Tea Party Supporter and Media Critic Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart is a conservative political commentator and the founder of an online media empire: Breitbart.com, breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Big Journalism. He has also worked for the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report.

HPR: You’ve defended the Tea Party against charges that it is racist and violent or merely the work “Astroturf” organizers.

Andrew Breitbart: The most threatening thing in a Tea Party event I’ve gone to are people who dress their dogs in patriotic garb. These people have hand-made signs. It is not Astroturf. The opposition to the Tea Party is clearly Astroturf. Their signs are mass-produced. Organized labor is behind it: AFL-CIO, SEIU, the egg attackers I’ve caught on camera, Democratic Party field directors…

What’s interesting  is the power with which the Democratic Party can set the agenda and set up a baseline of propaganda. When the Tea Party movement started to emerge, the Democratic Party immediately called it racist and homophobic. It is a natural tendency of the cultural Marxist to use multiculturalism and race division in order to intimidate and marginalize a movement. It was expected. That’s why I go to the Tea Party events. I am not so much a political figure as a political media figure. I am trying to create equality in the mainstream media, so that the Tea Partiers do not have to be on the defensive against baseless accusations that cast their motivations in the worst, most horrific light.

HPR: What is the real meaning of the Tea Party in your view and what do you think is its proper role?

AB: There’s never a collective sense of being aghast when the Left organizes and protests and even gets violent. But there is a threat to the Democratic and media establishment when the conservative movement discovers the power of protest. Everybody thinks they are somehow not susceptible to the collective persuasion of media. We are immersed in a media world right now in which we are being inundated and hit from countless different angles. And the Democratic Party has understood far more than the Republican Party the power of popular culture, collective messaging, and aesthetics. Right now, the Tea Party is the sign of early adapters who are starting to recognize, “Wait, we can do the same thing that they’re doing.“

The media establishment is losing the viewership of red-state Middle America conservatives who have recognized that the media has behaved unfairly towards them for more than a generation. They’re starting to stand up and form an insurrection against the Democratic Party and the media. And both the Democratic Party and the media are threatened by this group of people. I’ve even stated that there may have to come a day when we do a Tea Party to the tune of millions of people on 6^th Avenue, Media Row in Manhattan, to show these people that we are serious, that we recognize the power of their propaganda. We recognize their power to frame decent Americans who are worried about the economic trajectory of this country, who are raising legitimate questions about who is going to pay for this Utopia, with baseless and reckless charges of racism.

HPR: We saw large increases in entitlement spending, an expansion of the national security state, and two wars under the Bush administration. Why don’t you think there was this kind of reaction then?

AB: If you’ve ever listened to conservative talk radio, there was no love lost with George Bush leaving the presidency. Many conservatives supported his wartime policy after we were attacked on 9/11, and the Right, which is much more oriented towards national security, recognized the collective threat of radical Islam to a great extent. They looked at the map and looked at where terrorist attacks had occurred around the world, and saw where the money was flowing, and noticed the demographic shift of unassimilated Muslims into Western liberal democracy, and recognized that we are going to have to figure out a long-term strategy to deal with it. It cost money to do.

George Bush tried to make accommodations. These were attempts to accommodate liberal entitlement programs, to try to make nice with the Ted Kennedys of the world. And he got burned for doing it. They still hated him, they still ridiculed his policies, and they still blamed him exclusively for votes that they took in favor of his war.

So George Bush was hoodwinked and bamboozled by the Democratic Party. He made accommodations with them that many would say were not wise, because he didn’t get as much bang for his buck as he could have. But he did make a commitment to the troops that he would follow through on the mission. He did. And I think history will look kindly on him for what he did.

The Tea Party is a radically different approach to what government is obligated to do, and the amount of money that should be put towards government as hundreds of billions in deficits turn into tens of trillions in debt. Tea Party people have legitimate concerns.

HPR: What do you see as your place, your niche, in the movement?

AB: I’m an individual. I don’t look for a leadership position. I’m trying to use my media savvy to protect these people, to guide them through a treacherous process. The media and Democratic Party have a political interest and self-interest in maligning them. Most of the Tea Partiers are not media-savvy. They’re not used to public debate and congregating publicly to vent their political concerns.

As a Jew, I guarantee you that if I sensed I was walking into a racist or anti-Semitic group of people I would run away from it. And I have not been shy to criticize [the Birthers]. The Tea Party has a series of legitimate grievances, and that to me is not one of them.

My involvement in the creation of the Huffington Post was an intentional sign to people that I believe, “May the best ideas win.” I believe in the free exchange of ideas. I helped to create a platform for the anti-war movement to exist. I am now trying to create a platform for the [conservative] side to be able to openly express its concerns about politics. The Left and its cultural Marxist tendencies, steeped in Alinsky and critical theory, tries to deconstruct every opposing argument into multicultural conflicts that put the other side on the defensive, as if they are secretly motivated by racism or homophobia. These desperate tactics are becoming too plain to the American people.

