Tea Party Tally

The Tea Party held a town hall meeting in the Nation's Capitol so others may meet the conservative leaders. The event was organized by the Tea Party Express and included Senator Paul Rand, Senator Mike Lee, Representative Michele Bachmann, Representative Steve King and guests Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Allen West. (Gary Fabiano/Sipa Press/Newscom)

Patriot Act upset vote: Can tea party lawmakers, liberals be friends?

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 02.09.11

Many liberals tag the tea party movement as nativist, potentially racist, and out of step with progressive ideals. But some found themselves giving a nod of approval to tea-party-affiliated members of Congress who voted Tuesday to nix parts of the Patriot Act on grounds that they let the government intrude too much on individual privacy in the name of national security.

"House blocks renewal of Patriot Act. Some of these tea party guys aren't insane after all," tweeted Armon Dadgar, a resident of Kirkland, Wash.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and newcomer Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho were among eight in the Tea Party Caucus to vote against extending certain surveillance measures contained in the Patriot Act, joining with 18 other Republicans and most House Democrats to prevent their reauthorization – at least for now. Liberal Democratic lawmakers, in particular, have long derided parts of the Patriot Act as sacrificing civil liberties.

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Some Washington Democrats painted the upset vote as a failure of the GOP leadership, which seemed unable to corral its members for what ought to have been a routine, slam-dunk vote. Strong national security, after all, has been a Republican mantra since before 9/11. Democrats chuckled, and House Speaker John Boehner (R) lamented, "We can't be perfect every day."

But the vote also shows that some tea-party Republicans are willing to buck GOP orthodoxy to stand up for principles – even if those principles happen to be shared by the likes of liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio, says political scientist Charles Franklin at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mr. Kucinich called specifically on the Tea Party Caucus in the House to vote down the Patriot Act measures. As it was, 44 of 52 members of the Tea Party Caucus voted to extend the act's domestic spying provisions.

To tea partyers, "words like liberty mean Second Amendment rights, but also ... something like this [Patriot Act issue] – being opposed to too much government intrusion in a variety of areas in your life," says Mr. Franklin.

Democrats and tea party activists still stand far apart on issues ranging from raising the national debt ceiling, how much to cut government spending, and immigration policy. But their pairing up during Tuesday's vote to produce what some have called a "small uprising" points to the tea party movement's determination to install politicians who will put principle ahead of the party line, says Franklin. Though the Patriot Act provisions, which have President Obama's support, are likely to be renewed eventually, the initial "no" vote indicates that strange political bedfellows may indeed manage to shift policy in some unexpected ways.

"Oh, GOP, you want the Tea Party Republicans to just play ball and pass it? How little you understand them," wrote Allen Shull of Henderson, Tenn., on Twitter.

As House Republicans prepared a do-over vote, possibly as soon as Thursday, several tea-party-leaning Republicans, including Idaho's Representative Labrador, explained the basis of their "no" votes on the Patriot Act, saying it gives too much latitude to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to investigate Americans without their knowledge.

“While I agree that law enforcement and national security agencies need the tools necessary to keep America safe from terrorism, when crafting policy we need to be sure we are not infringing upon the protections and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution,” Labrador said in a prepared statement.

Whatever the reason of the nay vote, the stance of some tea-party-affiliated lawmakers perked up ears in the liberal corners of the blogosphere.

"With a political message that relies heavily on 'Don’t Tread on Me!’ rhetoric – opposing a tyrannical government, insisting on individual liberties, protesting overweening government authority – tea partiers should be surefire opponents of the Patriot Act," wrote Cynthia Tucker, one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's liberal columnists. "And, yesterday, a few members of Congress with Tea Party support stood up against its renewal. They allied with Democratic opponents of the Patriot Act to block it, at least temporarily. (How many times do you see civil rights icon John Lewis, D-Ga, and John-Birch-loving Paul Broun, R-Ga., in agreement?)"

