Tea Party Vindication?
Theda Skocpol is a distinguished academic, credentialed to the hilt. Harvard Professor, past President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association, member of the National Academy of Sciences. Not to be redundant, but she’s also a bit of a “progressive” activist and firebrand.
As such, her findings on what the Tea Party movement is REALLY about should normally be taken with a Lot’s wife sized portion of salt. And those findings will be available soon with her forthcoming book, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”.
I haven’t read it yet, but according to some reports, the findings are pleasantly surprising. Skocpol was in the Twin Cities this week discussing her book, here’s an excerpt of a review from a local lefty news source, MinnPost:
... Skocpol expresses an unexpected respect for a network that has managed to motivate hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to become political activists. In her presentation Thursday, she also knocked down emphatically a few of the left’s favorite excuses for dismissing the Tea Party organizations. For example:
For the most part, Tea Party people are not racists. (The exception, she said, is their attitude of utter intolerance toward Muslims.) Tea Partiers are very motivated by hostility to illegal immigrants (and their usual suspicion of big government goes away when it comes to wanting government to get more active against illegal immigration). But Skocpol concludes that this view is motivated not by racism, but by the concern for migrants getting benefits to which they are not entitled.
Skocpol dismissed as “poppycock” the idea that the Tea Party is a phony “Astroturf” movement of token marionettes manipulated from above by rich and powerful conservative puppet-masters.
Tea Party activists do not hate everything government does and do not completely share the privatize-everything mentality of the Koch brothers or some of the national righty think tanks. When she asked them about Social Security and Medicare, for example, they had an attitude that is widely shared among older Americans: I worked for it, I paid for it, I’m entitled to it.
Although there is a complicated interrelationship between the Tea Party and the Republican Party, typical Tea Party members distrust the Republican Party, which they seem to view as part of a corrupt political establishment.
The perfunctory shots at the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party’s “utter intolerance” against Muslims show that the book isn’t going to be all peaches and herb for us admirers of the Tea Party movement. But the major findings of this book appear blow holes in the established narrative with which the media and Democrat party adherents have gleefully run the past few years. The fact that the source of this debunking is someone with such impeccable liberal bona fides is big news. It reminds me of the legal concept “declaration against interest” where evidence is given additional weight if it contradicts what is perceived to be the claimant’s interest. As defined in the California legal code, the bolded excerpt seems particularly applicable:
Evidence of a statement by a declarant having sufficient knowledge of the subject is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule if the declarant is unavailable as a witness and the statement, when made, was so far contrary to the declarant's pecuniary or proprietary interest, or so far subjected him to the risk of civil or criminal liability, or so far tended to render invalid a claim by him against another, or created such a risk of making him an object of hatred, ridicule, or social disgrace in the community, that a reasonable man in his position would not have made the statement unless he believed it to be true.
Liberals using hatred, ridicule, and social disgrace against someone who disagrees with them? Perish the thought!
Let’s hope Professor Skocpol can hold up against the coming storm. I get the feeling she'll handle it just fine. For the rest of us, her work can serve to inform us the next time we hear a pundit or politician spouting these theories about the Tea Party, they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
But then again, we already knew that.
- Comment (6)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments :
Nov '10
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
The explanation for the Tea Party movement is that Mom and Pop had a political awakening.
Edited on Nov 13, 2011 at 2:36pmAug '10
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
It helps if you know that Skocpol's (very distinguished) academic reputation is largely based on documenting the decline of grassroots organization of civic society where members meet regularly in local chapters and the rise of professionalized DC-based organizations where "members" are really nothing more than a mailing list of people who occasionally write checks. In this sense Skocpol is an ideal person to study the Tea Party, which is a revival of the older form. For instance, this background has prepared her to know a grassroots movement when she sees one which is why she is able to recognize the absurdity of the "astroturf" charge.
Oct '10
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
Isn't it refreshing to hear about an 'honest Liberal' that looks truth in the face and doesn't shirk. It might be more accurate to call her an 'imminent conservative'.
May '11
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
Peaches and Herb?
Sep '10
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
perhaps some day she will learn that Islam is a religion.
May '10
Re: Tea Party Vindication?
Bravo, kylez: a beautifully economical formulation.