When Politics Turn Toxic: Why 2012 Is Like 1972 & History Will Repeat Itself
I have written early and often that the Tea Party will be a flash in the pan and its toxic brand of politics will never appeal to a larger constituency while at the same time dragging the Republican Party further into the electoral wilderness.
Several recent polls make my point: The Tea Party’s negatives have more than doubled — in one poll from 18 to 40 percent in 14 months. In another, voters were asked their opinion of 24 groups and the Tea Party polled worse than “Muslims” and “atheists,” two oft-vilified groups.
As David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, two academics who have closely studied voting trends note, the Tea Party’s fall from grace is occurring during an era when the voters are becoming more conservative and share some of the Tea Party’s views, most prominently smaller government. But when these academics peeled a few layers off of the Tea Party onion, they confirmed what some of us already knew: The Tea Party is not made up of nonpartisan political neophytes angered by tough economic times but are highly partisan Republicans who have an active loathing for government, blacks and immigrants, as well as denying women reproductive and other rights.
This in a nutshell describes the Republican base in 2011 and, as I also have written early and often, the primary reason why the GOP is likely to lose ground in Congress in 2012 as well as cede a second term to Barack Obama unless it nominates someone palatable to the mainstream voter.
A secondary reason is that while religion is an important part of many voters’ lives, they are troubled by the mix of politics and religion espoused by Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who inject God — that is their God, not yours or mine if we are not rock-ribbed Christianists — into their policy pronouncements.
Campbell and Putnam also draw an important historic comparison.
The last time a fringe group exerted substantial influence over a major political party was in 1972 when the anti-Vietnam War movement rallied beyond George McGovern over Hubert Humphrey, Henry M. Jackson and Edmund Muskie, all of whom could have beaten Richard Nixon.
I remember the 1972 campaign well and Election Night in particular. It was obvious early on that despite Nixon’s unpopularity — he had reneged on his promise to end the war and there were the first stirrings of the Watergate scandal that would abort his second term — that he would win in a landslide. I woke up the next morning and despite having a world-class hangover immediately understood why McGovern had been thrashed. Like the Tea Party, his supporters refused to dial back on their stridency and cool their rhetoric even if the face of probable defeat.
And so 40 years later history is repeating itself.
Need further evidence that the Tea Party brand has become tarnished?
Take Christine O’Donnell’s new memoir and Sarah Palin’s new documentary. Both are duds.
According to a number of Republican leaders and even her own campaign workers, Troublemaker: Let’s Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again is a tissue of fabrications and lies, two traits that were on display during O’Donnell’s dizzying crash-and-burn campaign, which opened with a flourish when she upended long-time U.S. Representative Mike Castle and then got throttled by a Democratic mediocrity in the November 2010 election, turning a sure-fire Republican keep into a Democratic gain.
Then there is The Undefeated, a documentary on the life and times of the half-term Alaska governor that while not exactly a tissue of fabrications and lies is reminiscent of a Communist propaganda film for all that it leaves out. It was a flop at movie houses, taking in a measly $25,000 on its opening weekend in Los Angeles, and is headed for pay-for-view purgatory.
28 Responses to “When Politics Turn Toxic: Why 2012 Is Like 1972 & History Will Repeat Itself”
The Tea Party is the Bush Twice (Thrice) crowd doing what right-wingers do best – consistent, rabid marketing efforts designed to portray themselves as something other than irresponsible, solipsist sectarians.
They are the privileged white people who blame their relatively small problems on others and want to be the center and the dominant caste in US society. Like they dabbled in either John Birch or Das Kapital, they are now dabbling in tricornes and constitutionalism.
Their outrage over not paying less in taxes is directly inverse to their outrage over women being treated equivalent to zygotes, contraceptions being banned, children being force-fed Christian clap-trap in schools or gay couples being expected to pay full taxation without having full respect in law books. They want to take for themselves, not give everyone fair dues. Whether it comes to entitlement spending or freedom.
In general – They are an ill. A sadness. A parody of adulthood. Take Ryan of Nazareth’s holy roadmap. It was a declaration of war against everyone but some demographics, and it was treated with major deference among teepers.
Absalon,
The Tea Party is a reaction to the failures of the main stream Republicans. Bush and the Republicans controlled Congress and the White House for six years and did not nothing but grow the government, increase spending, maintain open borders, and treat U.S. citizens like criminals.
