Tea party movement

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Taxpayer March on Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC September 12, 2009.
Demonstration in Wisconsin 2011

The Tea Party movement is an American protest movement , initially libertarian and later increasingly right-wing populist , that emerged in 2009 and was initially directed against Barack Obama's economic policy, which was perceived as communist . The name of the movement refers to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Politically, it stands for limited government conservatism , i.e. a reduction in the power of the federal government, and defined its mission statement in the Contract from America in April 2009 . The tea party movement is now intensely supported by the religious right and the neoconservatives , without fundamentally adopting their socio-political statements.

history

The impetus for the emergence of the tea party movement is a very emotional comment by reporter Rick Santelli ("Santelli's rant") on February 19, 2009 on the US television channel CNBC , in which he responded to an announcement by the new US president Barack Obama , to set up an emergency program for over-indebted homeowners, apparently spontaneously called for a "Chicago Tea Party": The homeowners who got into difficulties due to the global financial crisis are to blame for their situation and it is wrong to support them. Debt is a private matter that does not concern society.

The idea of ​​mobilizing against the government with reference to the Boston Tea Party was not new on the right-wing conservative side. Since the early 1990s, there had been repeated attempts, initiated by large corporations such as Koch Industries or tobacco companies, to bring about grass-roots movements against taxes or government regulation measures under this motto , which, however, met with very little response. What was new in 2009 was that people took to the streets, which was also due to a fundamental mistrust of many conservatives towards President Obama, who had only been in office since January 2009. Charles and David Koch , the owners of Koch Industries , supported by several other billionaires, immediately began to systematically promote the movement and harness it for its goals.

What appeared to be a spontaneous grassroots movement was therefore carefully prepared ( astroturfing ). Shortly after Santelli's call sites have been set up on the subject and contacted about 10,000 people whose data had two activists Eric Odom and Rob Bluey collected, when she in the previous year with a successful flash mob had organized radical Right in the House. The organization FreedomWorks of the Republican politician Dick Armey and Americans for Prosperity , an organization of the Kochs, were also involved. The first nationwide protests were planned for February 27, 2009. These took place in over a dozen locations, and according to the organizers, 30,000 people were involved. On the second day of the protest, April 15, there were already 300,000. The libertarian organizations Heritage Foundation , Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity provided speakers, drafted press releases and participated in the organization.

FreedomWorks reached an agreement with popular TV host Glenn Beck that greatly helped spread libertarian ideas. Beck received over a million dollars in total for including FreedomWorks-authored text in his comments. His broadcast on Fox News reached around two million viewers a day. Since the demonstration in Washington on September 12, 2009, organized by FreedomWorks, the tea party movement can be seen as a supra-local movement. However, it remained a marginal phenomenon until Obamacare was signed on March 30, 2010. At the same time, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks encouraged the tea party movement to focus their interest on the denial of global warming .

It was not until 2010 that the tea party movement became a powerful organization across America and has since been present all over the USA. It positioned itself as a counter-movement to President Barack Obama with the slogan “I want my country back” (“I want my country back”). Obama's health care reform was denigrated as a “socialist takeover”. The tea party movement also criticized the supposedly growing influence of African Americans , Hispanics and homosexuals on US politics more and more openly . A growing amalgamation with right-wing populist and right-wing extremist circles thus became apparent.

structure

composition

In a nationwide poll in April 2010 by the New York Times and CBS News , 18 percent of respondents said they were supporters of the tea party movement. In terms of wealth and education, they said they were above the US average. According to the survey, they are no more afraid of social decline than the average, are more conservative than the Republicans in their overall average and describe themselves as "very conservative", while President Barack Obama is "very left" ("very liberal", “Liberal” is not understood in US English as it is in German). The majority of them judge former President George W. Bush positively and Obama's politics clearly negative. While Republicans generally say they are unhappy with Washington politics, the movement's supporters say they are angry with Washington. According to a poll, a majority of them believe that Obama's policies are disproportionately geared towards helping the poor, and 25 percent (more than the population average) say policies favor blacks over whites. About 90% of the supporters of the movement are white. (For comparison: whites make up about 74% of the population.) About three quarters of them are over 45 and 29% over 64 years old.

financing

The two billionaires David H. Koch († 2019) and his four-year-old brother Charles are counted among the main financiers of the tea party movement . They own 84 percent of Koch Industries , the second largest privately held company in the United States. It operates oil refineries, coal utilities, chemical plants, and logging companies, and has annual sales of approximately $ 100 billion. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote in 2010: "The Kochs want total capitalism , and they are ready to fight - against a state health system, against climate protection and everything else that they consider to be excesses of socialism."