HPR: Do you think that it would benefit the Tea Party to stay as independent as possible of the GOP?

AB: Oh yes. I find it beautiful. Democrats are going to be put on the defensive about whether they are 100% for repeal or not. And the Republican Party is going to find that it now has checks and balances, which should have existed before, which would have kept the Bush administration more honest on issues of fiscal conservatism.

I believe in democracy. I believe in public debate. I am a staunch enemy of political correctness and the Left’s typical and predictable tactics of intimidation to stifle dissent. Wherever the Left finds itself in control, it stifles debate. Whether it is Cuba, or Hollywood, or the mainstream media. Wherever the orientation of the political Left becomes the dominant force, these tactics are used to shut people up.

I take this battle very personally. Having lived in L.A. most of my life, and I have an apartment in New York, I know how Leftists are. I know how they believe that their enemies are evil like Nazis. It’s not inexplicable that when given the choice between hiring someone who agrees with them politically and hiring someone they think is a Nazi, it is understandable that they would hire the non-Nazi. So that’s where I come from. I’ve witnessed and studied the Left. I find their tactics and their mindset deplorable and anti-democratic.

HPR: You have already launched several blogs focused on the “institutional Left,” such as Big Government, Big Hollywood, and Big Journalism, and you’ve said there may be more to come. Should we expect some kind of Big Academia, which would focus on the academy as a bastion of the Left?

AB: Yes. It’s going to be Big Education. It’s the one I will be the most passionate about, because that is the origin of this problem, that the Left took over academia at some point. There had always been a strong movement towards progressivism and even a movement towards economic Marxism during the 1930s and the Depression. But the arguments of economic Marxism never took hold in the United States in the way they did in other countries, because America had a unique makeup and a unique narrative. It was the idea that anyone could come from Ellis Island, and within a generation their family could pretty much be at the top of the heap.  So economic Marxism was not a particularly strong [ideology] in America.

But it was the Frankfurt School—people like Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno, who fled from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy—these people were Marxists who translated economic Marxism into cultural terms. That critical theory, that “deconstruction,” that language of [dividing] the country from e pluribus unum and split us up into little multicultural segments pitted against each other. And that is what I fight against—how the Left has used culture, especially academia, to pit people in groups against each other in order to achieve political gain.

That is my battle. That is what Big Education will fight mercilessly using video cameras and Alinsky tactics, to make life hell for totalitarian Marxist professors. [Families] are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or, God forbid, students are taking out hundreds of thousands in loans in order to be turned against the system that they are about to graduate into. And I was one of those idiots.

And now I’ve turned against my master, and I’m pissed.

Alexander Sherbany ’11 is the Managing Editor. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo Credit: Flickr (shalf)

The 2012 primary elections kick off in Iowa in a little under a year, yet the race for the Oval Office has yet to officially commence for Republican hopefuls. Will it be Trump, Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Santorum, Bachmann, Palin, or <insert rumored name here>? The list is seemingly interminable. However, unlike 2008, libertarian figures are sure to have a much more prominent voice in shaping the debate in light of mounting concerns among the American people about the state of the economy, healthcare, the budget crisis, and foreign entanglements.

Perhaps most telling of this recent trend is a simple comparison of exit poll data in the 2008 presidential election and 2010 midterm elections. Before President Obama took office, 44% of those who found the economy to be the most important issue facing the country voted Republican, whereas by the midpoint of Obama’s presidency, the number has risen to 54%. Furthermore, 68% of those “very worried” with economic conditions trended Republican and 65% of those who wanted Congress to take on a greater role in trimming the debt turned to the GOP, perhaps indicative of the message of fiscally conservative Tea Party movements throughout the country. This should be taken with a grain of salt. Republicans under George W. Bush were no better than Democrats under Barack Obama in correcting our budget malaise. Republicans need to be held to a higher standard and must practice what they preach.

Nonetheless, no one has been more vocal about reining in government spending and a smaller government approach to rectifying our economic woes for years than the father and son tandem of Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and freshman Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Both have been lightning rods for national attention over the years, running for the Republican nomination in 2008 and capturing the Kentucky Senate seat as the darling of the Tea Party, respectively.

However close family bonds and living spaces may be, there are some nuances that differentiate the two statesmen from each other.

The elder Paul has been a purist libertarian ideologue for decades in the House now, urging for policy positions that do not always resonate with the majority of Americans. Ideas such as returning to the gold standard and abolishing the Federal Reserve come to mind, which are courageous ideas for an intellectual to ponder, but nonetheless opaque issues for either the media and American people to digest. However, measures like the “Audit the Fed” movement last year showed the type of bipartisan support that could be garnered by a refined version of his message, one that appeals to the skepticism toward the central bank after the never-ending bailouts and quantitative easing. By the same token, Dr. Paul should avoid the association with radicals and conspiracy theorists when defending his views of the Federal Reserve; pursuing theories that the Federal Reserve has attempted to maintain its autonomy by indirectly involving itself in the assassination of John F. Kennedy is not a wise move politically or morally – it is nothing more than pure speculation, is antithetical to Paul’s generally logical approach to politics, and alienates loyal supporters. If the good ol’ doctor stays clear of unfounded assertions, the political climate may be ripe for legitimate change.