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Gary (r.) and Samuel, last names withheld, wear 'Stop Obama, Stop Socialism' tea bag hats they are selling at the Tea Party Political Fair in Charlotte, Mich., July 2010. Populist uprisings are common in American history, but most were folded into the major parties or else faded into obscurity. What will be the tea party's fate? (Rebecca Cook / Reuters / File)

Can the tea party survive success?

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 01.31.11

Flush with electoral success and a new Gallup poll that shows 7 in 10 Americans want Republicans to heed its small-government ideas, the tea party movement is on a roll toward its ultimate prize: determining the 2012 presidential election and becoming, in Sarah Palin's words, "the future of politics in America."

But the tea party phenomenon teeters at a critical point in its rags-to-riches two-year history. In fact, the future of the tea party could largely be determined in the next few months as its willingness – or not – to compromise on key issues comes into sharp focus.

"The big question is whether the tea party is politically savvy enough and realistic enough to realize that democracy works through incrementalism, or are we going to see this passion that says, 'If you compromise, you're done,' which is basically forming a circular firing squad," says Robert Watson, a political scientist at Lynn University, in Boca Raton, Fla.

American history shows that populist political insurgencies can burn out as fast as they flare up, either absorbed into a major party or shunted to the ineffectual fringes of the American mainstream.

The 19th century's anti-immigration Know-Nothing movement dissipated after striking deals with Democrats and losing the 1896 presidential election. At the other end of the spectrum, the 1960s John Birch movement, which also began as a right-wing Republican reaction to a Democratic president, remains a constituency for some Republicans today.

So far, the tea party has managed to emerge as a quixotic, if amorphous, force largely focused on economic issues, but imbued by strains of past xenophobic movements and simmering with culture war issues like "God, guns, and gays," says Professor Watson. Before the November election, USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham predicted that these views spelled its doom. "Left alone, there's a good chance that the tea party will sputter out of existence as quickly as the Know-Nothing movement did," he wrote last September.

But in a poll released on Monday, the Gallup organization found that the tea party has moved toward the mainstream of the political debate, reporting that 71 percent of Americans said the Republican party should take tea party positions into account when crafting new policy.

Many Democrats still hope the tea partyers can be sidelined, and would gladly see Republicans nominate more candidates in the Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell vein – two tea party-backed candidates who won Republican primaries but failed to muster enough votes in Nevada and Delaware general elections for the US Senate.

The basic challenge is whether the tea party – and, by proxy, figureheads like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann – can hold pragmatic approaches to the debt limit, entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, and the upcoming budget battle, while still remaining distinct from the GOP establishment. And, conversely, can Republicans marshal tea party ideas without alienating voters?

"Republicans are in a very challenging position now that they're in power, trying to deliver while having Michele Bachmann with the tea party caucus just waiting for leadership to not go far enough," says Tom De Luca, a political science professor at Fordham University, in New York. "It may require more than licking a finger and putting it in the air. They're going to have to figure out exactly how far they can move toward the tea party without alienating voters they're going to depend on."

Others point to the tea-party backing of moderate Republican Sen. Scott Brown (R) of Massachusetts as a sign that the movement is willing to compromise – at least, on a case-by-case basis – to achieve greater goals.

"Our concern is that we do get smaller government, less intrusive government, and that we get our country back on the track that the Founding Fathers put it on," says Shelly Pettus, a tea party activist in Florence, Ala. "I don't care if they call themselves a Democrat as long as they do what the American people want."

Tea party Republicans are gauging such sentiments now. Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida declined last week to join the Senate Tea Party Caucus, raising eyebrows among some tea party activists.

Yet Senator Rubio managed to put the snub in the context of a tea party ideal. "If all of a sudden being in the tea party is not something that is happening in Main Street but rather something that's happening in Washington, D.C., the tea party all of a sudden becomes some sort of movement run by politicians," Rubio told the Florida political blog, the Shark Tank. "It's gonna lose its effectiveness, and I'm concerned about that."

The ultimate arbiter of the tea party's future may be the 2012 presidential election. If Republicans nominate anyone but Sarah Palin in 2012, a new Rasmussen poll shows, nearly half of Palin supporters would likely vote for a third party, which could, in turn, doom Republican chances of unseating President Obama.

