Nowhere to go but down for Tea Party supporters
This column was first published on November 3, 2010 at Washington Square News.
Winning elections is fairly easy. Governing is hard. Tea Party supporters will come to realize this in the coming two years, just as progressives have over the previous two. The electoral numbers have been in the Conservatives’ favor since President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The president has had to balance political and policy interests in response to a historic economic crisis.
On the one hand, the skyrocketing unemployment rate required a government response, specifically a great influx of federal cash. On the other hand, the stimulus (like the bank bailouts) proved to be unpopular, despite economists’ estimates that it has creatednearly three million jobs.
Ignoring the economy would have been politically devastating, but a successful policy response wasn’t a political winner either.
Add in the fact that the president’s party nearly always loses Congressional seats in midterm elections, and it’s clear that Election Day 2010 was always going to be a big night for right-wingers. What is surprising is how little the Tea Party actually accomplished last night while the rest of the Republican party swept the House.
While Rand Paul and Marco Rubio rode to victory in Kentucky and Florida respectively, Christine O’Donnell was crushed in a race that was the Republicans’ to lose. Sharon Angle lost narrowly to Harry Reid, despite his 33 percent approval rating. This all speaks to the fact that, while Americans are unhappy with the state of the economy (and blame incumbent Democrats for it), the incoherent small-government message of the Tea Party still has yet to gain widespread acceptance.
That won’t change when Tea Party politicians head to Capitol Hill. They ran on an anti-tax message, saying they would cut government spending to balance the budget. But taxes as a percentage of GDP are actually at their lowest level since 1942. The “taxed enough already” message falls flat when it becomes clear that Tea Partiers aren’t trying to prevent confiscatory taxes, but are instead arguing for pushing revenue to historic lows.
Also, it isn’t quite clear how Tea Partiers plan to cut government spending when almost none of them admit to a desire to deal with Social Security, Medicare and the defense budget (which together make up 85 percent of the total budget). The Tea Party may be serious about balancing the budget, cutting spending or cutting taxes, but there is no way they can accomplish all three.
But the Tea Party’s empty promise to repeal health care reform is likely to bring about the most disappointment among its tricorne-sporting ranks. This is not going to happen. Republicans don’t even have a majority in the Senate, much less than the 60 votes they need to overcome a filibuster. And even then Obama would just veto a repeal bill. Yet the far-right has shouted from the rooftops its intent to “repeal and replace” health care reform with its own creation.
Tea Party supporters surely have high hopes for next year’s Congress. For the first time in two years, they will have the power to halt Obama’s agenda in the legislature. But they will soon learn that vague anti-government rhetoric doesn’t turn bills into law and doesn’t balance budgets, even if it does win elections.