By contrast, the younger Paul has assumed a slightly more mainstream view in the Senate Chambers. Though he is a deficit hawk and joined Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) in outlining a five-year plan to balance the federal budget that has drawn the ire of party apparatchiks on both sides, Rand caters to the bulk of the Tea Party movement and quite a few Republicans with his aggressive stance on deficit slashing. In all the interviews I have watched of Rand, I have yet to see one in which he forcefully calls for bringing all of the troops home or ending the faith-based money system in the U.S. Sure, the intent is implicit, but the means are less overt and emphatic, which leaves the door open for the American voter who becomes interested and wants to learn more.

Which of the two Paul’s would make the better candidate? Ron Paul has incredible fundraising abilities, which he demonstrated during the 2008 primaries and more recently with “money bombs” through his Campaign for Liberty non-profit organization and Liberty PAC, which brought in $3 million or so before the campaign has launched. He has a huge following among the youth, veterans, and online. Problem? He has never won a primary and as with John McCain in 2008, age can be an issue with voters (he would be the oldest president in history at 77 by inauguration in 2012). On the other hand, Rand has won a statewide contest and has considerable backing from the national Tea Party movement. He is co-founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the Senate, yet has not developed a substantial national face by being in office for several months.

Jesse Benton, political director for Ron Paul, recently stated that, “Rand would not run if his dad’s running,” and that chances of Ron running are “better than 50-50.” An announcement of his candidacy will reportedly be made in May, and in the words of Jonathan Martin of POLITICO at the Institute of Politics Forum this past week, it would appear that Ron will get the ball one last time and head to the mound for a last hurrah in 2012. Come 2016, the younger Paul will almost certainly take up the mantle if the country is still in doldrums (which it almost certainly will be if history vindicates my cynical “Republicrat” view of the two-party system). Nonetheless, with the potential backing of his son Rand in 2012, his traditional support base, and newfound allies won over to his side by virtue of the receptive political climate, the tides may be shifting for Ron Paul and the r3VOLution. It should be an exciting couple of months.

After Thought:

I would be remiss to ignore the Gary Johnson factor, former governor of New Mexico who now identifies with the libertarian school of thought. He has attempted to distance himself from Ron Paul by emphasizing his executive experience and his ability to justify tough decisions by more than just ideology. Though good friends, Johnson has stated that he would not back down as Rand would if Ron opted to run. How much would Johnson’s entry affect Ron Paul’s chances?  No one seems to have a clue. Paul has a devoted group of online followers who will stick with him through thick and thin, but so does Johnson (especially for his ardent backing of marijuana legalization).

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

On the one hand, a Palin victory in the primary would pave the way for an easy victory for Obama in the general election. For some politicians, charisma can go a long way in covering up vices. This compensation reaches a limit, however, and the depth of Palin’s inability to formulate a clear stance on many present-day issues, coupled with her constant gaffes that render her a joke for many, certainly exceeds that limit. Obama’s top guns have recognized Palin’s potential in winning Democrats elections, as both Plouffe and Axelrod “invok(ed) Palin to stir (the Democratic) base” while campaigning last September. Similarly, the progressive attendees of the Netroots Nation conference this year overwhelmingly chose Palin as the candidate who they’d like to see Obama run against.

On the other hand, all the press and attention focused on Palin far too often is wasted on making her look foolish and dumb. Perhaps this is best epitomized by the media’s obsession with Palin coining the word “refudiate” on Twitter. Not only were liberals “enraged” by Palin supposedly typing an “f” instead of a “p”, but the media entertained the story to the extent that thousands of articles were written about the minor gaffe and Palin was forced to repeatedly explain herself. The media is ignoring the real issues, those being Palin’s history as a governor and legitimate stances on current topics, while dumbing down the debate and focusing more on things that really don’t matter.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m giving Palin too much the benefit of the doubt. After all, she has spent her time since November 2008 retiring prematurely as governor of Alaska, becoming a pundit for Fox News, and serving as the centerpiece of a reality show on TLC. And she doesn’t usually have valuable ideas to contribute to debate, either, often resorting to the predictable rhetoric of how it’s all about jobs and how the government’s spending is out of control when she becomes confused by the topic at-hand. To make matters worse, she has proven herself entirely inept at knowing which battles to fight, recently picking on the First Lady’s crusade against childhood obesity.

But if she is really this bad, and I’m not saying she isn’t, why aren’t we worried a little less about who wins the next election and a little more about the future of political discourse in the United States? Shouldn’t we be able to trust the public enough to make an informed judgment about whether or not Sarah Palin is someone who should be taken seriously?