The main stream Republicans have still not figured out how to handle the failures of the Bush Administration and seem to just want to use time to make people forget.
McConnell and Boehner are both representatives of the establishment and thus has maintain spending, the size of government, and the flow of government goodies.
The Tea Party is mad because there is no place i politics for fiscal conservatives. The Tea Party is mad becuase there is no where in politics for people who want to limit the government. The Tea Party is mad because they see a U.S. that has no place for themselves or even their ethnic group.
Thanks Shaun for another well considered post. I admire the TP for one thing, and that is their willingness to get up on their hind legs and vent their opinions. Unfortunately it stops there for a very simple reason: They are going down the wrong road and it’s because they lack vision; the high ground resides in reason, not ideological melodrama and paranoia. I believe their antics and the GOP’s accomodation will come back to haunt them. I know the reactionary faithful will have trouble accepting this reality (and I expect subsequent comments to reflect this) but the voters in 2012 will be moving toward the center, not toward those who have been rubbing salt in the nations wound. And the center is definitely NOT represented in any measure by the GOTP.
Absalon:
Beautifully and powerful said.
SD:
There is a place in politics for fiscal conservatism. It’s called the Republican Party, but the party has been hijacked by the very people that Absalon so well describes and what they practice is not fiscal conservatism. It’s hedonistic Galtian power playing where they demand to be put first always even if it is not for the common good of everyone.
“The Tea Party is mad because there is no place i politics for fiscal conservatives. ”
No place for dilettantes that want to make sure boomers get low taxes and entitlements until they die and then leave everyone else to deal with the after-effects.
The teepers lined up behind Ryan’s roadmap – they have spoken for themselves and they are everything *I* say they are, and not what *you* say they are. *I* am more accurate than you are, based on THEIR OWN ACTIONS.
“The Tea Party is mad because they see a U.S. that has no place for themselves or even their ethnic group.”
In other words, “everyone has to adapt except us”. Nice slogan.
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dr. e, are the Ab examples of remarks over the top generalizations? If so, call out the TMV vets.
I thought you declared that the Tea Party died already.
You might want to polish the ol’ crystal ball.
I was part of that 1972 McGovern group, running an office in Illinois. I loved it. One of the powerful things about all that was how energized one can be by being rigidly against something, being holier-than-thou that we’re right and everyone else is wrong and being furious when it doesn’t go as we think it should. I got amazing energy from that time which is what I see happening in the tea party. However, I was also quite demoralized as it all fell apart. I suspect that will gradually occur with the tea party. There is much more short term power in being against something than for something. That power almost never succeeds in the long run if it isn’t followed by a positive, long term vision. Unwillingness to compromise on any level always fails. All one need do is look at any negotiation political or otherwise to see this. The tea party missed badly on this part and it will keep them from being a long term player.
Shaun: You beat me to it on this one. I was offline most of yesterday but listening to various news stations and more serious talk radio shows. This study that you sited came up on most of them. Also, to add a bit of a personal note, in 1972 I was at the Medill
School of Journalism getting my masters. When the first inkling of Watergate hit, before it was a big issue, I emailed a letter of support to my political hero, then CT Senator Lowell Weicker (I was registered to vote in my home state of CT) the Republican Republicans grew to hate. One of my profs was Stevenson biographer John Bartlo Martin who was working on McGovern’s campaign. He would fly in from Washington. He once told me, that Nixon White House people were going through IRS records, etc, that what was going on had not come out int he press. He was very depressed and worried. Some of the things he said to me later came out when Nixon left office. What struck me when I saw the 72 returns was that there were many who were thirsting for an alternative to Nixon but McGovern simply could not be it (in later years my own aversion to the McGovern wing drove me out of the Democratic party). I also see this happening in 2012 – a year when many voters would love to vote for a serious Republican who presents affirmative policies and is focused on ISSUES and deep sixes the Palin-like snark and talk radio polarization sound bites. Or even a serious, well-funded Ross Perot type (which will not happen for 2012).
“The role of race is nothing new. A New York Times survey as well as a University of Washington study found Tea Party members more likely even than other Republicans to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people, that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites, and to blame black disadvantage on the shortcomings of black people, rather than on the legacy of slavery and discrimination. Is it only about having a black president? Um, that probably doesn’t help. But it’s worth noting that these are the same people who’ve been fighting the Democratic Party since the days of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the beginning of the War on Poverty, almost 50 years ago. They associate those long overdue social reforms with giving folks, mainly black people, something they don’t deserve. I sometimes think just calling them racist against our black president obscures the depths of their hatred for Democrats, period.”
