This isn’t a trick question, I’ve just want a clear explanation as to how traditional Republicans differ from the new style Tea Partiers.
What are the main areas of difference? What issues to they disagree on? Is the tea party group the fringe edge of the Republican Party, or are they the wave of the future?
I’ll get flamed for this, but I would think level of education and/or intelligence is one factor.
I can read or hear what a “traditional Republican” has to say, and at least give it some thought (even if I probably disagree with it).
The Tea Bagger drivel is too moronic for thoughtful consideration.
*Is the tea party group the fringe edge of the Republican Party, or are they the wave of the future? *
I hope it’s the former, but fear it’s both.
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The tea party groups are activist, populist offshoots of the conservative movement, not the Republican Party. There is, of course, a large overlap between conservatives and Republicans.
There’s another recent poll on this, but I’m not finding it right now.
My understanding is the tea party is more the Sarah Palin wing of the GOP. I could be wrong though. And I’m sure there are some libertarians in the group, but the libertarians should’ve been mad when Bush was in office too (we had debt, unnecessary wars, social programs and civil rights violation from 2000-2008 also.) I think for many people that is partly what turns us off about the tea party, they didn’t care about the constitution, national debt (doubled in 8 years) or social programs (where was the tea party when medicare part D and no child left behind were passed) until a black democrat was president.
http://firedoglake.com/2010/04/09/new-university-of-washington-study-tea-party-simmers-with-racial-resentment/
I don’t even know what the definition of traditional republican is to compare the two. Ideological libertarians were and should’ve been mad at Bush for the war in Iraq, medicare D, NCLB, PATRIOT ACT, national debt, etc. However most tea party members didn’t seem to care about those issues. So the concept of a tea party as a nouveau libertarian, anti-federal movement is hollow to me (where was the anti-federal movement when NCLB & PATRIOT ACT were passed, where was the anti-social program when medicare D was passed?) They seem more motivated by fear and anger that their views and demographics are not represented in the halls of power (congress and the white house).
I think one difference is the tea party doesn’t have the same agenda with conservative social policy wrt things like gay marriage.
So IMO, they are not libertarian since they didn’t care about libertarian agendas when republicans controlled the government. And they are not social conservatives because gay marriage doesn’t seem to interest most of them. They seem more entitled and reactionary, and are dealing with the anger that comes from realizing that people who look and believe the way they do are not in charge anymore.
After the Truman Admin, the GOP split into two factions: A moderate faction, represented by Eisenhower, that accepted the New Deal as a fait accompli, and an extreme faction, represented by Senator Robert Taft, that wanted to put everything back the way it was before FDR. This split has persisted, with some mutations in content on each side, to the present day. Reagan represented the triumph of the hardcore “movement conservative” wing, and George W. Bush pretty much discredited it, but it has too much grassroots and institutional strength to just go away.
I believe it’s sort of like how the Hippies compared to the Democratic party. They’re a loud and noisy group that formed out of the people rather than at the higher levels.
Essentially, the Republican party has always theoretically been about smaller, cheaper government. After 8 years of Bush expanding the government and raising the national debt, just to be followed by another 4 years of someone expanding the government and raising the national debt, the small government segment of the population feels like they’re fairly well screwed regardless of which party they get behind so they’ve started their own.
That is to say, it’s all of the people who feel like neither their government nor their party is listening to them. If the Republicans can convince them that Bush and his measures weren’t really Republican, they should be able to bring them back into the fold. Since it’s unlikely that Bush and his policies will be loudly and publicly dismissed nor will most Republicans will figure out exactly what it was that has driven off this movement, it’s fairly likely that it will continue on for some time–until the people within it get bored or feel like the Republican party has gotten back on the right track.
:dubious: “Always”?
Well, he did say “theoretically”.
The Republican Party of 1854 was not even theoretically about smaller, cheaper government. To the contrary, it was the place most of the ex-Whigs fetched up – the ones who believed in an “American System” – high protective tariff, centralized national bank, federally subsidized “internal improvements” (roads and canals). Lincoln himself espoused all those things openly and proudly.
Stop living in the past, unless you’re talking about Reagan!
Within my lifetime, shall we say. Overall, I think I’d have to say that a nitpick of an unimportant generalization is not worth 4 posts of followup.
Yeah, but it is the exact unimportant nitpick that the Republicans try to sell every election cycle. Nope, still no sale.
Tris
If you define “traditions Republicans” as people who pretty much go with the party, then the Tea Partiers are about fiscal conservatism and anti-incumbent. They don’t like the big spending policies of George W. Bush, supposedly, although they don’t seem to have been very vocal about it at the time. Perhaps it was the big bank bailout that galvanized them, and that didn’t happen until the very end of Bush’s 2nd term. Still, the big protests didn’t happen until after Obama was president.
But I’m not sure the Tea Partiers are all that organized. They seem to be a lot like the Perot supporters, but without a Perot to rally around. And without that central unifying force, I expect they’ll lose relevancy.
Isn’t that exactly the point of my post? The Tea Partiers are taking them to task for it.
Not in this election cycle, they don’t.
Unimportant? The party that formed around the issue stopping the spread of slavery, and was in opposition to the Democrats who supported states’ rights?
The two parties basically exchanged ideology in the 60s following Nixon’s southern strategy. As regards to hippies, I think the better analogy is to the Yippies who were more overtly political or to the Weathermen who were as scary as the extreme tea baggers.
Actually, the Yippies were practicing art, not politics.
American Conservatism comes in two basic flavors: Southern (Ban gay marriage, put the Ten Commandments on display in the courthouse, close the liquor stores on Sunday if not the whole week) and Western (Stay out of my bank account, propositions on every ballot for anything that might increase taxes, and you’ll get my guns from my cold dead hands). It’s a broad generalization, but the Southern wing is home of the Moral Majority, and the Western wing has the small “L” libertarians. The Tea Party is the extreme fringe of the Western conservatives; their concerns are primarily financial, gun-owning and isolationist.
There are plenty of fiscal conservatives in the East and plenty of religious conservatives out west (Hell, Utah alone…), but geography is a big factor. Westerners have a proud tradition of keeping the government out of their personal business, with guns if necessary.
I’m not sure any of the above encapsulate what I’ve read of the TPers. It seems to me that whereas the Republican party is socially conservative and fiscally liberal, the TPers are socially conservative and fiscally conservative.