By focusing more on chastising Palin at every possible moment, I fear that both the Democratic Party, a party to which I loyally belong, and the national media are inciting Sarah Palin supporters to become ever more radicalized and increasingly loyal, often blindly, in their support of her. As I mentioned earlier, I fully recognize the potential for Democratic political success in associating all Republicans with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and I certainly don’t fault Plouffe and Axelrod for placing an emphasis on such a connection during this past arduous election cycle. Further, I am cognizant that such a polarizing figure as Palin would likely help Obama in 2012 much more than, say, Mitt Romney.

However, is this the nation we really want to become? Do we as Democrats honestly want our opposition to revere a candidate like Palin? Personally, I don’t buy in to the strategy of degrading opposition by laughing and ridiculing. Instead, I prefer constructive debate where both sides bring good ideas to the table. I fear that if we continue down the path we’re headed, our attempts to paint all Republicans as Tea Party “numb nuts” will backfire more than they have already. By that I mean, while we spent the midterm cycle obsessively attempting to portray all Republicans as Christine O’Donnell clones, Republicans picked up significant gains in the House and Senate, clearly showing the public viewed their message as much more legitimate than we attempted to portray it.

For the sake of not only the 2012 presidential election, but also for the sake of political discourse and the productive exchange of ideas in this country moving forward, it is my sincere hope that we, both as Democrats and as a nation, refocus our attention on the real issues and mitigate our obsession with Sarah Palin. It’s time the Democrats and media just forget about her, let people decide for themselves if she is a legitimate possibility for the presidency, and move on, before the damage is irreparable.

Photo Credit: Robyn Beck, 2008 AFP

In the weeks before Election Day, we were besieged by polling data, breathlessly conveyed as breaking news by unimaginative journalists. This might seem rather benign, a mild diversion for political obsessives. But I’m not sure polls are quite so innocent. We either need to train a more critical eye on opinion polls and become informed consumers of their data, or start ignoring them altogether.

The problem is that journalists, pundits, politicians, interest groups, and citizens usually take polls at face value—sometimes because it’s in their interests to do so. If a poll says 55% support Jones, then Jones must have 55% support. QED.

But it isn’t so simple. For one thing, it’s usually a bad idea to draw firm conclusions from a single poll; they can go grievously wrong. Consider a Rasmussen poll that predicted a 13-point victory for Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) a few weeks before the election. (Inouye won on Tuesday by over 50 points.) Then there’s the September poll conducted for PJTV, a right-wing Internet TV channel, which found that a third of African American likely voters would support a Tea Party candidate. A single poll like this one, mixed in with some wishful thinking and self-interest, can outweigh for some people the well-known realities of American politics.

The reason polls have this power is that they have a scientific ring to them. But what makes the best of them scientific often doesn’t apply to run-of-the-mill political polls. I’m not referring only to baldly partisan polling, which the two parties churn out in order to drive their preferred narratives about certain races. (Rasmussen, for its part, is a technically nonpartisan but Republican-friendly pollster; Nate Silver, of the FiveThirtyEight blog, estimates that their polls had a three or four point Republican tilt this year.) There are factors besides a poll’s provenance that should make us suspicious of seemingly straightforward results.

One major problem in the average political survey is forced choice: Pollsters will only offer options like agree or disagree, support or oppose, but not “I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought much about it.” Another recent PJTV poll asked likely voters whether they supported or opposed the Tea Party; there were no other options. The not-so-surprising result was that more than half the country supports the Tea Party. But this finding starts to look a little shaky when you consider that a recent Newsweek poll found that more than a quarter of registered voters have not read, heard, or seen anything about the Tea Party. Apparently a lot of the people PJTV was picking up either as supporters or opponents were just hearing about this “Tea Party” thing for the first time.

Americans just aren’t as opinionated as opinion polls assume and require them to be. When polls explicitly offer an option like “I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought much about it,” people often take it. In 2002, the National Election Study found that about a third of Americans admitted not having thought much about the Bush tax cuts, the central domestic policy initiative of the past year. Or consider a CBS News poll from late August, during the “Ground Zero mosque” nonsense, which asked about Americans’ impressions of Islam. Thirty-seven percent reported not having heard enough about the religion to say.

It’s easy for those who are afflicted with the political bug to forget that their fellow citizens just don’t pay that much attention to politics and don’t have strong opinions on every issue. But opinion polling has often implied the opposite: that Americans have well-formed views on everything under the sun.

Then there’s the issue of question wording, which has a tremendous ability to introduce bias into poll results. Compare a couple of polls taken in June, during the Gulf oil spill, measuring attitudes towards offshore drilling. CBS News asked whether respondents favored increased drilling off the coast, or thought “the costs and risks are too great.” Just 40% favored drilling, and 51% said the costs are too great. But Ipsos presented two options: either offshore drilling is “necessary so that America can produce its own energy,” or it’s a bad idea “because of the risks to the environment.” 62% said drilling is necessary; just 32% said it’s a bad idea.