They are the worst of the GOP on high horses, having a sort of mongrelized civil war reenactment. They combine religious obsessions and sectarianism with social darwinism. They are the least victimized Americans, they see themselves as the most representative group for disenfranchisement and suffering.
They are null. I would think more highly of them if their opposition to Obama was explicitly on racial terms. But I don’t think they are majorly racially motivated – they just think THEY are the most important group in the US and that Obama is mistreating them.
Both those convictions are more disgusting than any racial biases.
I miss having Republicans I could vote for. I used to vote for former Senator Danforth, as an example. Early in his career former Senator Bond didn’t seem so bad to me but as his party drifted to the right he followed suit. Not only is there no one like that now but nowadays I would have to hesitate because of the power it gives the current Republican party leadership, a group that I can’t support in any way.
1972-
One should remember that 1972 was the first year the 18 year olds got the vote. Big dif there.
-
O’Donnell’s temperment is not suited for an elected government post.
Palin favor’s money over public service. If one does not compliment the other then she is outta here! So she quit. They’ll have to put half a portrait up in the Alaskan capital legacy room. Having quit, she was going for the Hail Mary but was sacked in the back field. Now she runs around begging for attention like a scolded teenager though largely ignored.
The analogy of the 1972 McGovern movement to the Tea Party is a good one and although I don’t agree with Shaun on all the details the basic premise stands pretty well. The Tea Party’s rigidity of thought will likely lead to its downfall as well as to lost elections for its chosen candidates.
A couple of thoughts – first although the McGovern movement was a loser it did have some value raising awareness of the issues it felt important, and so will the Tea Party have some value. Second it is interesting to think of Obama in the Nixon role, a poor president ripe for defeat if only his opponents could moderate their beliefs and choose a decent candidate.
On Palin and O’Donnell, who cares.
I will now be annoying and note that I have been comparing Obama to Nixon for over a year now.
Inflexible opposition…check
Deal maker willing to compromise further than his party likely will again in the future and yet the opposition refuses to make those good deals…check
A pol voted for in large part to deal with domestic issues yet turns out to be a better foreign policy player…check
Cuts loose anyone that may make him look bad swiftly…check
Pragmatic desire for the POTUS that results in having little to no ideological compass…check
Rabid anti-him crowd that comes off as such a caricature that they turn off voters more than the voters desire to try anything else…check
Focus of campaign funding in the POTUS’s chest leaving fewer donors for down ticket races…check
The only comparisons that fail are of a more personal variety where they are rather polar opposites but politically the symmetry is eerie.
Shaun, thanks for the article. I think of all the many many grassroots and national groups and programs many of us have been a part of since we were gradeschool kids, (Catholic schools push for care and standing up for the ‘least of the least’ so little tiny children develop social conscience) and how some continue and how most have changed, and how some were alive like mayflies, just for a bit. My sense is the ones which have endured have strong and visionary leaders at the head who are passionate, articulate, and hold their followers to a certain line, partyline, behaviorally and onward. There is usually one voice at the front of the groups that have longevity and solidarity of message. My experience is that solidarity is hard to teach because it requires restraint over outburst, a plan instead of a free form standing up for… just my .02 re group psych.
dduck, I know more, being military wife, about generals, than about generalizations. Although a general, if young, might need generalizing so as to take on the ‘mein.’ if you know what i mein, I mean, mean. Your friends dduck must love having a beer with you and the wit.
Please, Margaritas, and writing is easier than speaking for me especially since I am in liberal NYC. And, that is a true (true?) generalization. Why do some really intelligent people, like we have at TMV, have to paint the other side in black, and usually paint themselves in white. Just asking.
dduck-It improves the games of both checkers and chess!
