The Tea Party Battles to Come

The Tea Party Battles to Come

 

Three unrepentant veterans of the shutdown brawl say they're eager for primary election fights with a goal of remaking the GOP.

 

By  Stephen Moore and Matt Kibbe

Only three weeks have passed since the end of the tea party-inspired government shutdown, yet already the group's citizen activists find themselves in the eye of another political storm. Republican-oriented business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation are now threatening to challenge tea party-favored primary candidates, especially if they appear to be in the Ted Cruz scorched-earth political mold.

These business interests and a growing number of GOP insiders are fed up with tea party tactics that they believe have become a negative political force for a Republican Party that is now suffering record-low approval ratings. One business leader recently compared its influence to the Occupy Wall Street crowd taking control of the Democratic Party.

The tea party's answer to the GOP establishment threats: Bring it on—we aren't backing down. That's the message I gleaned from recent interviews with three of the movement's most prominent leaders: Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots.

After 20 years working behind the scenes in Washington, Mr. Kibbe is well-seasoned in political warfare. Ms. Martin, a former computer programmer and Home Depot manager, and Ms. Kremer, a former Delta flight attendant, are relatively new to such conflict. The two women are both mothers living in Georgia—one of the states where the tea party first took root four years ago—and they reflect the group's typical profile: white, middle class, well educated, sick of politics as usual and driven by a conviction that America must be rescued from impending ruin caused by Washington's profligacy.

These three don't always agree on tactics, and they often compete for money and media attention. But they share an overall assessment of what is wrong with Washington and what needs to be done. Like many local tea party activists I have spoken with, they generally view the government shutdown not as a tactical blunder but as an example of weak-kneed Republicans muffing an opportunity to roll back ObamaCare.

"I don't have any regrets," says Ms. Kremer, who attended the original meeting in August when Sen. Mike Lee of Utah unveiled the plan to defund ObamaCare. Mr. Kibbe is similarly unrepentant. Asked what went wrong, he replies: "We just didn't anticipate the Republican circular firing squad in the Senate or the vicious attacks directed at Mike Lee and Ted Cruz." He still thinks the GOP could have won.

Ms. Martin expresses sheer frustration with the final outcome: "What would you expect? This was the ruling elite"—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid —"negotiating with the ruling elite"—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Neither she nor Mr. Kibbe nor Ms. Martin acknowledges even the possibility that the government shutdown was a doomed strategy from the start. The tea party's public-approval rating in the immediate aftermath of the government shutdown has plummeted to 14% in some polls, but these leaders seem unfazed.

Were their members demoralized by the GOP cave-in? No, Mr. Kibbe says, they're "energized." He says FreedomWorks' fundraising has soared in recent weeks, and he expects that the group will raise up to $20 million this year. Other tea party organizations report similar surges in contributions.

Ms. Martin says her troops are also fired up. "I have never seen our members so angry at the elected Republicans—especially Sens. McConnell and [John] McCain. " There is more than a hint in these interviews that tea party groups will redouble their efforts to unseat Republicans who they think waved a white flag during the shutdown. "Taking on incumbent Republicans is part of our job," Ms. Martin says.

Critics say the tea party seems to think that the other part of its job is replacing incumbents with candidates who are hapless neophytes—not-ready-for-primetime candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Republicans blame their defeats for preventing a GOP takeover of the Senate in 2010 and 2012. Don't tell that to the tea party. Its members are adamant that they aren't an appendage of the Republican Party. "How do these critics think Republicans won their landslide election in 2010?" Mr. Kibbe says. "It was because of us."

He believes it is a "false choice to say that Republicans can't win a governing majority by picking principled free-market candidates." And he shows me an election spread sheet purporting to show that in 2012, tea party candidates fared better than those handpicked by the Republican establishment. "Almost all our tea party candidates won in 2010," he says, while the big losers in 2012 were uninspiring moderate Republicans in states like North Dakota, Montana and New Mexico.

But Mr. Kibbe does admit: "OK, Indiana and Richard Mourdock"—who defeated longtime GOP incumbent Richard Lugar and then lost in the general election—"you can blame on us."

Ms. Kremer says, "It doesn't do us any good to have more Republicans if they don't stand for our principles. Our goal isn't to just elect more, but better Republicans."

She points to the election to the Senate in recent years of Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, all of whom were aided by tea party backing. She adds that when George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress, Washington's big-spending ways never changed. Just electing politicians with an "R" next to their name, she says, won't bring the kind of seismic change that's needed.

