Tea Party politics this week - is the GOP (finally) taking back their party?

What's interesting about this emerging shift is that this is where we first began investigating the Tea Party 5 years ago:  wanting to know where the GOP ends and the Tea Party begins.  For a long time, there was little difference, since the "devil" of the Tea Party (Barack Obama) was the target of GOP campaigning, too.

But now (theoretically) that we are moving to midterms and a new Presidential election cycle, the "devil" is no longer running, so the Tea Party is losing influence and the GOP seems to be taking back the party from them, perhaps realizing they have no identity once Obama is gone.

They will need something positive to be for because what they were against is no longer an issue.  (or they will need a new anti-thetical trope, but I doubt anything will ever match the fanatical opposition to Obama).

GOP mainstream politicians such as Jeb Bush began this shift years ago (see his 2013 keynote to CPAC).  In that speech, he never mentioned Barack Obama, but instead spoke of what the Republican party stands FOR, not what they stand against.  He noted "we have to stop being against everything."

In essence, the Tea Party needs a new anti-thesis and devil to survive rhetorically. So far the new antithesis seems to be "Benghazi" which is an anti-Hillary (+ Obama) trope.  But Hillary rhetorically turned that back on them in her book recently, accusing them of playing politics "on the backs of dead Americans", which I think significantly weakens for a future anti-thesis.

Not surprising, however, Tea Party leaders such as Sarah Palin and legislators like Ted Cruz are still fixated on Obama and "Obamacare" as a primary problem in the U.S. and still calling for repeal; others such as Rand Paul are slowly backing away from that position.  

Dave Weigel - Slate
The Tea Party vs. the Establishment, in Two Newspaper Front Pages

David Freelander - The Daily Beast
Conservative Senator Kicks Tea Party to the Curb

Stephanie Grace - The Advocate
The GOP keeping the Tea Party at bay.

Jonathan Martin - The New York Times
On Win Streak, Mainline G.O.P. Takes Tougher Stance Toward Tea Party

Jake Sherman - Politico
John Boehner’s friends plot tea party crackdown

Dan Balz - Washington Post
At Republican Leadership Conference, the struggle over the GOP’s future continues

Sean Sullivan - Washington Post
The tea party and GOP establishment are happily married in the Iowa Senate race

David Montgomery - The New York Times
Slowed Elsewhere, Tea Party Still Wields Considerable Sway in Texas Races

Obamacare - The Rest of the Story - NYTimes.com

Obamacare - The Rest of the Story - NYTimes.com:

The conclusion of Bill Keller's analysis questions whether the opposition to Obamacare is simply (fanatical) opposition to Obama:

 "The Democrats were passionately in favor of enrolling the uninsured, but many would have preferred a government-run program, or at least a public option. What Obamacare has wrought is the kind of market-driven reformation that Republicans pretend to believe in. Which makes you wonder how much of their opposition rests on the merits, and how much is just a loathing for anything associated with Barack Obama."  (Emphasis mine)

'via Blog this'

Tea Partiers Swear They Are Not Racist, But Their Actions Beg To Differ - Occupy Democrats

Occupydemocracy via Twitter:

Tea Partiers Swear They Are Not Racist, But Their Actions Beg To Differ - Occupy Democrats:

Salvatore Aversa writes in this analysis of the Value Voters Summit:

"It is not often I will say somebody is being racist, simply because they disagree with President Obama.  Despite that, there are times when arguments become latent with racism.  It is becoming more and more apparent that the Republican Modus Operandi is complaining because there is a black guy in the White House.  We see it when teabaggers carry signs of President Obama with a bone in his nose.  We see it when Republicans put criticisms on President Obama, that never seemed to be an issue before, like the raising of the debt ceiling, or even simply keeping the government operating.

 This has never been more apparent than with Joe Wurzelbacher, who recently published on his website an article by an unattributed author.  In it, the article states that wanting a “white Republican President” does not “make you racist, it just makes you American.”

'via Blog this'

More of this, please!

As I said earlier this week, what needs to happen rhetorically is for the GOP to start casting the Tea Party as the bad guys and the GOP and traditional Conservatives as the good guys.  As President Obama said October 1st, the Tea Party is "one faction of one party in one house".   The political right needs to run with that . . . and that appears to be finally beginning.   

Here is Scott Galupo from The American Conservative today:

Why are Republicans inflicting real, immediate, and tangible harm on the economy in order to accomplish the impossible (delay or defund Obamacare) address an abstract future threat (debt) or merely to save face? Why isn’t the majority of the House majority isolating its rightmost faction and ending this pointlessly asinine pissing match?