In the 2012 election, Americans will see just how pragmatic the tea party is willing to be and, thus, "how long it will last," says Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver.

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JoAnn Abbott, co-organizer for Washington D.C. Tea Party, speaks to reporters at the Senate Tea Party Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 27. (Charles Dharapak / AP)

Why senators are avoiding the Tea Party Caucus

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 01.28.11

The reluctance of tea party favorites like Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin to join a new Senate Tea Party Caucus points to the difficulty some incoming Republicans face in adjusting to the political realities of the Beltway while retaining the tea party bona fides they earned on the campaign trail.

Last year's House Tea Party Caucus had 50 members – this year's rolls haven't been released yet – but only four senators appeared before a throng of tea party supporters for the first meeting of the Senate Tea Party Caucus on Jan. 27.

Why are so few tea-party-backed senators willing to align themselves with the caucus, only months after the tea party was credited with fueling a Republican takeover of the House and boosting the party's Senate numbers?

The snub from Senators Rubio, Johnson, and others suggest that the newly elected politicians are carefully gauging the post-Tucson political winds, keenly aware that mainstream America may be tired of the kind of anti-Obama rhetoric that peppered the campaign trail and became emblematic of the small-government, anti-tax tea party movement.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Johnson hinted that his goal is broader conservative solidarity. "The reason I ran for the US Senate was to not only stop the Obama agenda but reverse it. I believe our best chance of doing that is to work towards a unified Republican Conference, so that's where I will put my energy," said Johnson, who told the Times he had "great respect for the tea party movement."

Such careful distancing may be necessary. "Tea party supported candidates run the risk of, if they stay on the message that put them in office, alienating themselves from the political process," says Joshua Dyck, a political scientist at the State University of New York, at Buffalo.

In the wake of the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., where six people were killed and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was gravely injured, some tea party Republicans have reconsidered their alliances and appearances. The president's poll numbers rose after his Tucson speech, where he squelched laments from the left about right-wing rhetoric playing a role in the shooter's motive, while appealing to the country to "pause ... and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

After that speech, "tea party Republicans are now going to have a hard time finding a place in this debate, because their entire argumentative style is based on saying everything [Obama] believes is wrong and is fundamentally harming the fabric of the Republic," says Professor Dyck. "When they say those things, it doesn't sound like they're willing to engage in this sort of softer, post-partisan debate."

In addition, Tuesday's rough-around-the-edges tea party response to the State of the Union address by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota raised concern among some Republicans that the tea party wing of the party could undermine a concerted conservative challenge to President Obama. In fact, at least one tea party-backed House Republican has privately said they now have reservations about joining the Bachmann-led House Tea Party Caucus.

"Invitations [to the caucus] would be viewed more favorably if it were led by someone else," one aide to a Republican lawmaker told the Times.

Tea party activists around the country are carefully watching the political calculations of Republicans calibrating their approach to issues such as cutting spending, repealing the health-care law, and finding a viable presidential candidate to challenge Obama in the next election.

"There is some concern," says Shelly Pettus, a tea party activist in Florence, Ala., "about what [senators] were thinking by not joining that caucus, but I don't know that I would say that means they're pulling back from what they were sent there to do."

Ultimately, she says, politicians' labels are less important than their actions. She says she is heartened, for example, by the House vote to repeal the Obama health-care reform law, an issue torn straight out of the tea party playbook.

"I don't care if somebody calls themselves a tea party person as long as they act like a tea party person," she says.

The four senators who have publicly joined the Senate Tea Party Caucus – Sens. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, Mike Lee (R) of Utah, and Jerry Moran (R) of Kansas – offered up a new $500 billion spending-cut plan and vowed to offer a counterweight to politics as usual. They said Thursday they plan to hold quarterly meetings to discuss issues among themselves and with constituents.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell addresses reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. (AP)

Collapse of the omnibus spending bill: rise of the 'tea party Congress'?

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 12.17.10

On the anniversary of the actual Boston tea party some 237 years ago – when pesky colonists dressed up as Indians and threw the King's tea into Boston Harbor – the modern invocation of that revolutionary spirit tossed another expensive package overboard Thursday: a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill.