CBS News, of course, reported that a “majority now opposes more offshore drilling.” Ipsos, meanwhile, concluded that support for offshore drilling wasn’t budging “despite increased coverage and environmental fallout from the spill.” Which conclusion you believe depends on which question wording you prefer—or, more realistically, which conclusion you want to peddle. The inevitable variation between polls with different question wordings enables almost all interested parties to claim the public’s support for their positions.

Now, while I have focused on issue polling, it’s worth noting that polling averages are generally pretty good at predicting electoral outcomes. But a few major caveats are in order. First, the media often doesn’t report polling averages. They report lone poll results, like Gallup’s outlandish prediction that Republicans would best Democrats by 15 points in the overall congressional ballot (it looks to be closer to seven points).

Second, even polling averages can systematically fail. They predicted about a three-point victory for Sharron Angle over Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), but Reid has pulled another rabbit out of his hat, and won by five points. One possible explanation, says Silver, is that pollsters didn’t pick up a lot of unenthusiastic Reid voters (is there any other kind?) because such people were unlikely to complete the polls. The flip-side of this problem can be seen in Colorado, where polls thought radical-right independent candidate Tom Tancredo would be closer than he was, possibly because his voters were very enthusiastic and likely to respond to pollsters.

I should clarify, in closing, that this is not an argument against polling per se. Nonpartisan, transparent, methodologically sound polling is absolutely useful. It can tell politicians what people think, and tell citizens what their neighbors think. And it is fun for the political class to follow this stuff, and, yes, I confess that it’s fun for me too. But the current cacophony of opinion polls is distracting, and the indiscriminate way in which the media reports on them is misleading. So let’s either learn how to read polls, or how to ignore them.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of tychay

On the other hand, the Justices have little accountability.  Even on the issue of conflicts of interest the Justices are left to their own discretion. This creates a unique situation in which a Justice may refuse to recuse himself from a case even when it is clear that a conflict of interest exists.

The issue of conflicts of interest on the Court is especially relevant in light of Virginia Thomas’s recent career choices.  Better known as Ginni, Virginia Thomas is the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and the recent founder of Liberty Central, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting conservative candidates aligned with the Tea Party movement.  Videos and articles on the organization’s website use buzz words such as “tyranny,” “socialism,” and “elitism” to describe Washington.  Clearly, Ginni Thomas is not shy about making her opinions known.

It is, of course, Ginni Thomas’s right to involve herself in the political process.  While other spouses of Supreme Court Justices have quietly remained behind the scenes, Mrs. Thomas has proudly entered the political fray.  The possible problem is not about her at all.  Instead, the real issue comes with how Justice Thomas will make sure that this new overt activism does not influence his judging.  As the New York Times reported, “It is the most partisan role ever for a spouse of a justice on the nation’s highest court,” and this role means that Justice Thomas should be even more careful about recognizing conflicts of interest. So far, he has not attended any of the numerous Tea Party rallies with Mrs. Thomas, but there is the possibility that her work may influence his judging.

While Liberty Central does not participate in any litigation, there is always the problem of donors to the organization.  Federal law dictates that judges recuse themselves in instances where a family member could have a monetary interest, but the choice to recuse oneself is left to the individual Justice.   Liberty Central has no requirement to reveal who its major donors are according to 501(c)(4) , and this only adds more to the accountability problem for Justice Thomas.  Without knowing who the donors are, the public can never be sure that he is recusing himself in all cases in which he could possibly be influenced by his wife’s work.

Issues of conflict of interest are nothing new to the Court.  Justice Scalia received criticism in 2004 after he failed to recuse himself in Cheney v. USDC for District of Columbia.  The case involved then Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom Justice Scalia had recently dined and accompanied on a hunting trip.  More recently, Justice Kagan has recused herself from several cases that she was involved in during her time as Solicitor General.

This pick-and-choose type of solution to the conflict of interest problem is clearly less than optimal.  The Court thrives on its ability to act outside of the normal political arena, but it is also damaged by these insinuations of secondary motives in cases.  Ginni Thomas is entitled to exercise her rights as a citizen, but, like or not, the public deserves some type of assurance through disclosure of her organization’s major donors that Justice Thomas is recusing himself when he should.  While clearer guidelines on when Supreme Court Justices should sit out on cases, the best that the public can hope for now is that the sound judgement we hope Justices use on every case is also used to decide whether they have a conflict of interest.

PHOTO CREDIT: U.S. Government

The question, of course, answers itself. In January the Supreme Court blew the starting gun, and since then the big-money donors have been racing to the November finish. Spending on political TV ads is on track to top 2008 levels, and one analyst predicts it will exceed $3 billion when all is said and done.

Especially unnerving is the fact that Republicans and Democrats have raised and spent eerily similar amounts (the Dems trail by just a few million). What this suggests is that the parties are in a financial arms race, matching each other dollar for dollar. To end the vicious circle, both sides need to cooperate and back down; unilateral disarmament is a pipe dream. Unfortunately, at this time, only one side thinks there’s a problem here. You can call Democrats hypocritical for raising funds from special interests and big donors and then railing against the corruption of American elections, but I’ll take hypocritical over malevolent any day.