Contra the conventional wisdom, I maintain that no one in leadership will lose his job. The very nature of Tea Party opposition, whether it issues from the likes ofBazooka Ted and His Gang in the Senate or the unappeasable Jacobins in the House, is to throw weight without consequence. They evince no interest in actually wielding power from the inside, which would require restraint, conciliation, and moderation. They are hysterics on the brink of utter demoralization. The danger they pose to democratic norms, institutional comity, and political functionality is precisely why they can’t be bargained with; they must be marginalized.

 It’s time, Republicans: it’s time to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom. (emphasis mine)

Word.  More of this, please!!

"Insane, Catastrophic, Chaos"

From the Washington Post:

President Obama addressed the nation Tuesday regarding the government shutdown, telling Congress to take a vote on a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown.  Video and transcript are available here.

Specific comments about the Tea Party from President Obama's press conference today:

Now the last time that the tea party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, two years ago, markets plunged, business and consumer confidence plunged, America's credit rating was downgraded for the first time, and a decision to actually go through with it, to actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be -- and I'm quoting here -- "insane, catastrophic, chaos" -- these are some of the more polite words.… 

And I've continued to believe that Citizens United contributed to some of the problems we're having in Washington right now. You know, you have some ideological extremist who has a big bankroll, and they can entirely skew our politics.
And there are a whole bunch of members of Congress right now who privately will tell you, I know our positions are unreasonable, but we're scared that if we don't go along with the tea party agenda, or the -- some particularly extremist agenda, that we'll be challenged from the right. And the threats are very explicit. And so they toe the line. And that's part of why we've seen a breakdown of just normal routine business done here in Washington on behalf of the American people.And all of you know it. I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know because it's very explicit. You report on it. A big chunk of the Republican Party right now is -- are in gerrymandered districts where there's no competition and those folks are much more worried about a tea party challenger than they are about a general election where they've got to complete against a Democrat or go after independent votes. And in that environment, it's a lot harder for them to compromise. All right?

Transcript of President's remarks is available via the Washington Post.

The Shutdown Party: Our view - (USA Today Editorial)

USA Today editorial position - October 1st, 2013

The Shutdown Party: Our view:

As the government shutdown loomed, many Americans did what comes naturally in matters regarding Washington: They ignored it.Now that the shutdown has happened, many people are inclined toward a second default position: Blame everyone.

Both positions fit the dismally low view that Americans have of government in general, and Congress in particular.

In this case, however, the "they're all bums" reaction is off-base. This shutdown, the first in 17 years, isn't the result of two parties acting equally irresponsibly. It is the product of an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, controlled by a disaffected base that demands legislative hostage-taking in an effort to get what it has not been able to attain by the usual means: winning elections.

Call it the Tea Party shutdown. The group will wear the badge proudly. 

Pressed by this uncompromising fringe, Republicans leaders in the House are making demands that are both preposterous and largely unrelated to budgetary matters in return for keeping government running. Most absurdly, they want President Obama to undermine the health care law that he ran on in 2008 and 2012, and now considers his signature domestic accomplishment. 

No president of either party could accept that kind of badgering. No president should.

 (emphasis mine)

'via Blog this'

Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News Over Syria Coverage: 'Who Cares HOW We Avoided A War...' (VIDEO)

Jon Stewart - the man who brought us "Baracknophobia"  - blasts Fox this week for their fanatical opposition to President Obama ("the devil").  They do this not with well reasoned argument on policy but rather with fear that serves to increase and feed their "brotherhood".

I get that Fox opposes the Syria peace plan because its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless, irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus like existence, BUT... sorry, I blacked out for a second I was saying something?  (emphasis mine)

This is epic.  Watch:

Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News Over Syria Coverage: 'Who Cares HOW We Avoided A War...' (VIDEO):

'via Blog this'

Tea Party Devil and Holy Cause redux: "I hope he fails!"

Once again, I assert that the "devil" of the fanatical Tea Party movement is Barack Obama - and Limbaugh's 2009 rallying cry of "I hope he fails!" is their primary identity, their fanatical "Holy Cause" and their one true political goal. There is nothing about this movement rhetoric that is rooted in reality and reaching toward a better future for all Americans. This is once again, as always, about demonizing and obstructing the "un-American" "tyrannical" "socialist" "dictatorial" President of the United States, Barack Obama.

(The democratically elected, majority-winning POTUS, mind you - but, hey, let's not let that annoying fact get in our fanatical way).

Their "Baracknophobia" and fanatical Holy Cause to defeat Obama the devil doesn't get any clearer than this:

"Tea Party Nation urges businesses to stop hiring in order to hurt Obama"

Right Wing Watch writes:

"Tea Party Nation sent to their members today a message from activist Melissa Brookstone urging businesspeople to “not hire a single person” to protest the Obama administration’s supposed “war against business and my country.” Brookstone writes that business owners should stop hiring new employees in order to stand up to “this new dictator,” the “global Progressive socialist movement,” Hollywood, the media and Occupy Wall Street."