After leading a Republican charge into the House in the Nov. 2 midterm elections, the anti-debt, anti-federalist tea party movement notched its first major legislative victory Thursday by standing up to big-spending Democrats and Republicans and forcing Republican leadership to revoke its support of a bill laden with $8.3 billion worth of legislative earmarks – lawmakers' pet projects known as pork-barrel spending.

Among other spending priorities, the bill included a total of $1 billion to kickstart the first phase of the federal health-care reform law passed in April, meaning that its defeat likely lays the groundwork for Republicans to follow through on their promise to gut funding for the landmark legislation – per the tea party's wishes, by the way.

The failure of the omnibus bill "is a reminder for Democrats that their 'historic' legislation may be short-lived," writes Washington Post conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin.

Sen. Harry Reid, who had to shelve the bill when Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, under grassroots pressure, swayed nine critical Republican lawmakers to resist it, complained that its failure indicated that Republican leadership has become "a wholly-owned subsidiary of the tea party."

Faint praise, perhaps, but tea party activists across the country clearly took the repudiation of the pork-laden spending bill as its first major legislative victory and a sign that the grassroots movement will be able to wield influence over the Republican agenda.

"The sun rises tomorrow on a new political landscape" said commenter "reheiler" on National Review, in response to the failure of the omnibus bill. "I grew up on a horse farm. They behave differently after they've been broken."

"The Republicans recognized the lesson from the election: that the grass roots, the tea party, does not want unnecessary federal spending, and they realized that they ignore that sentiment at their own peril," adds Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, R.I. The Democrats, meanwhile, "miscalculated the internal pressure that fiscal conservatives are putting on Republicans – they didn't think that some of these Republicans ... would be willing to walk away from these earmarks," she says.

Earlier this week, Reid apparently believed he had locked in nine key Republican votes that would have ensured passage of a bipartisan spending package before the government officially runs out of money on Saturday.

But grassroots concern about the debt-inducing $858 billion tax-cut extension (which passed with bipartisan support Thursday) prompted Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who had himself inserted 48 earmarks into the bill, to change his tune as a vote on the spending bill approached.

Spurred on by Republican Sens. McCain, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma – as well as by vows of Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and John Cornyn of Texas to drop their earmark requests – Senator McConnell, in a flurry of 11th-hour phone calls, pulled the nine Republican votes out of Reid's hand, dooming the bill.

Outside-the-Beltway tea party groups like Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots had vehemently opposed the spending bill in recent days. John Hart, a spokesman for Sen. Coburn, said the spending bill defeat was "100 percent grassroots."

As a result, "voters should be very encouraged by what happened," says Mr. Hart. "This shows that, in spite of our dysfunctions, when the American people make their voices known, it does make a difference."

The spending bill's demise, critics say, pointed out the hypocrisy of Republican appropriators who had publicly vented about over-the-top federal spending while, as Politico's David Rogers writes, putting "their hands in the cookie jar" by helping to assemble the nearly 2,000-page appropriations bill.

Instead of the omnibus bill, Congress is likely to pass a two-month extension of a current stop-gap mechanism that's been in effect since Oct. 1. That, in effect, puts Republicans in charge of the budget process, because they'll take over the House in January.

Thursday's proceedings came straight out of the tea party playbook, including tea party stalwart Sen. Jim DeMint's demand for the Senate clerk to read the entire bill – which would have taken at least 50 hours. A major part of the tea party platform, as it is, is to force Congress to impose waiting periods to allow people to read proposed bills, as well as mandating that Congress include constitutional justification of all new laws. The tea party's Contract From America document has also demanded the end of earmarks from both sides of the political aisle. Earmarks are one-time appropriations that many lawmakers see as just desserts for constituents who deserve to see federal money spent in their communities.

Ms. Schiller at Brown doesn't see the repudiation of the spending bill as ushering in a "tea party Congress," but notes that it will put additional pressure on incoming House Speaker John Boehner to build a workable coalition with freshmen tea party members before Republicans split over spending and debt-reduction principles.

