A Look Inside the Tea Party

[Q&A] Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol discusses the GOP's shift to the right, Obama-loathing, and what it all means for the 2012 election.

With the release of her new book, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, renowned political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol sat down to talk to The Mark about the Tea Party and the upcoming 2012 U.S. elections.

In your new book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, you talk about how the Tea Party has been an influential force in Republican politics. What does the Tea Party want; what is it primarily after?

Well, the Tea Party is not just one thing, it's three things working together: [It’s] grassroots activists who are very conservative older white people; big-money funders and free-market-policy advocates who operate on the national stage; and then the conservative media involved in promoting the whole thing.

The elites in the Tea Party want to push the Republican party further to the right and to make sure that Republican officeholders don’t compromise with Democrats. They would like to pursue maximal policies of cutting taxes on the wealthy, removing business regulations, blocking environmental regulations, and if possible, privatizing social security and Medicare.

Most of the grassroots activists also want to push the Republican party to the right, but they are mostly just very upset about [President] Barack Obama. And many of them are on social security and Medicare so they’re more ambivalent about that goal.

Why are they so upset with the Obama presidency?

I think first of all it’s important to remember that these are very conservative people who vote for Republicans against Democrats, so they wouldn’t have liked any Democratic president, especially not one that arrived in the midst of a big economic crisis with majorities of Democrats in the House and Senate.

But it also upsets them that Obama has a foreign father and that he is idolized by many young people and supported by Latinos, because in many ways grassroots Tea Partiers are worried about immigration and concerned that they might have to pay taxes to give benefits to young people and people they consider "freeloaders."

So there is a kind of latent xenophobia that is acting as a driving force?

It’s one of the reasons. In a way Obama represents everything that extreme conservative grassroots people don’t like and fear. It doesn’t help that he’s a college professor either; they don’t like college professors.

How are the elites in the Republican party leveraging the Tea Partiers and what do you think it means for the current election?

Well it means in 2012, just like it meant in 2010, that there will be a lot of big money from very wealthy, very conservative, really radically conservative interests that will be trying to elect Republicans and push Republicans to do what they want once they get into office. I don’t think it will be quite as easy to bring about Republican victories and to push a non-compromising radical line in 2012 as it was in 2010, because a lot more Americans will go to the polls in 2012.

Is that due to the current economic crisis?

No. American politics is very simple. In mid-term elections, which are congressional elections and state elections without the president, about two out of five voters go to the polls. That’s what happened in 2010. They tend to be older, white, conservative – the same people that are more likely to be Republican and who are responsive to the Tea Party messages. But in presidential years it is closer to 55 to 60 per cent of voters that go to the polls. So it will be a more diverse electorate with more people who are middle-of-the-roaders and Democrats.

Do you see the Tea Party as a liability for the Republicans in their ability to choose a nominee that is middle-ground and more moderate?

Well, there is no moderate running. Let’s be clear on that. The fact is that the Tea Party is increasingly unpopular with most Americans and so it presents a dilemma for Republican candidates. You see that dilemma playing out in the Republican presidential primary right now.

To get elected in the general election against Obama, a Republican has to present themselves as more moderate than they probably are. They have to appeal to middle-of-the-roaders as well as conservatives. But to get the Republican nomination they have to cater to the Tea Party wing of the Republican party, which is the most active, the most attentive, and most likely to vote.