margaritavilla coming up for you dduck
as for other… as one of the commenters above so ably put it, deflation leads to inflation, which leads to more deflation. Easy and steady does it. Projection of god/demon often means one person has never met or spoken in depth with another, only taken the measure of that person through the vast sieve system of tv and internet, newsp. reporting by various. I tell my writing /journo students: go first person, face to face whenever you can. Do not rely on second and most especially with the internet, third and fourth and tenth party resource. That can be like looking through sandblasted glasses depending how not objective, but how just a writer may be, and how developed in seeing many sides. Some draw energy by getting mad, thinking only ‘their side’ is ‘right,’ etc., then becoming deflated when things dont go their way of their sight, and then struggling to attach to something that gives energy again. It’s a circle instead of a progression. You can read the same in most any of the holy books. It has been with us a long time. It takes effort to leave the whirlpool. We hope to see farther than mere projection. Just a two cents worth about ‘groups’ that inflate and deflate
1972 — the far Left got their revenge against the Man and the Establishment, even if Nixon beat his far-left opponent. It included storming academia as well as the media, not just government.
Shaun is incorrect, however. It was prior to 1972, though, when liberal politics turned toxic, post-1975, apparently already in 1968.
It’s no surprise it repelled the likes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, e.g..
(We now return you to your basic, regular far-left lightweight gossip)
DLS-And oddly the TP will have begun its game 4 years prior to the 2012 election and will also likely stain the minds of many in the fringe of the GOP for a generation…much like happened with the Dems. It was not purely that “voters rejected them for being extreme” it was also that in being extreme those groups reject the masses lack of extremity. This was true of the Dems of the variety spoken of here and is also common among the TP faction of the GOP. It is not about putting forth electable reps but instead pure ones and if the voters reject them it is voters fault for any damage that ensues. It reminds me of the documentary series the Power Of Nightmares and what the 72 Dems have in common with militant Islam and the TPr’s of today is that they all desire to punish those that do not agree instead of compromising.
Question for Shaun:
Why is the Navy not complaining about their official Union Jack being used as a partisan political trophy?
Dr. Estes-
[Just a two cents worth about ‘groups’ that inflate and deflate]
All groups, “people” do it…but in the process of inflating and deflating we make love, create life, and. die.
I disagree. I wouldn’t change a damn thing.
The Magical Sky Father* wrote:
The (real) Tea Party was simply basic mainstream center-left politics that was populist. It never was a devil, wasn’t extremist, wasn’t any of the lies that were made about it.
The social and religious conservatives who “crashed the Tea Party” ended the earlier phenomenon.
The current Republicans include some with former Tea Party sentiments, but the social and religious conservatives (not the core or any big part of the original Tea Party) are asserting themselves in their own right, and then there are the GOP folks who seem still just to be crude big-business buddies (and while it can be so in the states, too, it’s in Washington where we look for the GOP newbies soon to enjoy the favors of corporate lobbyists.
“The Tea Party is a reaction to the failures of the main stream Republicans.”
The tea party certainly _exploits_ the miserable economic situation created by the Bush-era Republicans, that much is true. But to what end?
It’s historically inescapable (for the last few decades, anyway) that Republicans are only fiscal conservatives when they are not in office.
It’s also objectively apparent that the president and congressional Democratic leadership is (misguidedly in my opinion) focused on deficit-reduction over bottom-up economic stimulus, to the extent that they are willing do pretty much exactly what the Republicans say, (as opposed to what they do, and to what they will likely be saying when they run to the left of Obama in the next election) in order to achieve it.
IMO the notion that the tea party is a spontaneous grass-roots small-government movement is extremely naive; Viz: how many clarion-calls did Fox have to issue befoer it managed to gather more than a few dozen attendees at any Tea Party event, despite wall-to-wall promotion?
It’s purpose is to manipulate impressionable people, using a legitimate fiscal-policy stance as cover for cynically divisive, inflammatory messaging, into acting against their own interest. In short, it’s about rabble-rousing, pure and simple.
The goal is to ensure that those who would at least govern in good faith don’t interfere with the important business of Government of the People, by the Corrupt, for the Powerful.
Dear Allen, dduck and I were discussing groups that rise and decline, referencing jdwincu.
re your life of “wdnt change one thing,” you stand in good luck. enjoy.
@epiphyte
Then why are mainstream Republicans so upset with them?
It seems to me that the Democrats hate them for pushing (terrorism! hostages!) for real spending cuts when mainstream Republicans wanted (and pretty much got) little more than the usual vague talk of future spending cuts.
Seems to me that one of the main similarities to 1972, is more that the so-called *tea-party,* is just another name for the *silent-majority* of that era.
Whatever they call themselves, they’re basically the same GOP base.