By Maurice Bumbu
Whether you consider them to be just a fleeting echo of the divisive 2008 presidential race or the emergence of something new and revolutionary in America, the Tea Party is definitely making some noise.
The grassroots effort that began right after Obama’s 2009 inauguration, in response to the government’s $787 billion stimulus package and health care plan, has grown in size over the past year and now reached into our hometown. A Tea Party in El Cajon even drew about 1000 people in February of this year. Although still in its early infancy, the national Tea Party represents a group of mostly white, middle-class independent-leaning conservatives that feel overtaxed and underrepresented by Washington. While previously dismissed by Democrats as an extreme right-wing group incapable of doing too much damage, the coalition is doing more than just printing posters that read “I didn’t vote for this Obamination” and “Taxed Enough Already” (a popularized acronym for the movement). Anchored in a belief in fiscal conservatism, the “party” has already dipped its populist head into the political arena, boasting a fresh new resume that includes holding a national convention in Tennessee and serving as a driving force behind Scott Brown’s election to the Senate following Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing earlier this year. But while the Tea Party’s sharp, meteoric rise to national significance is impressive and undoubted, the future of the burgeoning young movement is uncertain. They may become a third party and rival both the Democrats and the GOP in November, or they may be dissolved into the Republican Party itself. For now it is a coalition without a clear leader.
Until they choose someone to lead the movement, the Tea-Partiers will remain in their current state of political limbo – not quite an independent third party powerhouse but also not quite a subset of the GOP. Some have pointed towards Sarah Palin as the new voice of conservative populist protest in America, but most see her as just too radical. Palin told Fox News that the movement should “take over the Republican Party” because “it is easier to reform one of the parties than it is to form a new machine and new process via a third party.”
Politics is a world of opposition. Red versus blue. Republican versus Democrat. Conservative versus liberal. Any new movement that wants to change the game without getting sucked into one of the two opposing extremes faces a daunting task in self-identification. While local leaders bicker about the Tea Party’s direction, the coalition’s future may just fall onto the shoulders of some larger-than-life demagogue who can turn conservative frustration into power… and votes.
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