# Is the Tea Party movement generationally time-limited? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 23, 2010, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769 "2010-09-23T14:47:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/41 "2010-09-30T01:50:46Z")
This is my understanding. The concept that young people are always liberal and old people are always conservative is false. There have been studies finding that people actually become more liberal with age, and that millennials are progressive/liberal because of the environment they/we grew up in, not because of age. young people who grew up under Reagan were extremely conservative. young people who grow up now are progressive, and those liberal attitudes are probably going to last for decades to come. The average fox news and talk radio viewer is 65-67, and many are male. So within 15 years the vast majority of diehard conservatives will be dead. Also within 15 years millennials will make up about 35-40% of the electorate. So you have 35-40% of the electorate with socially & fiscally liberal attitudes, combined with 80% of the audience of fox news and talk radio being dead (basically the most conservative 10-30 million people in the US dying) and you end up with a far more liberal society. Replace the most conservative 10-15% of the electorate with 10-15% who are fairly liberal, and it changes everything. I can’t wait until the elections of 2026. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/42 "2010-09-30T01:55:12Z")
The Tea Party is nothing new. Fake right-wing grassroots movements comprised of people who claim to have been previously non-political have been created during every Democratic presidency of the 20th century: FDR has the Liberty League, Kennedy had the John Birch Society, Clinton had the Arkansas Project and militias, and Obama has the Tea Party. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/43 "2010-09-30T02:16:46Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > So you have 35-40% of the electorate with socially & fiscally liberal attitudes, combined with 80% of the audience of fox news and talk radio being dead (basically the most conservative 10-30 million people in the US dying) and you end up with a far more liberal society. Replace the most conservative 10-15% of the electorate with 10-15% who are fairly liberal, and it changes everything. Well maybe, but don’t underestimate the power of corporate money in politics. After all we just passed a health care bill without a public option despite polls showing a solid majority of voters _wanted_ a public option. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/44 "2010-09-30T02:20:48Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > This is my understanding. > > The concept that young people are always liberal and old people are always conservative is false. Of course it is. That’s why to my knowledge no one has asserted that it is. What they (and I) say is that people **tend** to be more liberal in their youth, and that people **tend** to become more conservative with age. I’m sure you won’t agree with that either, but you need to argue from the position of what people have actually said and not in easily falsifyable absolutes that no one has actually claimed. > [@Mozart1220](#): > > The tea party movement is definitely “intelligence” limited. Check the heroes. Palin? O’Donnell? > > Really? No, not really. In the first place, O’Donnell is hardly a “hero” of the Tea Party; she’s merely a candidate who the Tea Part decided to support in the Delaware senate race. Palin, I’ll give you. But there’s a lot more to her than people around here like to admit, or even acknowledge. But the idea that Tea Party members in the main are stupid flies in the face of logic, given that they tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than the general population. To wit: > [@](#): > > Several polls have been conducted on the demographics of the movement. Though the various polls sometimes turn up slightly different results, they tend to show that the self-described Tea Party supporters are mainly white and slightly more likely to be male, married, older than 45, more conservative than the general population, and likely to be more wealthy and have more education. [Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#Composition_of_the_movement) So, who’s your dummy now? ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/45 "2010-09-30T02:29:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > As an outside observer, this is the political dynamic I see happening in the US: > For all those reasons, I don’t see the Tea Party as a movement lasting through more than one or maybe two more election cycles. It’ll probably survive and even thrive until 2012, but after that all bets are off. But even more importantly, I don’t think the future is very bright for the Republicans unless they become very different from who they’ve been since the late 1980’s. Mind you, the future’s not bright for the Democrats either. > > Maybe what you’re heading for is a very politically unstable time where neither party can hold power for more than an election cycle or two, because the fundamental problems are too big and the structural political problems in the parties will keep them from being able to do much about it. Demographically, as the US becomes majority Mexican and black obviously that will go against the Republicans. The challenge for the Democrats will be that along with baby boomer retirements, there will be a skill shortage leading to reduced economic performance. Also, you’ll have increasing income inequality between the more educated and less educated as unskilled jobs get replaced by technology or outsourced. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/46 "2010-09-30T03:24:08Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > But the idea that Tea Party members in the main are stupid flies in the face of logic, given that they tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than the general population. [Michael Lind writes:](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/09/21/lind_tea_party_whiskey_rebellion/index.html) > [@](#): > > Today’s Tea Party movement resembles the Whiskey Rebellion – but emphatically not because it is supported only by ignorant yahoos, as many critics of the Tea Partiers contend. On the contrary, just as the Tea Party is supported and subsidized by many elite conservatives, so the Whiskey Rebellion’s sympathizers included members of the early republic’s elite, including Albert Gallatin, a Swiss immigrant who later became President Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of the Treasury. (The mature Gallatin adopted much of the Hamiltonian philosophy he had denounced in his youth and proposed a massive, federally funded canal and road system.) > > Whether they are educated or not, the supporters of the Tea Party movement, like the supporters of the Whiskey Rebellion, are deeply confused. The Whiskey Rebels failed to understand that the federal funding of state debts almost certainly spared them much higher state taxes in the long run. Although the federal excise tax on whiskey was regressive, as a whole Hamilton’s scheme for funding the state debts was more progressive than debt payment schemes by the individual states would have been. For example, the state of Massachusetts alone had planned to pay its debt by raising more than $1 million a year in new taxes. In contrast, the interest on the consolidated national debt of $75.6 million required only $4.6 million from the entire United States. And whereas states repaying their debt would have relied heavily on highly regressive property taxes or poll taxes, the federal government raised revenue mainly from tariffs paid primarily by the affluent. While