Brookstone writes:

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

…

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

And there you have it . . . bat-shit-crazy redux. The Tea Party fanaticism is back and more hyperbolic and vitriolic than ever. Now our democratically elected President - in cahoots with OccupyWallStreet - has created a war within America - "I...resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped."

This will surely be interpreted as a call to the Holy Cause (and most likely violence) for the nuttiest wingnuts - mark my words.

This.is.not.good.

Is the Tea Party Over?

Article from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/is-the-tea-party-over.html

UPDATE (10-19-11): Obviously not! http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tea-party-nation-urges-businesses-stop-hiring-order-hurt-obama

President Obama as rhetorical devil of the Tea Party . . .

This billboard recently covered up by the Tea Party movement makes an important point for our case here:

Hoffer makes clear that a mass movement of "true believers" must have a clear anti-thesis to create the essential identity of the movement. He states, "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil."

I still maintain that being "anti-Obama" is the primary rhetorical identification of the Tea Party movement, and it has been since day one. Although certainly there are racist elements and members of the Tea Party movement, the identification is not necessarily racist per se, but it IS essentially primarily and anti-Obama. Thoughts?

Summary - Eric Hoffer "The True Believer" (1951)

Pasted below is the summary handout I've used in my rhetoric classes to begin the discussions of Eric Hoffer's work on True Believers and Mass Movements. I invite you to read through it and see if you think any of these characteristics apply to popular Conservative Talk Radio/Fox News personalities (aka "wingnuts") and/or the Tea Party movements we have witnessed since Barack Obama became President of the United States. Note particularly Hoffer's key insights at the end - and the essential insight that a mass movement need not have a god, but it MUST have a devil. It is this rhetorical anti-thesis that creates their primary identification as a group. "We are who we are because we are not THAT."

For Hitler's Nazi Germany, they were who they were because they were not Jewish (or any other non-Aryan group). Hitler himself remarked that if the Jews had not existed, he would have had to invent them (to be the devil) for the Nazi identity.

So . . .I wonder: who would Tea Partiers be if there was no Barack Obama?

My friend Genma related her experiences at the convention to me last night...and she was simply amazed that the group was so tightly focused on Obama as the (un-American, un-Christian) devil.

Indeed, this morning the keynote address at the convention is titled: "A comparison of the current administration to Marxist dictators of Latin America." (Okay, I'm stumped. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is like a Marxist dictator because . . . ???)

Note the determination to associate President Obama with anything "un-American" . . . birthers say he isn't American outright. Others simply keep calling him a "socialist" while still others refuse to believe the man is a Christian. This repeated mantra of "un-American Obama" serves a clear purpose in the identity (and motivation and fervor) of the movement.

I'll leave it to @coviner to tell you about what he found in his ideograph research and the connection between popular Conservative pundits and these movements and the rhetorical motivation that works to fuel this association and fanatical opposition to the President.

_____________________________________________________________

COMM 4650 – Long

Hoffer, E. (1951). The true believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. New York: Harper and Row.

Definition: The true believer = “. . . the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause” (p. xii)

Rationale:

“It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping up the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities. (p. xiii)

“The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain…(p. xiii)

Hypotheses:

“Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.” (p. xii)

“ . . . a mass movement . . . appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.” (p. 12)

Potential Followers and ‘True Believers’ = The Disaffected

“Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories: a) the poor, b) misfits, c) outcasts, d) minorities, e) adolescent youth, f) the ambitious, g) those in the grip of some vice or obsession, h) the impotent (in body or mind), i) the inordinately selfish, j) the bored, k) the sinners.” (p. 25)

Content vs. Form:

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.” (p. 41)

Preface: Part III - United Action and Self-Sacrifice (pp. 58-61)

When we ascribe the success of a movement to it faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, and ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. To know the processes by which such a facility is engendered Is to grasp the inner logic of most of the characteristics attitudes and practices of an active mass movement.

“The reader is expected to quarrel with much that is said in this part of the book….this is not an authoritative textbook. It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new questions. ‘To illustrate a principle,’ says Bagehot, ‘you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.” (pp. 60).

Factors promoting self-sacrifice (pp. 62-90):

1. identification with a collective whole (44-46)

2. make-believe (47)

3. deprecation of the present (48-55)

4. “things which are not” -

5. doctrine – not meaning but certitude (58-59)

6. fanaticism (60-63)

“What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as the decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come form the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more – and there is. By expiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation….(p75)

“The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude…presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine….simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer.” (pp. 80-81).

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual sources – our of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. The passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the sources of all virtue and strength….He sacrifices his life to prove his worth.” (p. 85)

“The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to reason or his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause.” (p. 85).

Mass Movements vs. Armies (p. 88-90).