Positions

Tea party demonstration in Madison
Poster at a tea party demonstration

The movement is associated with the loss of influence of the neoconservatives and the religious right in the Republican Party. As a result, the libertarian direction, for which Ron Paul stands for example , would come to the fore again after this direction had receded into the background since Eisenhower's presidency. In addition to libertarians, the movement is also recruited from among supporters of Ronald Reagan's politics and the Barry Goldwater tradition . Historically, Walter Russell Mead sees the roots of the current tea party movement in the populist anti-establishment movement of the early 19th century, whose impetus Andrew Jackson used for his successful presidential elections in 1828 and 1832, which is why it is also referred to as Jacksonianism . Abby Scher and Chip Berlet describe the tea party movement as “right-wing populism” in the tradition of “producerism”, an ideology that a so-called “producing class” opposes “unproductive” elites and “lazy” lower classes delimits.

The economic policy demands of the Tea Party dominate the US public. She represents what is known as limited government conservatism . The movement advocates tax cuts and the reduction of the national deficit . In addition, a ten-point catalog of political positions was drawn up, eight of which politicians should take in order to be supported by the movement. This Contract from America includes standing up for scrutiny of the constitutionality of any new law, tax cuts and simplifications, reducing the deficit, repealing health care reform, and reducing the power of the federal government.

Although the Tea Party is also supported by followers of the religious right and the neoconservatives, it focuses on socio-political issues ( "social issues") as abortion , religion, or same-sex marriage is not usually as there is on these issues among their supporters no agreement. The same is true of foreign policy, as isolationist as well as neoconservative currents are represented in the Tea Party . According to a poll from October 2010, 53% of tea party supporters believe that climate change will not have any serious impact in the future. In the general population, 22% hold the same view. Tea party activists took part in actions that were directed against climate protection laws.

The Tea Party is directed essentially against the Democratic government under Barack Obama, but also rejects the policies of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush . The movement is not seen as an expression of the whole of American society, but primarily as an expression of movements within the Republican Party; here the more conservative section of Republicans turns against more moderate representatives of the party's establishment.

Links between the Tea Party and representatives of the States Rights movement lead to comparisons with the positions of the Confederate States of America during the secession of the 1860s. Direct connections exist in the vehement struggle against the Federal Government and in the defense of real or supposed rights. However, the representatives are not limited to the geographical southern states of Dixieland .

Representatives of the movement reject a racist position, on the other hand an empirical study comes to the conclusion that the supporters of the movement are by no means neutral in this regard.

Sarah Palin was temporarily seen as a symbol of the movement . TV presenter Glenn Beck , who worked for Fox News , was seen as the face and voice of the tea party movement.

From within the tea party movement and its supporters, Obama was often attacked with racist connotations. At a party convention in March 2011, radio host and activist Laurie Roth described him as a secret Muslim and communist who only pretended to be American. The conspiracy theory that Obama was not a natural born citizen was discussed in detail at this party congress and used for personal attacks on the president. A sample survey conducted by Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto among supporters of the Tea Party movement found that many of them consider Obama a socialist and over 90% judge him negatively.

effect

The first political success of the movement is the election of the Republican Scott Brown as US Senator to succeed the late Edward Kennedy in the otherwise more liberal Massachusetts on January 19, 2010. However, after taking office, Brown has shown himself to be more moderate and more willing to work with the Democrats Republicans profiled why the Tea Party activists had considered putting up their own internal party opponent in the run-up to the 2012 Senate elections . As part of this election, Brown was his party's candidate, but could not assert herself against the Democrat Elizabeth Warren , who replaced Brown in early 2013.