But it wasn't until the Obama administration took over, with an unprecedented spending spree—including the $830 billion "stimulus" and plans for a fantastically expensive health-care overhaul—that millions of Americans were galvanized to take political action.

Many on the left and right hoped that the tea party movement would fizzle, but its influence, especially inside the GOP, seems to have increased. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledges that the defund ObamaCare and government-shutdown power play simply wouldn't have happened without the organizing efforts of activists across the country. Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks led this mobilization. They have combined annual budgets of more than $30 million and claim between six million and 12 million active members.

What's next on their agenda? Beyond still vowing to roll back ObamaCare—how, precisely, isn't clear— Ms. Kreme says "one of our immediate priorities is to enforce the budget caps and sequester." Even the defense cuts, which many military hawks think could endanger national defense? "With a $17 trillion debt," she says, "everything has to be cut."

Unlike Reagan-era conservatives, who supported rising budgets for the Pentagon to ensure military superiority in the Cold War, the tea party sees the federal debt itself as the main threat to national security.

Mr. Kibbe identifies balancing the budget as the paramount goal for his members. Are they so obsessed with eliminating deficits that they would accept tax increases to get there? No way: "There's a definite supply-side strain within the tea party," he says, smiling. "They want revenues, yes, but through growth and tax reform."

It's a mistake, though, to assume that the tea party is a single-issue movement. The focus on federal spending reflects a general distrust of almost everything that happens in Washington. A theme that emerges in talking with tea party leaders and activists is that under President Obama the federal government has increasingly intruded on basic constitutional rights. It's easy to discount this as black-helicopter paranoia, but Ms. Martin pointedly notes that Tea Party Patriots and allied groups were the subject of IRS targeting and audits.

One typical and unfair criticism of the tea party, as expressed once by Nancy Pelosi, is that this is an "astro-turf," manufactured movement, not a genuine localized grass roots uprising. Nonsense. All one has to do is attend a tea party rally to see that the activists are bus drivers, construction workers, home makers, small business owners and grandparents who have a patriotic concern about the consequences of trillion-dollar deficits and bailout nation. As one activist told me, "All we want from our government is less of it."

Now that the activists are facing friendly fire from mainstream Republicans, the temptation to start a third party might seem tempting, but Mr. Kibbe quickly dismisses the idea. "Third parties are a political disaster," he says, citing the Bull Moose Party a century ago, which split the GOP and helped put the liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the White House. More recently, Ross Perot took votes from George H.W. Bush and helped to elect Bill Clinton.

Mr. Kibbe says the tea party's goal is to "move the center of gravity of the Republican party toward an agenda of freedom and limited government." He cites as a model the modern-day progressive left's takeover of the Democratic Party, gaining enough liberal influence to make Nancy Pelosi the House Speaker and using a grass-roots strategy to nominate Barack Obama over the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton.

The animus from the business wing of the GOP doesn't scare the tea party leaders. Ms. Martin scoffs: "We're not surprised big businesses are opposing us. These are mostly crony capitalists who want something from government."

Mr. Kibbe is similarly disdainful: "I used to work at the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber supported the original version of HillaryCare back in 1993 and the precursor to ObamaCare. They supported the bank bailouts and the Obama stimulus. We are not for any of that." As for the prospect of business backing candidates specifically to challenge tea party choices, Ms. Kremer says: "If it's business money versus tea party grass-roots activists, I like our chances."

This us-against-the-world mentality turns off many people regarding the tea party and may prevent it from gaining enough traction with a big tent of voters to realize its goals. Conservative pollster Whit Ayres says of the tea party, "I wish they would remember the Reagan rule, if someone is with me 70% of the time in politics, they are my friend."

Not the tea party. If you're 30% not with them, that can be a deal breaker. "I would hope the business groups would understand that money alone doesn't buy elections," Ms. Martin says. "The business groups need to work with the tea party, not against it."

If these three activists are any guide, and I think they are, then the GOP is headed for an internal brawl in 2014, and perhaps beyond. In the recent debt-ceiling wrangle, the tea party seems not to have realized where that fight would lead. Before letting the clash with establishment Republicans escalate into all-out war, the tea party should step back and consider an uncomfortable fact. In the end, only one person will win that war. Her name is Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Poster's comments:

Plan B is a whole new third party evolving. It might  take a values-based, good and evil-focused perspective on the immorality of the now century old bipartisan welfare-state expansion (progressive/liberal era?), and both national parties’ shameful response to the global war declared on us by the jihadists. Add in the ethical follies of the 1990's if you choose.

In other words, whatever "it" evolves to it should be able to finance a future of tranquility and prosperity better than what is going on these days.