your mind. We are still waiting for your side of the party to come up with real economic solutions.
Your overall point is well taken, John. Not that I agree with everything you wrote. The problem I have with the tea party is the extreme name-calling element within the ranks. Although I do not know just how many of these there are. But the tea party takes a bad rap from them, it's true.
Also, strategy does seem to escape them. And this shutdown is a precise example. No idea where they were going, just hell-bent to get there.
But in some ways I'm glad this happened. We may yet get something out of it. I hope the House doesn't rollover with the senate deal. We can have Obama on the ropes if we want to. If we stick together and are willing to compromise.
That is my problem with the tea party in general. They don't understand that they need to compromise to move forward. And you explained this very well. Presently, conservatism has no other possible home than the Republican party. Some don't get that, or don't want to get it. They are happy to burn down the house, rather than make small compromises and move forward.
-Martha
Martha, thanks for the constructive feedback. I realize not all Tea partiers do name-calling, but it's not like it's uncommon - even their leaders like Sarah Palin engage in such immature practices. And even those who are not name-calling, don't really tend to know that much about the issues.
Ohio Joe, what exactly are you saying here? That I shouldn't be writing here because I'm not an American?
I've been writing for years about what "real economic solutions" I support, and you know that.
You, are free to write as a European John, but that does not mean you know what is going on in America. The Tea Party does not have anymore bad actors than the general public, yet you point to a few Tea Partiers with questionable signs and suggest that they are representative of the Tea Party movement.
Yes, in the past you have written good economic policies, but what good are they if you do not want to want to impliment them when budget time comes.
Finally, like other establishment types, you have lost sight of the real priority. What is the sense of getting a few minor spending cuts when we have a health care sytem that is killing the country? This is no good for the country.
Martha, you had your chance for small compromises, small comprises are not big enough to solve of economic problems at this point.
OJ, yeah that is probably true. But there has to be a better alternative than kamikaze, and so far the Ted Cruz faction hasn't produced one.
-Martha
OJ, what Paul Ryan has tried to do is produce serious reform, albeit incrementally. And he hasn't gotten very far. We are so far gone . . .
-Martha
This is the way I see it.
We (conservatives) are right. We have the right ideas, the right appreciation of The Constitution, the right motives for all Americans, and the right vision of what America has been and should be. And even though many of our Republicans leave a lot to be desired, they are NOT like most democrats.
The problem is that most Americans would rather watch Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty, and over-analyze Breaking Bad than think about their country, and how important it is to preserve our liberties. The media has turned America against us. Our name is mud. So I don't know what the answer is, and I am not at all optimistic that we can change anything. It seems we are too far gone, to my mind. The only thing that can save us now is enough catastrophic events to wake people up to the awfulness of our situation.
Anyway, the tea party has good motives, but like I said, kamikaze isn't going to cut it.
-Martha
Some of the efforts of the tea party have gone unrewarded, but the same can be said about establishment Republican tactics as well. No? How much if Paul Ryan's entitlement reform efforts has been implemented, and how realistic of a chance did we really have of it happening under Reid and Obama. It cuts both ways. Throw in the 40 times the house has voted to repeal ObamaCare. Waste of time and resources?
I generally don't put much stock in what someone born and living in Europe thinks about out our politics, with all due respect.
Mr. Ryan is not serious in his reforms. If anything, he has produced nothing, but damage to the GOP.
BTW, if people like Mr. Ryan had their way, we would be another Europe. This is America, we do not want quasi-Socialism and Leftist non-sense.
Right wingnut, this isn't simply about efforts going unrewarded. That's life, that's how politics works - you put in a lot of work and you don't really know what you'll get for it in the end.
However, this is not about getting safe returns - this is about ethics and professional standards, something the Tea Party congressmen are lacking.
It's so easy to say that "they were elected to stop obamacare so they have to do everything they can". First; Republicans were only able to keep the house in 2012 due to a technicality known as redistricting. The democrats got more votes after all, and won even bigger victories in the senate and of course the presidential race. So where's the mandate?
Also, if the situation was reversed, would you accept it if the Democrats acted the way the Tea Party is right now? Say that they had congress, and that they had been elected (but received fewer votes than the Republicans) on a promise to stop entitlement reform, and they shut down the government to stop Republicans from reforming entitlements... is that just fair game then? Be consistent. Judge yourself by the standards that you judge others by.
I find it REALLY funny how no-one cares about me living in Europe, as long as you agree with me. Then when I suddenly come up with an argument you can't answer, you choose to ignore me because of my ethnicity. I know more about american politics than you do RW (and OJ) - you don't have to live in a country to know that country's politics. If you had followed Swedish politics since you were 13 and read several books about it, you'd know more about Swedish politics than the average Swede, despite never having lived in Sweden.
As for Paul Ryan, while I'm not sure if his plan will be enough - time really is running out fast! - at least he is making a serious attempt instead of just screaming at his opponents.
We probably would have been better off if no one had ever heard of the tea parties. Whether they existed or not, the Republicans would have picked up a large amount of seats in 2010, perfectly consistent with historical off year elections. Instead, we won the amount of seats we should have won, reflecting massive revulsion of Obama, and the tea parties leaped to take credit, thereby ensuring more factionalism.
While the House has every right to not fund the ACA, you could certainly make the argument that the American People, in all their ignorance, either didn't vote, or voted for Obama and so deserve implementation of the ACA.
John, you certainly write longer articles (way, way too long, and boring as hell) than me about politics, but I doubt you know more about American politics than I do. I will acknowledge that you're better at putting words on paper than I am, but that's never been my strong point. Swedish politics? You're right. I'm clueless on that one.
I decided to torture myself and read your entire article. Your writing is good, but the content is awful. However, I acknowledge there is a modest demand for anti-tea party content from the quasi-right. David Brooks and David Frum have proven that.
Just a tip...most people will not take the time to read something that long that isn't authored by a more established blogger or columnist. I would recommend condensing your articles down to a few paragraphs until you have a more established readership. You're welcome.
John,
I was just thinking about what I wrote earlier...
...However, I acknowledge there is a modest demand for anti-tea party content from the quasi-right. David Brooks and David Frum have proven that....
Much of the demand for such content comes from the left. They use it to drive a wedge between the various factions of the Republican Party. The Kos crowd loves articles like yours.
....Then when I suddenly come up with an argument you can't answer, you choose to ignore me because of my ethnicity.
I need to take issue with this, but I'll assume something is being lost in translation here. You and I have the same "ethnicity." Yes, It's true. I could walk down any Swedish street, and blend right in, as long as I didn't speak.
YOU DON'T LIVE HERE. Therefore, you don't have the same perspective. It's really as simple as that.
" First; Republicans were only able to keep the house in 2012 due to a technicality known as redistricting. The democrats got more votes after all, and won even bigger victories in the senate and of course the presidential race. So where's the mandate? " That is only partially true. The fact that dems got a few more popular votes is totally irrelivant when some state has a different voting system than Others. You are not comparing apples to apples.
"Whether they existed or not, the Republicans would have picked up a large amount of seats in 2010"
Total rewriting of history.
Joe, of course we would have. The off year election phenomenon has been going on my entire adult life. I remember Reagan losing dozens of seats in 82, and losing the Senate in 86. That's the way it's always been. I think the tea parties have been a net negative. I'm sorry, they're my people, but I have to call it like I see it.
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