And direct election spending is only the beginning. As Jane Mayer of The New Yorker recently reported, Charles and David Koch (the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, an enormous but little-known conglomerate, and longtime libertarian sugar daddies) have been funding the anti-Obama backlash from day one. It’s more than TV ads; it’s leadership training seminars, buses and supplies for protesters, stipends for think-tank shills—all of it coming from a treasure chest of oil and chemical money.

Of course, liberals and Democrats have their big donors, too. George Soros, the billionaire speculator, helped found the Center of American Progress, the liberal counterpart to Koch-backed think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. But Mayer suggests that the Koch brothers are more insidious because their donations directly promote their corporate self-interest. When the owners of oil refineries support climate-change skepticism and the producers of toxic carcinogens lobby against the Environmental Protection Agency, it’s fair to say their reasons aren’t purely ideological.

Digging into motivations is, of course, tricky business. Tim Mak, a reporter for FrumForum.com who was previously a Koch Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, defends his benefactors by arguing that “funding a plethora of free-market groups seems like an odd path to profit.” Mak continues, “If these organizations exist to serve the corporate interests of Koch Industries, why not replace them with a lobbying firm that would directly advocate on the niche issues that affect their businesses?” But Mak’s question is easy to answer: lobbies that promote corporate interests garner suspicion, but think tanks with scholarly veneers and “grassroots” organizations seeded with corporate money seem a lot less fishy to most people.

Still, Mak is probably right that the Koch brothers “genuinely believe that free-market methods are the path to prosperity.” Very few people are so cynical that they can’t even convince themselves of their own integrity. The point isn’t that libertarian ideology is a mere cover for corporate interests; it’s that the overlap between them shows that the ideology isn’t very good. For instance, Koch Industries has opposed the EPA’s classification of formaldehyde, of which it produces 2.2 billion pounds a year, as a carcinogen (which it is). Whether the Koch brothers’ anti-regulation ideology is sincere or not is sort of beside the point.

The brothers have also been major financial supporters of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party-backing Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and heavily funded by the Kochs, plans to spend $45 million on the midterm elections. It’s not that there wouldn’t be a Tea Party without the help of big donors like the Koch brothers; there was an egg of conservative cultural resentment before there came the chicken of the Tea Party movement. But there’s no doubt that the Kochs are getting their money’s worth. As David Koch said at an Americans for Prosperity meeting last year, “Days like today bring to reality the vision of our board of directors when we started this organization, five years ago.”

This is the central irony of contemporary conservative politics: here’s a mass movement whose essential theme is populist, which is motivated by pangs of powerlessness and alienation, yet which is underwritten by wealthy, powerful, cosmopolitan ideologues. When the conservative movement scores a success, as it is primed to do in November, the check-writers’ economic interests are invariably advanced; the social and cultural interests of the foot soldiers are usually not.

To point out its big-money backers is not to dismiss the Tea Party as a mere “Astroturf” movement, as many liberals do. Money helps, but it isn’t everything. Where money really does the most work, or the most damage, is during the immediate election season. That’s when it is used to fund appeals to the whole voting population, rather than for organizing hardcore activists and supplying protesters. Even when they’re enabled by the likes of the Koch brothers, the latter activities are hard to get riled up about. It is essentially democratic behavior. But when the big money goes toward slippery, mendacious advertising, its supporters coyly hidden behind innocuous names like Americans for Prosperity, the democratic decision-making process is corrupted.

The first step in fighting this corruption is to require complete transparency. In Minnesota, we recently saw a good example of how this should work. Target and Best Buy each contributed six-figure sums to a group supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, a far-right social conservative. The retailers liked Emmer’s pro-business policies, but didn’t consider the full set of positions to which they were lending their support. Thanks in part to Minnesota’s strong campaign-finance laws, the donations were revealed, the companies were embarrassed, and their shareholders demanded a review of their political contribution policies.

This is a model of how campaign finance laws ought to work. We need stronger disclosure requirements to make sure that, if corporations are going to give freely to political causes, the people at least can hold them accountable. Unfortunately the Democrats’ attempt to pass the DISCLOSE Act fell short, and, if corporate donors like the Koch brothers have their way, the midterms will make progress on campaign finance reform even more unlikely.

This column first appeared in the Sept. 16 issue of the Harvard Independent.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of dolphinsdock

The Tea Party movement attracted a lot of attention with its vocal opposition to the Democratic health care legislation, but it took shape at the very beginning of the Obama presidency. It arose out of widespread libertarian and populist outrage over the federal government’s intervention in the economy. While opposing the Obama administration, the Tea Party movement has remained independent from the Republican Party, sometimes openly confronting the GOP establishment. Yet the two organizations are united by their opposition to the Democratic agenda. What will ultimately determine the future of the Tea Party movement, then, is how successfully Republicans can incorporate elements of the Tea Party’s doctrine into their party platform. And how effectively they can prevent the Tea Party from bringing down more electable, establishment candidates.