During the 2010 gubernatorial and Senate elections, candidates who were supported by the Tea Party won the Republican Party's primaries many times over. In the course of the election campaign for the US Senate in 2010, the governor of stepped Florida , Charlie Crist , out of the Republican Party, as polls showed that he the candidate of the Tea Party movement, Marco Rubio , in the internal party primaries would be inferior. He decided to run as an independent candidate, but was defeated by Rubio. In Kentucky , a representative of the Tea Party movement clearly prevailed in the Republican primary with Rand Paul , son of Ron Paul. His lead over the party leadership preferred Trey Grayson was 24 percentage points. Then he was able to win the actual election. In Utah, the Republican establishment representative, Senator Bob Bennett , was defeated by the Tea Party's opposing candidates in an internal party vote. Mike Lee became the new Senator .

The successes in the primaries are seen as a sign that, contrary to the assumptions of Republican strategists, the Tea Party movement cannot simply be used as an election campaign force, but that the Tea Party has a considerable influence on the personnel decisions of the Republicans. In the state of Maine , the Tea Party movement succeeded in changing the Republican party program. This now provides for a commitment to a completely free market economy , calls for the abolition of the American Federal Reserve and the US Department of Education and rejects requirements for oil drilling, President Obama's health reforms and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child . The successes within the Republican Party are also seen in part as a threat to the party, as more radical representatives could ultimately lose out in the elections.

The 2010 elections resulted in a clear Republican victory. In particular, the House of Representatives elections were successful, with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives while the Democrats held a slim majority in the Senate .

The success of the Republicans is attributed to the mobilization by the Tea Party, but at the same time also the failure of the Senate majority by the nomination of extreme candidates such as Christine O'Donnell , Ken Buck or Sharron Angle . Ron Paul did not join the Tea Party group in the House of Representatives after the election, believing the Tea Party should remain a grassroots movement and should not be viewed as a political party. Unlike his father, his son Rand took part in the formation of a tea party caucus in the Senate.

2011 budget crisis in the United States

In the 2011 budget crisis, representatives of the Tea Party took the position that the problem of the budget deficit and national debt could only be solved by saving. Tax increases and an increase in the debt ceiling were rejected. The representatives of the Tea Party opposed the compromise proposals of more moderate Republicans such as John Boehner . The People's Republic of China, the main believer, accused the US of being held hostage by irresponsible politicians . Washington should better show a global sense of responsibility. Many commentators believe that the cause of the behavior of members of the Tea Party opposition was their fear of losing the next election. They feared that if a compromise was reached they would be considered a failure.

Review by the IRS (2013)

Due to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of the United States Supreme Court and the upcoming US election in 2012, there was a duplication of requests for tax exemption under Section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code. House and Senate Democrats suspected tax evasion and urged the IRS to use their powers to prevent possible tax abuse. As a result, the various organizations of the tea party movement were not deprived of any tax advantages. In the period between 2010 and 2012, however, the tax exemption application was only granted to four organizations, the rest received no response and were put off. According to the Associated Press and The New York Times in May 2013, conservative organizations, including tea party organizations, were discriminated against by inadmissible general selection criteria for tax auditing and were therefore examined relatively more frequently than other organizations for tax exemption under Section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code applied for. The IRS then apologized.

Influence on the 2013 budget dispute

In the debate about the government shutdown in 2013, the forty members of the House of Representatives who are part of the Tea Party represent only part of the divided faction of Republicans. The members of the Tea Party are under pressure not to agree to any compromises, as they fear that they will be replaced by more loyal candidates in their constituencies. Despite being only a fraction of the Republican MPs, they were able to put significant pressure on House Republican spokesman John Boehner .