More broadly, Schiller says, the omnibus bill's defeat speaks to voters' desire for Washington to rein in projects like a $300,000 farm museum in Urbandale, Iowa, and a $1 million weather camera installation in Hawaii.

"If Americans are pulling back and they're not spending money in every way they want to, it's totally reasonable to ask the federal government to do the same," she says.

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin greets Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele during an RNC get-out-the vote rally in Anaheim, Calif., on October 16. (Newscom)

Sarah Palin to replace Michael Steele at RNC? Don't hold your breath.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 12.06.10

It isn't that Sarah Palin is too busy shooting caribou, as she did in a recent episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," but chances aren't great that the former Alaska governor will take up the call by a national tea party group to replace Michael Steele as the head of the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Steele, despite overseeing one of the greatest Republican comebacks in history last month, is facing a tough fight to retain his seat amid criticism of inappropriate spending sprees and waning influence of the RNC as a central organization.

In that light, Judson Phillips, head of the Tea Party Nation group, writes in a letter to Palin that she'd be just the elixir to set the national party straight, raise more money for candidates, and focus its philosophy on the small government, low taxes tea party line.

In Mr. Phillips' view, the RNC needs a Sarah-quake, if you will, to counteract not just Democrats, but so-called RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only, who he says dominate the RNC.

"If we end up with establishment control of the GOP and their support for an establishment candidate in 2012, Obama and the socialists will have won," he writes.

So far, Wisconsin GOP chair Reince Priebus, former Michigan party chair Saul Anuzis, and former Missouri chair Ann Wager are vying to unseat Steele, who is by most accounts going to run for another term.

Ironically, Palin and her tea party mates have played a role as the RNC's first black chairman has struggled to marshal a withering donor base. Privately raised tea party "money bombs" played an outsize role in a 2010 election fueled by an anti-establishment mood that favored Republicans – a mood at least in part embodied by Palin.

Direct donations to Republican candidates and political action committees skyrocketed before this year's midterms, meaning the RNC had to spend more to raise fewer dollars, wrote former RNC political director Gentry Collins in a leaked resignation letter. The RNC is currently holding more debt than cash.

Moreover, given that much of the tea party movement is just as peeved at the Republican establishment as at national Democrats like Obama, a Palin-led RNC could become a distracting study in schizophrenia, since Palin is, in some ways, already at war with party stalwarts she calls "blue bloods."

"The problem? She's too divisive," wrote Time's Megan Friedman when the idea of Palin as RNC chairwoman first surfaced in July.

Besides, gladhanding and intraparty politics probably don't seem that appealing to someone whose idea of a good time is snaring salmon and tweaking the public debate via Twitter and from her commentator's perch at Fox News.

"I respect the desire to have someone in charge of the RNC who understands the wishes of the conservative grassroots and understands that power resides with the people and not the vested interests in D.C.," Palin told ABC News today, in response to the tea party letter. "However, the primary role of the RNC chair seems [to] be that of fundraiser-in-chief, and there are others who would probably be much more comfortable asking people for money than I would be, and they would definitely enjoy it more."

Palin, of course, has hinted that she may be running for a slightly more influential job in the near future.

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Tea party groups push GOP to quit culture wars, focus on deficit

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 11.15.10

Representatives of the loosely organized tea party movement urged GOP leaders in a letter released Monday to abandon their fronts in the culture wars – issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, and abortion – and instead focus their new electoral power on individual liberties and "economic freedoms."

The letter, signed by 16 tea party groups and a conservative gay organization, points to an emerging rift between the tea party movement and the GOP, which still counts social conservatives seeking "moral government" as a key constituency.

The signatories, ranging from conservative commentator Tammy Bruce to local tea party group leaders, say the key lesson the GOP should draw from the election is that Americans are concerned chiefly about taxes and the size of government, not their neighbors' lifestyle choices or personal decisions.

But the push to quit the culture wars is already meeting resistance from mainstream Republicans, who worry about a rebellion from social conservatives if the party refrains from taking stands on moral issues.

