The recently-passed big-spending budget deal’s failure to generate significant opposition from the “tea party� has led some to pen obituaries for this once-powerful movement. These commentators may have a point. However, few of them understand the true causes of the tea party’s demise.The movement commonly referred to as the tea party arose in opposition to... Read More

"There is no education in the second kick of a mule," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. With some such thought in mind, Speaker John Boehner strode to the floor of the House to offer a "clean" debt ceiling bill and relied on Nancy Pelosi's Democrats to pass it. They did. "Surrender" and "betrayal," are... Read More

Many House Republicans blame their intransigence in the current federal funding crisis on fears that they will be subjected to primary challenges in the next election. On the principle that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, there is something in this. Certainly the Tea Party has an impressive record of derailing any Republican deemed not sufficiently... Read More

Scientist/historian Peter Turchin (who was recently in the news for his model which describes the evolution of human civilization over the past few millennia) previously claimed that the United States is due for some sort of upheaval in the coming years – based on his study of historical cycles (cliodynamics), as previously discussed in my... Read More

Is letting the government shut down going to get politicians in trouble? That’s the fond hope of Democrats watching the Tea Party-powered Obamacare tantrum in Congress. Maybe. Maybe not. During the War of 1812, the Madison administration let the whole capital get burned down and suffered minimal political damage. Instead, it was the hapless Federalists,... Read More

What may be a declining force in American political life is the Tea Party movement, which in 2010 played a critical role in winning congressional seats and governorships for the economically conservative wing of the GOP. Since then, national support for this loosely organized movement has fallen precipitously. Between March 2010 and April 2011, according... Read More

My, how the neoconservatives hate the Tea Partiers. David Brooks had a piece on Monday over at the NYT dripping with sweet reason and explaining how the Republicans have a budget victory within their grasp if they can summon up the wisdom to seize it. They will get “trillions of dollars in spending cuts in... Read More

Having looked at the swelling of the Tea Party, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a uniform movement. There are at least three different movements trying to give the impression of being one. The most influential of these movements is the one that fits most easily into the GOP. It is associated with... Read More

GOP regulars and their movement conservative drones have been sending signals for some time now that they wish to have the Tea Party be nice. While David Frum and David Brooks have generally followed the Left in condemning these “extremists,� Bill Kristol, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and Rich Lowry have taken a gentler approach to... Read More

While reading about the Tea Party activists as radical rightists, I had the sense that these critics and I see the world very differently. The New York Times and then the Lancaster papers, on April 16, released polling data that offers a revealing picture of these activists. Most of them believe that their current share... Read More