Primary campaign for the 2016 US presidential election

During January 2016, the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund conducted a three-round survey of its activists. On January 31, 2016, the spokeswoman Jenny Beth Martin announced that her organization recommends the Texan Senator Ted Cruz as President of the USA (“We seek a candidate who shares our values: personal freedom, economic freedom, and a debt-free future. ... On behalf of Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund and our supporters, I am proud to announce our endorsement for President of the United States: Senator Ted Cruz! ”)

Scientific classification

Thomas Greven wrote in 2011 that the Tea Party Movement (TPB) is an "authentic" grassroots movement that benefits from attempts to mobilize conservative interest groups and the media. Although there is no consistent ideology, there is a strong paranoid element, such as the cry “We want our country back”, which suggests a distinction between right and wrong Americans. Fired by the demographic trend that the whites will soon become a minority, the TPB is instrumentalizing “white fear”. The Republican Party, supported by the TPB, threatens to become a whites' party.

literature

Web links

Commons : Tea Party Movement  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-3855-3559-5 . P. 165f.
  2. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 167-169.
  3. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 176-180.
  4. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016. pp. 182f.
  5. ^ A b Matt A. Barreto, Betsy L. Cooper, Benjamin Gonzalez, Christopher S. Parker, Christopher Towler: The Tea Party in the Age of Obama: Mainstream Conservatism or Out-Group Anxiety? In: Political Power and Social Theory. Volume 22, 2011, ISBN 978-0-85724-911-1 , p. 4.
  6. ^ Riley E. Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright: Organized Climate Change Denial. In: John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, David Schlosberg (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 144-160, especially p. 154.
  7. ^ Polling the Tea Party. In: The New York Times. April 14, 2010.
  8. ↑ Kate Zernike, Megan Thee-Brenan: Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated . In: The New York Times. April 14, 2010.
  9. ^ A b Matthias Rüb: "Tea Party" movement: amused and alarmed. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Online from April 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ Ansgar Graw: Tea Party Movement fights against Obama's reforms. In: Welt Online. July 24, 2010.
  11. ^ Libertarians as major tea party sponsors. In: TELEPOLIS. September 1, 2010.
  12. ↑ Jane Mayer: Covert Operations. In: The New Yorker . Online August 30, 2010.
  13. ^ Moritz Koch: The great inheritance: money - power - hatred. Two brothers on a crusade. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . September 25, 2010. Retrieved September 25, 2010.
  14. ↑ a b Martin Kilian: America's rights go to the limit. In: Basler Zeitung Online. April 15, 2010.
  15. ^ Walter Russell Mead: The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy . In: Council on Foreign Relations (Ed.): Foreign Affairs . tape 90 (March / April), No. 2 . New York 2011, p. 33 f . (English).
  16. ↑ Abby Scher et al. Chip Berlet: The Tea Party Moment. In: Nella van Dyke, David S. Meyer (Eds.): Understanding the Tea Party Movement. Ashgate, Franham 2014, pp. 115f .; Chip Berlet: Reframing Populist Resentments in the Tea Party Movement. In: Lawrence Rosenthal, Christine Trost (Ed.): Steep. The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party . Univ. of California Press, Berkeley 2012, pp. 47-66. On the right-wing populism of the tea party movement, see also Karin Priester: Right and Left Populism. Approaching a chameleon. Campus, Frankfurt / M. 2012, pp. 189-206.
  17. ^ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Between market radicalism and social resentment: The tea party and its supporters. P. 4.
  18. ^ The Contract from America. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  19. ↑ Tea Parties stir evangelicals' fear. at: Politico. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  20. ↑ Michael Shear: Tea Party Foreign Policy a Bit Cloudy. In: New York Times Blog. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  21. ^ New York Times / CBS Poll (PDF; 25 kB), accessed March 8, 2011.