Unifying agents (pp. 91 – 128):

1. hatred

2. imitation

3. persuasion and coercion

4. leadership

5. action

6. suspicion

Key insights/Summary from The True Believer (P. Bsumek, James Madison University, 2000)

• 1. We may be godless, but we are not irreligious.

• 2. Mass organizations appeal to us through appeals of self- advancement.

• 3. Mass movements offer and in fact require self-renunciation.

• 4. The logical content of the message is irrelevant.

• 5. A mass movement should have a god, but it must have a devil. (p.91)

• Characteristics of a devil:

• Devil is ugly.

• Devil is powerful

• Devil is strangely attractive

• Devil is omnipresent

• 6. If you want to stop a movement, you cannot argue against it logically.

• 7. Movements offer freedom, but only deliver brotherhood.

• 8. Proselytizing as a sign of doubt not of truth.

"We need to read Eric Hoffer . . . "

This particular rhetorical criticism project began April 15th, 2009 - the day I was late to my rhetoric class because I was fascinated watching the tea party protests on the noonday local news in Nashville. I was also following blogger Oliver Willis as he began live tweeting from one in Washington, DC. And all I could think about this rhetorical phenomenon as I drove to class was: "we need to read Eric Hoffer."

I began reading and discussing Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" with my rhetoric classes in the Fall of 2001. After 9/11, we spent a great deal of time talking and making sense. And one thing that just didn't make sense was the fanatical nature of Al-Qaeda. It also seemed to me that we needed to be mindful of our own nationalism; that our collective bonding in the face of such horror must not deterioriate into blind fanatical rhetoric and behavior of our own. So, because it helped us make sense of this rhetoric of our time, we would read Eric Hoffer's classic analysis of fanatical social movements at the end of every semester through the spring of 2004.

I've since changed Universities, and I've been teaching other courses since then, so I didn't include Hoffer in my course syllabus when I was assigned to teach a rhetoric course again last spring. It simply didn't seem as necessary to consider his work that winter because fanaticism per se was not so much in the public eye then. Mostly it was celebration and exultation following the election of Mr. Barack Obama as POTUS. And President Obama's rhetoric is not True Believer/fanatic rhetoric. It may be many things, but it is not that. So, I edited Hoffer readings and discussions out of my syllabus in favor of trying some different learning activities that are currently more in vogue with educators (i.e. group projects).

But then came Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh . . . and the army of True Believers that followed him. They had a very clear fanatical "devil" = any and all things un-American. And that's fine as far as it goes - I am pretty passionately patriotic, too. But they weren't standing up for American values, they were standing against a very specific un-American devil = the President of the United States, Barack Obama (and his leagues of evil liberal minions).

Jon Stewart captured and confronted the spirit of this developing rhetorical community quite well when he said on the April 7th Daily Show episode "Baracknphobia": "I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing...See, when the guy you disagree with gets elected, he's prob going to do things you disagree with...That's not tyranny, that's Democracy. See, now you're in the MINORITY. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco."


This demonization rhetoric characteristic of True Believer movements intensified throughout the spring, reaching it's first peak and public organization with the Tea Party protests on April 15th, once again prompting a "perspective by incongruity" from Jon Stewart on "Tea Party Tyranny".

To make the President of the United States and the US Government into an Un-American rhetorical devil like this is the hallmark of True Believers and Mass Movements, ala Eric Hoffer. And it was this rhetoric - this increasingly vehement, vitriolic, vengeful and intensely political action - toward our constitutionally elected leaders in the spring of 2009 - that made me throw out the vogue but bland course syllabus and start seriously discussing rhetorical current events with my students again. We voted to scrap the group projects and read Eric Hoffer and take a closer, academic look at this rising mass movement against the POTUS and US Government as our real time rhetorical criticism for the remainder of the semester.

My co-blogger, @coviner, was one of those students - and he has done great research on this topic with me since then, culminating in two conference papers that have used the tools of rhetorical criticism to dispassionately and academically investigate this rhetoric. He began by analyzing popular Conservative pundits, and then turned his attention to the tea parties and other rising true believer voices. His analysis of their ideographs and my application of Hoffer's ideas to this rhetorical discourse community form the core of our ongoing rhetorical criticism project seeking to understand the new social movements that have grown since the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

As luck would have it, the first Tea Party Nation convention is being held in Nashville, and we have the opportunity to study some of the discourse first hand. Thanks to our generous and adventurous assistant Dean of Liberal Arts, and the University mission to support student-faculty scholarship, we have two tickets to their dinner, to enrich and extend the rhetorical analysis we've established this far. We'll share that experience here - as well as some other insights from our ongoing rhetorical criticism project. We invite and welcome your thoughts and ideas, too.

Next up . . . a summary of Eric Hoffer's theories of True Believers and Mass Movements as a method for rhetorical criticism.