- John Samples, CATO Institute
John Samples is director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington, D.C., and the author of the forthcoming book The Struggle to Limit Government and he recently published an article in the Detroit News that was reprinted on the website of the CATO Institute entitled “Tea Partiers Shouldn’t Date The GOP“.
In the article, Samples makes the case that the leaderless style of the Tea Party Movement is exactly what makes it as successful and powerful as it is.
The quality that gives the Tea Party movement its legitimacy is that it is so fundamentally illegitimate: outside the establishment, bereft of representation on K Street, and without an identifiable face to speak for it on Meet the Press. This is a movement that sprang deep from within the viscera of America, not from some political poll or focus group.
It is not Republican; it is not even conservative. It has no interest in debating the merits of No Child Left Behind, abstinence-only sex education or George W. Bush’s rationale for going to Iraq. Replacing a “spend and borrow” Democrat with a “spend and borrow” Republican is not the goal of the Tea Party movement.
I couldn’t agree more.
Does that mean that some organization between the Tea Party groups isn’t necessary? No. In fact, some organization and coordination will simply be a fact of the process of maturation of the movement and frankly long term success will not be achieved without it. Each time a Tea Party group formalizes a link to another Tea Party group, the coordination between the groups becomes more focused and more powerful. For example, the Scott Brown victory was a direct result of a coalescing of interest among Tea Party members. The more the press reported that Brown was gaining in the polls, the more aware various Tea Party groups became of him. The more aware the groups were of the issues in the campaign, the more likely they became to suggest to their members that they should become involved. As more and more word of mouth spread between Tea Party members, the more focused Brown’s support became resulting in the biggest upset in this century.
However, there is a fundamental flaw in repeating this strategy. It’s the Press.
In Scott Brown’s case, we were lucky that the media seized upon the race and published news story after news story about the fabled “Kennedy Seat” in the Senate and the more galvanized Tea Party members became. We cannot and should not count on the media being our unwitting ally again. For example, did you know that there was a Illinois primary for a Congressional Seat (IL-11) where the most conservative candidate won the Republican nomination for the district with over 64% of the votes? Did you also know that this candidate will be facing off against one of the most liberal “moderate” Democrats in the House, Debbie Halvorson? His name is Adam Kinzinger and according to one RedState blogger:
Adam’s a fiscal conservative, military veteran (Air NG, served overseas), and pro-life; his hobbies include toppling incumbents in elections, advocating smaller government, and subduing would-be knife-wielding maniacs with his bare hands. His opponent, Debbie Halvorson, is best known for folding like a cheap suit over cap-and-trade, then running and hiding over health care rationing like most of the rest of the supposedly ‘moderate’ Democrats in Red Districts. IL-11 is a R+1 district, so check Adam out.
I bet your answer is that you didn’t know about him and I would suggest that it is no accident. The primaries in Illinois had some big name players in various Districts including “moderate” Republican incumbent Mark Kirk who was running against two conservative candidates in the Primary for one of the wealthiest districts in Illinois, District 10. The press latched on to this race as a possible repeat of Scott Brown’s race. Unfortnately, what the press actually reported was less about Kirk’s opponents and more about Kirk himself. The reason, I believe, is because the press was skewing coverage to give his Democratic opponent the ability to claim that because Kirk had to move right of center to win the primary and he could then be framed as a “flip-flopper” in the general election. Sound unreasonable? Here’s a Newser story that ran the day of the primary:
If polls prove accurate, moderate Mark Kirk will emerge victorious from today’s Republican Senate primary in Illinois, beating out two more conservative candidates with tea party backing. His victory would put a dent in the tea party panic gripping the GOP, says Talking Points Memo. Republicans in states including Florida, Pennsylvania, and California have been worried that far-right candidates will topple moderates, then lose in the general election.
“This blows a hole in that whole narrative,” says a Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee rep. But Democrats believe that, even if Kirk wins, he’s had to move far enough to the right in the primary that they can attack him as a flip-flopper. Tea partiers aren’t buying the polls, but they say a loss won’t discourage them. “We’ll just keep fighting for the next one,” says one activist, “which will be Dick Durbin in 2014.”
The problem with all the press coverage of Kirk and his race is that Kinzinger’s race got almost no coverage. I found out about it via conservative blogs and I passed the information along to my fellow Tea Party members and encouraged them to support Adam. We avoided any involvement in the Kirk race because truthfully there was nothing in that race for us to get excited about. Kirk’s primary opponents were not going to overcome his lead in the polls and frankly, even if Kirk holds off the Democrat in the general election, there’s not a hair-width’s difference between the Republican and the Democrat so in our opinion it was much ado about nothing. Adam Kinzinger, on the other hand, had not only a great chance of winning, but he had a resume that backed up his claims of conservative leadership. Was this cherry-picking on my part? Probably. But I would argue that cherry-picking isn’t bad in all cases and recommended in others. Picking good races and good candidates to support allows Tea Party members to feel confident in their support of these candidates and allows them to allocate their scare resources to places where they can do the most good. In my opinion, the Kirk race was a no-win situation, whereas Kinzinger was no-lose. Even if Kinzinger had lost the primary, he would have been back to fight again another day. Tea Parties should not place their bets on the most likely to win a single race, but rather on those most likely to make a difference in the long run.
We cannot depend solely upon the media to provide Tea Party groups with the necessary information to make informed recommendations to our memberships. That’s one of the primary reasons for creating this website. We want local Tea Party groups to let other Tea Party groups know which races are important and which races are a waste of time. The honest assessment of a Tea Party voice identifying a good, honest, principled candidate and the issues he or she is promoting would be more helpful to Tea Party groups around the country than 100 news articles.
Political Parties and The Media play games trying to nudge candidates one way or another to “appeal to the right voters”. It’s their nature and it is their fatal flaw. The Tea Party movement focuses on principles which is the exact opposite. The Tea Party movement will fail if it allows itselft to become infiltrated by those who would try to move the Tea Party away from it’s focus on Constitutional principles and toward getting in bed with either Political Party or toward forming a separate third party. The Media has a vested interest in seeing the Tea Party Movement fail and you can bet that their efforts will be focused on trying to convince local Tea Party members that their future lies with one or the other of the two choices listed above.
Beware! Both choices are false choices and would turn the Tea Party into nothing more than tools of the rot they are fighting against so successfully right now.
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