  22. ↑ California Tea Party Activists Work to Pass Proposition 23. ( Memento from October 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) On: consumerwatchdog.org , October 4, 2010.
  23. ↑ Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith. In: The New York Times. October 20, 2010.
  24. ↑ a b Andreas Mink: Fountain of youth for conservatives. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . Online April 19, 2010.
  25. ↑ a b Shaun Halper: The true opponent of the tea party. (translated from English by Konstantin L. Kasakov) In: Die Zeit . Online, September 24, 2010.
  26. ↑ Heirs to the American Civil War - Under the Southern Cross. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 28, 2013.
  27. ^ The rise of the New Confederacy. In: Washington Post. October 11, 2013.
  28. ^ Charles M. Blow: Trying to Outrun Race. In: The New York Times. May 7, 2010.
  29. ↑ 2010 Multi-state Survey on Race & Politics. University of Washington, Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality, read May 8, 2010.
  30. ↑ Sebastian Moll: A propaganda station against Obama. In: The time.
  31. ^ The New Republic: Value Voters And The Tea Party. at: National Public Radio . Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  32. ↑ Christopher S. Parker, Matt A. Barreto: Change They Can't Believe . In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2013, ISBN 978-1-4008-4602-3 , pp. 2 ( books.google.de ).
  33. ↑ Christopher S. Parker, Matt A. Barreto: Change They Can't Believe . In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2013, ISBN 978-1-4008-4602-3 , pp. 54, 55 ( books.google.de ).
  34. ^ Gregor Peter Schmitz: Tea Party Movement in the USA: The Anti-Obama Party. In: Spiegel Online. February 5, 2010.
  35. ^ Judson Phillips: Scott Brown Threw Tea Party 'Under The Bus'. In: Huffington Post.
  36. ↑ R. Klüver: Bitter tea. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online. April 30, 2010.
  37. ↑ Gregor Peter Schmit: Party rebels clear away in US primary elections. In: Spiegel Online . May 19, 2010.
  38. ↑ a b Bernd Pickert: The “Tea Party” is gaining influence. In: taz online. May 19, 2010.
  39. ↑ Voter anger towards the established. On: Stern.de May 19, 2010.
  40. ↑ Martin Killian: In the USA the hour of radical outsiders strikes. In: Basler Zeitung Online. May 18, 2010.
  41. ↑ Marc Pitzke : Superpower in the super standstill on: Spiegel Online . November 3, 2010.
  42. ^ The House / Senate split and the Tea Party paradox. In: Washington Post . November 3, 2010.
  43. ^ Ron Paul will not join the Tea Party caucus. In: The Daily Caller . November 16, 2010.
  44. ^ Judson Phillips: Why the Tea Party is unyielding on the debt ceiling. In: Washington Post . July 27, 2011. (English)
  45. ↑ Peter Gruber: US financial crisis: Republicans rebel against Republicans In: Focus Online . July 27, 2011.
  46. ↑ Time is Tickin 'Away… In: the daily newspaper . July 29, 2011.
  47. ↑ Patrick Welter: Tea Party Republicans - The opponents of a debt compromise. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 29, 2011.
  48. ↑ Budget crisis in the USA - Tea Party blocked - Debt dispute divides Republicans. on: sueddeutsche.de , July 29, 2011.
  49. ↑ Financial Crisis in the US - Who's Who in Debt Dispute? ( Memento from February 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on: tagesschau .de , July 29, 2011.
  50. ↑ washingtonpost.com
  51. ↑ Micah Cohen: IRS Approved Dozens of Tea Party Groups Following Congressional Scrutiny. In: The New York Times Online. May 16, 2013.
  52. ↑ Alex Altman: The Real IRS Scandal: Auditing so-called social-welfare groups isn't a mistake. The problem was the IRS chose its targets poorly. In: Time Magazine Online. May 16, 2013.
  53. ↑ Stephen Ohlemacher: IRS apologizes for targeting tea party groups. In: Associated Press Online. May 10, 2013.
  54. ↑ Ansgar Graw: Arguing until the US dollar starts to burn. In: Die Welt Online. October 10th, 2013.
  55. ↑ How strong is the tea party movement in the USA? On: Deutsche Welle Online. 5th October 2013.
  56. Jump up ↑ The Tea Party hostage. In: Handelsblatt . September 30th, 2013.
  57. ↑ www.jfki.fu-berlin.de
  58. ↑ Thomas Greven: The crisis of American democracy and the tea party movement. Imprint: FES Washington , October 2011.