Let me begin by saying that Campbell and Putnam's 2006-2007 research on religion and politics is impressive. It is their research(or actually their total LACK of research) on the Tea Party that I criticize here. I think they have stretched their original research findings too far in this article in order to create buzz for their book rather than to provide a useful analysis of the rise and fall of the Tea Party in American Politics. Since I have actually researched the Tea Party since 2009, I find their conclusions troubling because they fundamentally beg the question about the Tea Party. Hence, their conclusions provide us with little real insight into the movement or what may predictably follow in this campaign and beyond.
In today's New York Times, authors Campbell and Putnam write in their Op-Ed
"Crashing the Tea Party" that:
Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.
What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters.
So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.
More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.
This inclination among the Tea Party faithful to mix religion and politics explains their support for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Their appeal to Tea Partiers lies less in what they say about the budget or taxes, and more in their overt use of religious language and imagery, including Mrs. Bachmann’s lengthy prayers at campaign stops and Mr. Perry’s prayer rally in Houston.
Now, there are a few problems with this analysis that really bug me. One,
according to the index of their book, they never actually studied the "Tea Party". There is not one reference to them in the index.
Two, the "research" they claim to have done in 2010 (which I assume is their
one and only blog post on the Tea Party from 2010) ignored many
large scale demographic polls about the Tea Party to engage a very
small religious poll about the Tea Party. They simply ignore the information of the NYT poll about religion and the Tea Party and adopt wholesale the much smaller sample from
The Public Religion Research Institute.
(Note: Both the PRRI and Campbell and Putnam beg the question about "conventional wisdom" knowledge of the Tea Party. Statements such as "Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes" and "the survey challenged much of the other conventional wisdom about Americans who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement" are straw arguments THAT BEG THE QUESTION of how and why the Tea Party became such a powerful force in the 2010 elections and the debt ceiling debacle. Hence the claims that the Tea Party is not what we originally thought but are instead what Campbell and Putnam say they are is just as fallacious and potentially misleading as the shadowy premises they are purporting to debunk. This is a VERY big problem with both analyses.)
At that point in 2010, Campbell and Putnam only make the claim that the "Tea Party" marginally overlaps with Christian Conservatives on religion. They note:
To the extent that the Tea Party and its rise causes the Republicans to focus much more on libertarian issues (size of government, tax policy), it is likely that religion will no longer nearly as influential in helping Americans to choose whether to vote Republican or Democratic
And while they go on to note how much of the Tea Party is comprised of "religious" voters, they do not make explicit claims about a religious factor driving this movement. Yet in today's 2011 article, they are claiming that the Tea Party "rank and file" is ALL about religion, was never about political issues, and thus presumably, are driven primarily by this religion.
Their research does not actually support this claim, although this claim supports their research. Big difference.
Their major claims about the Tea Party history and composition in this article are not supported by any research that I could find done by Putnam and Campbell ON THE TEA PARTY explicitly. That is irksome to me as a scholar and a professor. That they are also academics sliding in opinion under the guise of facts and research is shockingly bad form. But judging from their
self-congratulating blog, they are more interested in selling books and advancing their thesis than they are about really researching the complexity and power of the Tea Party. Co-opting negative public sentiment and attaching it to their work this way isn't scholarly - it's simply, crassly capitalist, in my opinion.
Both their blog post and their article today serve to support their thesis in their book. But does it really help us understand the history of this movement and the Tea Party's political power over the last two years? Does it help to predict what comes next?
Not really.
Let me offer an alternative vision that accounts for their analysis and also takes into account some very real facts about the Tea Party that the authors have conveniently neglected to address in their presumably one track goal of selling more books.
The Tea Party, as we have long identified in
our research, is a
fanatical movement. That movement is centered on the holy cause of "
I hope [Barack Obama] fails".
Obama is their "devil" - the mysterious, omnipotent "other" that defines their identity - they are who they are because they are not THAT. It is partially a
hateful opposition, but it is
an antithetical rhetoric with a larger purpose that "the frustrated minds" of fanatics crave: security and pride. Belonging to the Tea Party gives these disaffected citizens a way to calm their fears in the wake of the economic disaster Bush left behind as well as their fear of (whether because of racism or simply fear of change) an African-American President.