the rich disproportionately benefited from federal assumption of state debt, they also disproportionately paid the costs, sparing ordinary Americans the taxes that the states otherwise might have imposed. But the Whiskey Rebels were too busy grabbing their muskets to understand their own interests. > > In the same way, the Tea Partiers who denounce the TARP and the 2009 stimulus fail to understand that the alternatives to those much-demonized policies would have been much worse. In a financial crisis, the government must rescue the financial system on which the rest of the economy depends. Progressives can plausibly argue that it would have been better to nationalize the banks, while recapitalizing them. But Tea Party conservatives who argue that the government should have allowed the national and global banking systems simply to collapse are, to be blunt, ignorant fools. And they are ignorant fools, too, when they argue that the 2009 stimulus was too large, when in fact it was too skewed toward tax cuts and too small to play its necessary role in boosting aggregate demand when consumer spending had cratered. The depth of their ignorant folly is demonstrated by the fact that most credible Republican conservative economists supported both the TARP and some sort of stimulus. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/47 "2010-09-30T03:30:27Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > What they (and I) say is that people **tend** to be more liberal in their youth, and that people **tend** to become more conservative with age. See post #16. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/48 "2010-09-30T06:24:02Z")
Politics shmolitics. There’s something different that has relatively recently evolved: a massive, multifaceted and heavily integrated industry that is generating a substantial profit from a defined audience. It may have existed before in some senses (it does have roots), but the depth and breath of today’s industry–television, talk radio, publishing–are unparalleled. While anything can happen, the sheer economic volume and its potential lead to self-perpetuating corporate marketing efforts; the diversity of economic actors assures that the current brand may mutate in some ways yet individual failings and die-offs will be small in comparison to the whole. Again, politics shmolitics. The braying voices and ugly lies and distortions of both left and right-wing positions undercuts the notion that this is a “conservative” movement. The media monstrosity is taking otherwise articuable sentiments from both sides and couching them in over-sensationalized terms meant to sell advertising space. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/49 "2010-09-30T13:25:03Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Demographically, as the US becomes majority Mexican and black obviously that will go against the Republicans. The challenge for the Democrats will be that along with baby boomer retirements, there will be a skill shortage leading to reduced economic performance. 😕 Wait, why? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/50 "2010-09-30T17:21:24Z")
All those “Mexicans” taking siesta during class, probably. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/51 "2010-09-30T17:24:50Z")
Immigrants do not **replace** the native-born population, they **supplement** it. High immigration figures would not in any way cause a “skill shortage” in a given generation, not even if all the immigrants are unskilled illiterates. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/52 "2010-09-30T20:23:16Z")
> [@Brain Glutton](#): > > Immigrants do not replace the native-born population, they supplement it. High immigration figures would not in any way cause a “skill shortage” in a given generation, not even if all the immigrants are unskilled illiterates. Why the “generation” qualifier? There’s no question that as the native population ages and retires and dies out, and immigrants continue to flood in, the immigrant population will for all intents and purposes replace the native population. Or is it your contention that America’s white population has merely “supplemented” the Native American population? > [@Really Not All That Bright](#): > > All those “Mexicans” taking siesta during class, probably. :rolleyes: Care to point out just who it is you’re rolling your eyes at? Or have you just cooked up a faux-racist comment yourself and then attempted to pass it off as coming from the opposition? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/53 "2010-10-05T18:09:55Z")
[New survey finds the Tea Party is religious-right, not Libertarian.](http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/05/tea-party-is-much-like-the-religious-right-only-moreso-surve/) > [@](#): > > The common view that the Tea Party movement is a rebellious, libertarian threat not only to the Republican establishment but also to traditional Christian conservatives is upended by a new survey that shows a broad overlap between the religious right and voters who identify with the Tea Party. > > For example, nearly half (47 percent) of Americans who consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement also consider themselves part of the “Christian conservative movement,” and among the more than 8 in 10 Tea Partiers who identify as Christian, nearly 6 in 10 (57 percent) also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement. > > The biennial American Values Survey, released in Washington on Tuesday, was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and shows that two-thirds of Tea Partiers say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 45 percent say there should be no legal recognition for same-sex relationships. That is hardly the profile of a libertarian fringe and more closely reflects the Republican base. > > On the other hand, just 11 percent of Americans identify with the Tea Party movement, as opposed to 22 percent who identify with the conservative Christian movement. So the Tea Party is perhaps not as large as it is vocal and visible in the media. Its political influence, however, is out of proportion to the raw numbers because Tea Partiers are angry and mobilizing for a November vote that many other groups are sitting out. I would say that adds **immense weight** to the “generationally time-limited” theory. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769/54 "2010-10-05T18:14:31Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > > [@Brain Glutton](#): > > > > Immigrants do not replace the native-born population, they supplement it. High immigration figures would not in any way cause a “skill shortage” in a given generation, not even if all the immigrants are unskilled illiterates. > > Why the “generation” qualifier? There’s no question that as the native population ages and retires and dies out, and immigrants continue to flood in, the immigrant population will for all intents and purposes replace the native population. No, not unless the native-born population goes through a simultaneous decline in numbers – absolute, not just relative, numbers. You seem to be assuming not only that immigrants are coming but that native-borns are no longer reproducing. That’s not really true even in Europe, and far less so here. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Or is it your contention that America’s white population has merely “supplemented” the Native American population? :dubious: The Native Americans **did** go through some serious declines in abolute numbers. They also went through a process of cultural destruction and displacement – something which immigrants to the U.S. do **not** threaten to do to the native-born, **as you know.** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-tea-party-movement-generationally-time-limited/554769.md?page=2)