The Origins of the Tea Party

When CNBC commentator Rick Santelli railed against the “homeowner bailout” at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in February 2009, he tapped into a widespread frustration with government “handouts.” Santelli famously declared that he wanted to oppose Obama’s economic agenda with a “Chicago Tea Party” in July. Within weeks, anti-tax groups had sprung up across the country. Zephyr Teachout, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, emphasized the importance of these early events in an interview with the HPR. “While right-wing media and politicians fueled the anger around health care reform and other programs,” she said, “I suspect that some of the organic growth of the Tea Party movement came from extraordinary anger at the bank bailouts.” Indeed, the bailouts—combined with the stimulus package’s $787 billion price tag—were major instigators for the Tea Party movement.

Kate Zernike, national correspondent for the New York Times, told the HPR that “the motivating grievance for most [Tea Partiers] was when Congress passed TARP—under President Bush.” TARP, which provided emergency assistance for major financial institutions, was maligned by populists on both the left and right. Furthermore, many Ron Paul supporters, devoted libertarians, provided an organizational structure for the nascent movement. A loose populist-libertarian coalition arose that sought to limit federal spending and roll back newly acquired government powers. The stimulus bill, Zernike said, was just fuel on the fire.

Tea and GOP

The Tea Party movement has repeatedly rebuffed the GOP establishment’s attempts to co-opt it, which has alarmed some Republicans. Richard Parker, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, observed, “The RNC remains concerned about three things: the impact of Tea Party primary challengers on the electability of general election candidates, how Tea Party voters will vote in November, and the potential political damage that negative perception of the Tea Party can cause.”

Overall, though, the Tea Party movement has chosen to operate as a wing within the Republican Party in the upcoming midterms, recognizing that fielding candidates against Republicans in general elections would be counterproductive. Indeed, Rasmussen Reports has found that in three-way contests between Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party candidates, the anti-Democratic vote is split down the middle. Zernike explained, “Tea Party leaders generally boil their issues down to three things: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.” These issues comprise the core values of fiscal conservatives, and Tea Partiers generally recognize that Republicans are better aligned with their interests than Democrats. Still, there is no doubt that the Republican establishment should be concerned, as it has seen a number of preferred candidates receive strong challenges from the Tea Party movement.

Tea Futures

As the economy recovers, the anger and frustration driving the Tea Party could abate. The principles behind the movement, however, will survive. If the Republican establishment adopts Tea Party planks and refrains from voting for new spending programs, Tea Party leaders will feel more incorporated into the political mainstream. The Republican caucus has already unanimously opposed numerous Democratic proposals, most notably President Obama’s health care initiative. As long as Tea Partiers believe that Republicans are listening to their concerns, the Tea Party is likely to function as “an outside advocacy group” that “works for Republican candidates, but does not uniformly support them,” Zernike predicted.

The Tea Party, originally a reactionary movement against what was perceived as unnecessary federal intervention in the nation’s economy, has become an organized political force. Although the Tea Party movement has not outright endorsed the Republican Party, it can exert significant pressure on the GOP to maintain a platform of strict fiscal conservatism, as seen in such primary challenges as Marco Rubio’s in Florida or J.D. Hayworth’s in Arizona. Though the economic conditions fueling the Tea Party’s growth will dissipate, the movement itself may have a long-term impact on American politics.

Alexander Chen ’13 is a Staff Writer.

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Charlie Crist's winning smile

Governor Crist will undoubtedly point to his infamous “hug” with President Obama, backin early 2009, when the President was campaigning for his massive stimulus program. Then, Crist was seen as a pragmatic Republican, willing to compromise and work with the popular President. Crist will say that the Charlie Crist’s winning smile Republican Party as moved too far to his right leaving him no choice but to run on his own mantle. In some ways this does look plausible, as Marco Rubio has shot up the top ranks of the Republican Party from obscurity, buoyed by support from the fledgling Tea Party movement and early endorsements from conservative leaders like Mike Huckabee and Jim DeMint. Yet, Crist’s cataclysmic fall in popularity among conservatives in Florida is far more a demonstration of his failure to demonstrate solid convictions, than crazy extremist right-wingers. Recently, perhaps in preparation for his independent bid, Crist vetoed a Republican-backed education reform bill that would have removed the system of tenure for Florida public school teachers and instituted performance based salaries. Such a bill had been the brainchild of former Governor Jeb Bush, and subject to countless compromises, and the veto clearly demonstrated again political expediency over conviction.

Fortunately for Floridians, a Crist independent run would probably only further damage his reputation. The country needs genuine leadership to tackle the issues of a growing budget deficit, runaway entitlement spending and vast socioeconomic divide. From what we have seen from Charlie Crist, he may shine well in the spotlight, but when it comes putting the people of Florida first, he has failed.