It is critically important to understand - and to admit - that the Tea Party is largely fueled by what Jon Stewart called
"Baracknaphobia". Indeed, his
coverage of the first Tea Party demonstrations in an attempt to define "tyranny" serves to highlight this element - notice how many of the signs have pictures of Obama. And note how many of these folks really have no rational idea what they are for. They only know what they are against.
While yes, the Tea Party is comprised of mostly of political Conservatives, that has never been in dispute. That they are predominantly white and Christian has also never been in dispute. But to claim that Tea Partiers are mostly or even essentially seeking "God in Government" is a BIG stretch that leaves out important concrete facts about the history and motivations of this movement. They are in fact heavily anti-Government, primarily because "Government" = Barack Obama. Is this different from the original Tea Party strict Constitutionalism goals? Yes, it is - but that isn't because of religion. That is because of the fear and frustration that drives all fanatics.
What might more cautiously be said is that Christian Conservative voters are also fanatics and thus were easily co-opted into a fanatical movement. Like all fanatics, Christian Conservative voters identify themselves by what they are not: they are anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-[fill in the blanks]. Ask them what they are for and they will tell you what they are against. (Try it!)
So the fact that there is an overlap between these groups is not at all surprising. Again, I think we already knew that. But as Campbell and Putnam themselves point out, that overlap is only 5%. What accounts for the rest of the Tea Party fanaticism?
Libertarians I know will tell you with great irritation that they started the Tea Party movement only to have it
grossly co-opted by the likes of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Those original founders were in fact only interested in the political issues of "big government". But at this point, to say that those original Libertarians are not currently "the rank and file" of the Tea Party - that is also most likely true. Their guy is more likely Ron Paul - who doesn't mix up religion in politics. Nevertheless, to suggest or claims that the Tea Partiers are or always have been about religion in government is not only false, it is really missing a big part of the picture.
The Tea Party is anti-Obama. That is the link that unites religious and non-religious Tea Partiers. Any political party they have cobbled together since 2009 with the
help of corporate America's money was intended to bring down this President. It wasn't the (respectable) idealism of the Libertarians nor the religious motivations of Christian Conservatives that these Tea Party capitalists (some of them heavily invested in the pharmaceutical industry) were organizing against - it was simply an issue of economics and profit for them. For THOSE Tea Party folks, bigger government means bigger taxes and less profits and "less liberty" to keep making outrageous profits (healthcare reform especially threatened their self-interest). So, THOSE folks wanted that stopped. And they used every tool they had at their disposal. Fanatical minds make great tools for this.
Notably, however,
the moment that Michele Bachmann and the other Tea Partiers "jumped the shark" and concretely damaged the U.S. economy with their debt ceiling craziness,
Wall Street and
Fox (via Karl Rove) began to distance themselves from them altogether. So, too, did the American public. No matter how afraid of Barack Obama they might be, the Tea Partiers are even scarier.
While it is interesting that voters are shifting from Bachmann to Perry, this is happening moreso because of his lack of baggage from the debt ceiling debacle. The Republicans will tolerate him because he is not a Tea Party candidate, per se. That trip is over. But a guy who will appeal to the Christian Conservatives AND the anti-Obama fanatics AND maybe, the "less government" folks, is a much more acceptable choice. And yet, if he continues to run so far out of the mainstream with his Christian Conservatism, he'll lose their favor, too.
Because in the end, Wall Street Republicans don't want God in their government any more than they want Barack Obama there.
That's a pretty big point about the Tea Party history and agenda that Johnson and Putnam miss.
It wasn't about religion. It was about money. It still is.
And more importantly, it's about making sure that "I hope [he] fails" becomes a concrete political reality in the United States.
The fact that Palin and Bachmann and their like successfully co-opted the movement and infused it with Christian Conservatism is simply a function of essential fanaticism of the group as a whole. Religion was never the driving force - it was merely a tool to be used to fuel the Holy Cause and meet their one uniting goal of defeating Barack "the devil" Obama.
But they Cambell and Putnam are correct in one important respect: the more candidates like Bachmann and Perry infuse the Tea Party politics with fundamentalist Christianity, the less they will be embraced by the traditional GOP party opinion leaders.
Just ask Karl Rove or the Wall Street Journal.
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