[lbo-talk] tea party numbers

[Marv Gandall]

I view the TPM as essentially representing a further radicalization of the xenophobic conservative Republican base, one which is still vulnerable to control and cooptation by the party establishment. It largely parallels the same process which occurred within the Democratic party during the previous election cycle, when the liberal ranks were driven by a visceral antipathy to Bush, whom they viewed as belonging to an alien culture, and by the war in Iraq. Republican activists and supporters are motivated today by a similar animus towards Obama and the alien social forces he is seen to represent, and by the economy rather than foreign policy. This restlessness at the base of both parties reflects the deepening social and political polarization within US society in the wake of its imperial and economic reverses and a growing sense that it is in decline.

I'd be more concerned by the growth of a substantial right wing movement outside of the two major parties and committed to the destruction of the bourgeois democratic political order. That characterized the development of fascism in the interwar years. The TPM could morph in that direction and leave the Republican party in a political and economic crisis of that magnitude, but, as Doug, James H. and others have pointed out, we haven't nearly approached that point. If there is no further deterioration, there is no reason not to suppose that the TPM agitation will subside if the Republicans win the Congress and the White House, leaving not a a few of its supporters feeling betrayed by a new Republican administration vaguely promising change but acting "in the same old way", ie. within the inherited constraints of the system and its changing imperatives.

Admittedly, I'm observing from the outside. If you have hard data showing that this right-wing radicalization is largely occuring outside of and in opposition to the Republican party, I will take the tea party mobilization more seriously.

On 2010-09-01, at 7:01 AM, Chip Berlet wrote:


> 
> I never said that. I wrote that the numbers and analysis of the Tea Party were wrong, and folks were still not taking the Tea Party mobilization seriously. It's not just the election.