"If the Tea Party wants to remain true to its limited government principles, then it strikes me that the default position would be less government and more personal freedom, whether the issue being dealt with involves economics or so-called 'social issues,' " writes Doug Mataconis on the Outside the Beltway blog. "At some point this unnatural split in the GOP's view on freedom will have to be reconciled."

The letter, sent to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, tackles the rift between small-government conservatives and those who might see the Republicans' Election Day victory as a mandate to legislate morality on issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

"This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check," the letter reads in part. "Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party's message and use it to push their own agenda – particularly as it relates to social issues."

The tea party letter implies that many activists believe the GOP has lost ground with certain voters who, though fiscal conservatives, disapprove of the way the party has in the past used "wedge" issues like abortion and gay marriage to garner votes.

"For almost two years now, the tea party has been laser-focused on the size of government," Christopher Barron, who heads GOProud, a gay coalition, tells Politico. "No one has been talking about social issues – not even the socially conservative candidates who won tea party support."

Yet social issues have cropped up among some tea party stalwarts. Sen. Jim DeMint, considered a tea party kingmaker for his support of candidates across the US, had before the election urged a ban on gay teachers. What stance to take on the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prevents gays from serving openly in the military remains a source of conflict within the movement. And a tea party-inspired GOP platform in Texas urged stronger sentencing for those caught with small amounts of marijuana.

"[C]aught between Scylla and Charybdis, the Republicans are now facing the big problem that they faced not long ago with defining who they are as a party," writes Bridgette LaVictoire on the Lez Get Real blog. "Do the remain small government or do they go for social issues? Can they continue to balance the issues in order to please both sides of their base?"

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Bristol Palin and her partner Mark Ballas perform on the celebrity dance competition series, 'Dancing with the Stars,' Nov. 1, in Los Angeles. (Adam Larkey/ABC/AP)

'Dancing with the Stars': Is tea party conspiracy helping Bristol Palin?

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 11.10.10

Bristol Palin is no Mick Jagger on the dance floor. So how did the famous teen mom survive last night's "Dancing with the Stars" after crashing through a samba?

A tea party conspiracy, perchance?

Conspiracy is a strong word, of course, seeing that the center of the storm is a fluffy, albeit entirely entertaining, reality show that normally has little bearing beyond popcorn-littered living rooms.

But even the show's producer, Conrad Green, told Bloomberg last week that "it's entirely possible" that young Ms. Palin may be picking up support from her mom Sarah Palin's political supporters and a wave of tea party voters turning their attention from upsetting Washington to tweaking Hollywood. Callers, Mr. Green said, may be behind Bristol Palin "for political reasons."

Callers trump judges

Two weeks in a row Ms. Palin, a frequent tabloid subject, self-effacing mom, and "teen advocate," has received the lowest scores from the judges (including for last night's "instant samba"), but has squeaked through thanks to support from call-in voters, who make the final elimination call.

The apparently tea party-fueled call-in campaign, experts say, waltzes around her mother's rock-star power among conservatives and her figurehead status among tea partyers. It also points to the growing influence of distant social media operators, who with the flick of a few thumb strokes can prod like-minded people to the polls and, now, even affect the story arc of call-in reality TV shows.

"It's a game-changer," says Elayne Rapping, a pop culture expert at SUNY-Buffalo. Tea party activists on Twitter "are part of a large community that has power, and when this group of people with this power decide to put it in the service of Bristol Palin, it's kind of mind-boggling."

The tea party conspiracy theory does have legs. The Daily Beast website tracked Palin's Twitter support in part to conservative author Tammy Bruce, whose Twitter-centric "Operation Palin" has championed the teen mom's dance floor tenure. Ms. Bruce tweeted before last night's show: "Operation Bristol waltzes in tonight! As #DWTS starts vote at abc.go.com Tweeps pls tweet phone info, will RT."

In other words, "Vote early and often for Palin!"

GOP and social media

"The Republicans really do have this whole social-media thing figured out," writes Simone Wilson in LA Weekly "'Operation Bristol' has been posted and re-posted by websites such as Conservatives4Palin and us4Palin, gathering a clickety little army with the sole mission of securing the Palins as much screentime as possible."