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Events on Flickr Creative Comments

I am struck by a few things from Peyton’s post, and I want to pull them out and talk about them directly.

First, Peyton argues that we should not consider the FICA tax when assessing the overall progressivity of the tax system, because, he says, those who pay FICA taxes “receive direct monetary benefits during retirement.” The idea here seems to be, if I may put it crudely, it’s not really a tax if you’re getting it back eventually. But when conservatives lament the overall tax burden that falls on, say, the top 5% of American earners, I am pretty sure they include FICA. Otherwise, taxes would seem pretty darn low! Moreover, the FICA tax isn’t the only one that is remitted back to the people in the form of some service or benefit. Peyton helpfully lists these: “the U.S. military, benefits for veterans and federal retirees, federal support for education, transportation and infrastructure, and international affairs, and the numerous other areas of federal spending not directly tied to workers’ retirement welfare.” Now, liberals and conservatives disagree about how much money should be spent on such things, and how cost-effective our current spending is, but we don’t try to calculate what proportion of our taxes is eventually remitted back to us in the form of services and benefits, and then say that only the remainder, only the waste that is, is our real tax burden. To sum up, taxes are taxes.

Second, Peyton responds to the point that everybody also has to pay state and local taxes by saying that these taxes “vary tremendously from state to state and from locality to locality.” Of course. But Republicans and conservatives media figures have been pushing the narrative for at least a week that 47% of Americans just don’t pay taxes, period. Even when they take care to say “federal” taxes (which they don’t always do, as I found out yesterday when I flipped to Fox News), the implication is clear to everyone: half the country is a bunch of freeloaders, and the other half is paying their way. One Tea Party sign, quoted by the New York Times today, read: ““I’m the 50 percent stuck paying for the other 50 percent.” If that were true, it would be quite objectionable. But it’s just not true, and the existence of state and local taxes makes it not true. Peyton can’t do these two things at once: recognize basic facts about our system of government, and imitate or justify the moral outrage of the Tea Partiers.

Finally, Peyton has a very interesting psychological argument about how voters who don’t pay much in taxes might not be responsible stewards of our fiscal future. But I don’t understand the leap from saying “I ultimately don’t pay the federal government any income taxes” to saying “I have no stake in anything the federal government funds.” Obviously this is the kind of thing that’s easier to say than to show, but I just don’t think people reason like that. It’s not that Peyton’s being too cynical, as he worries. It’s that he’s not being cynical enough! Voters don’t go through those sorts of calculations. Many if not most people vote out of atavistic party loyalty; many others vote based on the personal characteristics of candidates; many vote on symbolic issues or issues unrelated to taxing and spending; and many people who care about the deficit also don’t much in federal income taxes (unless we are to suppose that all fiscal conservatives are in the top 53%).

I also object to Peyton’s claim that “Such programs are all benefit and no cost for the bottom 47 percent of the country.” Just to pick an easy target, I hardly think it’s the case that military spending is all benefit and no cost for the poorest Americans. Not when they’re the ones fighting our wars.

Ultimately, I agree with Peyton that this debate comes down to irreconcilable moral positions. But I still think we need to get our facts straight, and talk about these issues with complete candor and statistical rigor. And as for the moral side, I’ll just say this: Peyton might be right that all citizens ought to have a stake in how the government spends its money, but I’m not willing to worsen the living conditions of the working and middle classes just to satisfy this abstraction.

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But his sightings of  ”trolls” — people unsympathetic to the Tea Party movement who are there just to make it look bad – corroborate the reports we’ve been hearing about left-wing activist groups mobilizing to crash the Tea Party events and frame them as racist and violent. (See, for instance, crashtheteaparty.org.)

Now, the Iron Law of Populist Protests says that for every 1,000 people at a public protest,  100 will be an embarassment to the cause.

And as Copulsky observes, some of these are true believers. The Birthers, for instance, are not going to go away any time soon. They’ve been hermetically sealed off from reality for the foreseeable future. They are going to be a vocal minority at every Tea Party event.

But what about the Hitler impersonators? Aren’t these the same people who hassled Barney Frank last year at his town hall? The primary, organized force behind the Hitler signs and costumes has long been the cultish LaRouchePAC, which believes that the Queen of England controls American politics and wants to start an FDR-like Civilian Conservation Corps to achieve “productive employment” in the United States. Note the Obama-Hitler images all over the home page and the ObamaWatch campaign.

There is no rhyme or reason to their politics, except idolization of Lyndon LaRouche and his conspiracy theories, and they certainly don’t support small government or lower taxes.

The Left, naturally, tries to pin him on the Right. And the Right tries equally hard to pin him on the Left. But he’s not so much left-wing or right-wing as a certifiable independent.

If take out the left-wing activists (the crashers) and the LaRouche nuts (the piggybackers) you may be left with a much less circus-like cross-section of people.

After all, even if the activists tend to fit a certain profile, they seem to have broader support in the population than is commonly thought.