While polarizing, the Palins are indeed becoming the poster family for how to walk the line between politics and pop culture. And it all appears to be heading in one direction. In the lead-up to her new reality TV show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," which starts next week, the elder Ms. Palin again toyed with a presidential run in a Tuesday speech, saying that if she ran, she "would be in it to win it." Sarah Palin is also in the audience at DWTS.

But whether getting involved in TV dance contests is really a formula for building tea party electoral power is another question, says Ms. Rapping, adding, "If this is part of what the tea party is up to, it's goofier than it seemed."

Yet others contend there is a more serious edge to Bristol Palin, despite her two left feet, moving closer to victory in one of America's must-watch TV events.

"Bristol's survival on 'DWTS' is a testament to the power of her mother and her Tea Party fans," says CBS News. "And, it's an indicator of how the Palin brand is viewed as Sarah Palin contemplates running for president in 2012."

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House Republican leaders John Boehner of Ohio (r.) and Eric Cantor of Virginia talk to reporters at the US Capitol in Washington Nov. 3. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Tea party vies for seats at House GOP's table

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 11.09.10

Breaking with tradition, GOP leaders announced Tuesday that they'll give a larger role than usual on the influential House Steering Committee to freshman lawmakers swept into office on the Republican wave last Tuesday.

The move is an apparent nod to the conservative tea party wing of American conservatives, which provided a boost of energy and passion to help put Republicans over the top in the House, rejiggering national political dynamics in the process. Likely House Speaker John Boehner and whip Eric Cantor said in a letter delivered Tuesday they'll seat a freshman legislator at the leadership table and give an additional seat to a freshman on the Steering Committee.

IN PICTURES: Tea Parties

But as tea party champions such as Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina also vie for more prominent roles within the party structure, the GOP faces an internal conundrum: How much rope do they give to the 18-month-old movement that espouses a return to "constitutional government" by slashing federal spending, even at the risk of Congressional budget deadlock?

Representative Bachmann's bid ahead of next week's leadership elections to head the Republican House Conference points to a brewing battle "between the GOP's top House leadership and the tea party movement that helped propel Republicans into the majority," writes John Parkinson of ABC News. Bachmann raised more campaign cash than any other candidate in a midterm election that broke contribution records.

So far, many Republicans have been slow to embrace a broader role for Bachmann and Senator DeMint. His decision to back controversial – and ultimately losing – candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware helped scuttle a bid by Republicans to seize control of the Senate, some say.

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Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R) of Ky. and his wife Kelley arrive at his victory celebration in Bowling Green, Ky., on Nov. 2. The tea party's influence could be felt in individual races such as Rand Paul's in Kentucky, but perhaps more keenly in its ability to enchant the crucial independent vote. (Ed Reinke/AP)

The meteoric rise of the tea party -- and the limits of its power

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / 11.05.10

For a self-described ragtag band of political scoundrels, they didn't do all that bad.

After a year and a half of stirring America's political pot, the tea party and its followers on Election Day won about 35 percent of the seats they targeted. The tea party's influence could be felt in individual races such as Marco Rubio's in Florida and Rand Paul's in Kentucky, but perhaps more keenly in its ability to enchant the crucial independent vote. That vote was a key factor in what President Obama termed a "shellacking" of Democrats on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the small-government, antitax buzz of the tea party may have been more of a flutter, at least on the national level: National tea party candidates, especially in super-crucial Senate races, tended toward the fringe, and the defeat of Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, and probably Joe Miller in Alaska doomed a GOP takeover of the Senate.

Yet the tea party's biggest impact may ultimately emanate not from the result of big national races, but from outcomes at the local and state level. State legislatures under GOP control went from 14 before the midterms to 25 as of Nov. 4, and the elections also produced a net gain of six Republican governors.

It is at the nonfederal level, tea party activists say, where the real 2010 conservative comeback found its footing and where its future power will probably be flexed – potentially affecting issues like congressional redistricting, an earmark ban, and education funding and even possibly fueling momentum for a national convention to consider a balanced-budget amendment to the United States Constitution.

"If you want to compare it to the original Boston Tea Party, this election was the dumping of the tea. In other words, we're just getting started," says tea party activist Rob Adkerson, a landscaper in Adairsville, Ga. "Nearly 700 state seats were won by Republicans, and that is where the influence of this movement came in. That is where local tea party groups got behind their guy and got the word out."

Going from guys and gals in tricorn hats outside some county courthouse on tax day last year to rejiggering national electoral dynamics 18 months later is certainly a major political accomplishment, especially for a decentralized interest group without an anointed leader.

The tea party got its first major spark in February 2009, when TV reporter Rick Santelli railed against an Obama administration program involving mortgages and called for a new "Chicago tea party." After that, mostly older, conservative Americans started peacefully protesting – sometimes in clusters of just six or seven people – in hundreds of big cities and small towns from California to Maine.

Those protests helped establish a general tea party umbrella that attracted Americans of all stripes, including GOP leaders such as Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sarah Palin. In the process, they upset political balances in crucial primaries and eventually reached, among other things, the election this week of several black Republicans and an Indian-American female governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley.

Along the way, the tea party movement picked up flotsam in its trawl net, giving fuel to critics who paint it as hopelessly fringe and even a dangerous throwback. Reams of polls and doctoral dissertations have parsed its associations with everyone from white supremacy groups in Idaho to New York millionaires.

Yet the tea party movement has seemed to thrive off such criticism.

Political analysis around the tea party's rise nearly always misses the mark, says Mr. Adkerson, the Adairsville tea party activist. "It's just the American spirit, man – that's it," he says. "It's a human love of liberty. It spreads like fire."

Many who support the tea party – which is really nothing more than an amalgam of loosely tied local, state, and national group – have done so out of a sense that the people weren't being heard. America's economic woes and the rising national debt only added to the fire.

Independents especially "are always stuck with liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, and they're neither: They swing back and forth," says Stephen Voss, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "The tea party could get those voters who wanted things moving in the other direction, who see [the tea party] as a way to get a balance."

Over the past year, polls have shown that about a third of Americans self-identify with the tea party. According to exit polls on Election Day, just over 4 in 10 voters said they at least somewhat support the tea party, with the remaining voters split between opposing the tea party and feeling neutral about it.

A USA Today/Gallup poll this week reported that Americans say the tea party has made politicians "more responsive to the views of ordinary citizens," but a majority also say, on the whole, that it has "created deeper political divisions" in the US.

The overall role of the tea party in the election results does not necessarily bode well for its future influence, according to some political experts. By raising high ideological expectations, the tea party has put a "political noose" around its own neck, Laurie Rhodebeck, a political scientist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, said recently.

The defeat of tea party Senate candidates in Nevada, Delaware, and possibly Alaska "raises important questions about the whole Tea Party project," writes David Frum, George W. Bush's former speechwriter. "It also weakens the alternative power structure in the GOP ...."

Whether Election 2010 signifies a movement rising or a movement reaching its zenith will be a major question as the new, clearly more conservative, Congress gets down to business. Another big question mark: Can newly elected tea party ideologues such as Mr. Paul in the Senate stand up to entrenched Republican and Democratic powers to check spending and push for tax cuts?

Some are optimistic that the tea party can continue to have an effect. Both national parties are now on "high alert," says Adkerson.

Hardly deterred, those in the tea party are eyeing other big goals. With 25 state legislatures now under Republican control, and many other states holding large Republican minorities, the prospect of a "balanced budget" constitutional convention, which needs the approval of two-thirds of statehouses, just improved, tea party activists say. The repeal of health-care reform and the defeat of Mr. Obama in the next presidential election are other big prizes.

Also, tea party-fueled victories for Republicans in state and gubernatorial races could become crucial in upcoming congressional redistricting efforts in 15 states. That could help cement conservative rule for a decade.

“I think we’re headed in the direction of tea party principles dominating and guiding the Republican Party,” David Adams, a Kentucky tea party leader, told the Associated Press.

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