The Tea Party And The Remaking Of Republican Conservatism Part 2

"This is America!" exclaimed CNBC commentator Rick Santelli in his famous February 2009 call for "Tea Party" resistance to the Obama Administration's mortgage-a.s.sistance measures. Reporting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli demanded of the traders working around him: "How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" His harsh words and dramatic gestures mingled with lofty patriotic rhetoric. "If you read our Founding Fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson, what we're doing in this country now is making them roll over in their graves."1 When John Patterson of Lynchburg, Virginia, heard Santelli's rant replayed, "I related to him," he says. "He went off ... saying what a lot of people think." In his fifties, John is a technical writer now working sporadically as a consultant since being laid off by his former company. After Obama's election, John, a longtime Republican, had wondered what could be done. His son served in Iraq and it filled him with "seething rage" to hear Obama say the war could not be won. In Iraq, the "wrong people cheered" the night Obama beat McCain, the "same people trying to kill my son." John is "not calling Obama a Muslim," but he was glad when conservative-minded people who "love the same things" about this country started organizing Tea Party rallies and he could join the cause. John is determined to fight against "government meddling in the free market" and "big government folks" who are "taking the struggle out of normal life issues," by handing out benefits to people who have not earned them.

Stella Fisher of Surprise, Arizona, age 67, explains why she and her 69-year-old husband Larry gravitated to the Tea Party. "We always voted, but being busy people, we just didn't keep as involved as maybe we should have. And now we're to the point where we're really worried about our country. I feel like we came out of retirement. We do Tea Party stuff to take the country back to where we think it should be." In April 2009, they attended a Tax Day rally at the state capitol and visited several Tea Party groups before helping set up a local Tea Party in their neighborhood. States' rights is the number one issue for the Fishers: "We think the federal government is overstepping their authority. Take health care, take the education. All those things.... The EPA, they've shut down I forget how many timber plants in Arizona because of the spotted owl."

For Bonnie Sims of southeastern Virginia, in her sixties, "it's so sad the way the country is now." She points to the disturbing changes that prompted her and her husband to join the Tea Party. "We worked for everything we got," never used credit cards, and never got "in trouble with the law" or "lived a day in our life off welfare." "We had to earn our rights." But such "values are not taught anymore." You "have to select English" for daily transactions, and the streets in nearby Newport News are not safe to walk. She always voted, Bonnie explains, but her husband was "never political" until Obama "got in." Then "all of a sudden" his eyes went "wide open." They heard about the Tea Party and decided to go to a meeting in August 2009. The "young generation" is all "Obama, Obama, Obama," says Bonnie, but she dreads where he is leading the nation. "I am not a racist," she a.s.sures us, but Obama is "a socialist" who "got a lot of it from his father." Debt will burden our children and grandchildren. "Where will the money come from?" Bonnie wonders.

Fear punctuated by hope is a potent brew in politics. No one can listen to John, Stella, and Bonnie talk about what brought them to the Tea Party without hearing their sense of dread about where America could be headed, along with the jolt of optimism and energy they felt upon learning about the Tea Party. Issues and policies matter to Tea Party members, of course, as do their conceptions about American government. We will carefully consider the substance of these views. But we would be remiss not to underline, from the start, the feelings that came across so vividly when people spoke to us.

In mostly liberal academia, more and more scholars are crunching numbers or parsing texts to figure out the Tea Party. But nothing can replace hearing from people directly and trying to make an empathetic leap into their frame of reference. "Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to the Tea Party," was the simple question we used to open all of our interviews. We have challenged ourselves to hear the aspirations evident in Tea Partiers' reverence for the U.S. Const.i.tution, to grasp the vision of society that underlies their comments about government regulations and spending, and to understand the worries that reverberate in their a.s.sessments of President Obama.

In their emotional response to politics, Tea Partiers are not so different from other Americans. Democratic politics, indeed all politics, deals with morally vital, emotionally charged matters such as what government can legitimately do, and what claims different groups can make on political power. Politics is about who we are-often in contradistinction to "them," to types of people that are not fully part of our imagined community. "We" want our representatives in government to speak for "us," not cater inappropriately to "them."

When George W. Bush claimed the presidency in 2001, aided by a startling Supreme Court decision, many Americans of liberal persuasions were shocked and disheartened. Citizens in more culturally secular parts of the country often felt alienated by the arrival in the White House of an evangelical Christian conservative, a Texas Republican, backed by GOP majorities in both houses of Congress. Things got worse for liberals when Republicans, despite razor-thin margins, moved with boldness and alacrity to push through long-sought contentious legislative priorities. But left-leaning Americans turned despair into anger, activism, and landslide electoral victories in 2006 and 2008.

In early 2009, conservative Americans also felt disheartened-and in many cases downright frightened-when a Democratic president arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton DC, greeted by 2 million cheering supporters on the Was.h.i.+ngton Mall, backed by big majorities in both houses of Congress, and bolstered by an apparently sweeping mandate to respond to the economic crisis. And there was also an element of shock at the personal history of Obama himself. Truth be told, most Americans of all races, backgrounds, and political persuasions were a bit surprised that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could win the presidency. For most citizens, the surprise was thrilling, or at least comforting, if only because of the good things it seemed to say about our country's capacity to surmount its tragic racial past. But for very conservative Republicans, and others even further to the right, the Obama presidency was, and is, scary.

No wonder widely advertised calls for "Tea Party" protests felt like a G.o.dsend to U.S. conservatives-a very welcome opportunity for hope and joint action amidst a winter of Republican despair. Even if you disagree with them politically, it is not so hard to understand the stories told by John and Stella and Bonnie. As we move on to explore the political beliefs of Tea Partiers more fully, we should keep in mind the visceral fears and hopes that have spurred individuals and groups to action, feelings that run through their governing philosophies and public policy preferences.

REVERENCE FOR THE CONSt.i.tUTION.

A tour of Tea Party websites around the country quickly reveals widespread determination to restore twenty-first century U.S. government to the Const.i.tutional principles articulated by the eighteenth-century Founding Fathers. The Lynchburg Tea Party of Virginia, for example, sums up the "principles that we adhere to" as "Const.i.tutionally Limited Government"; "Freedom to Pursue Prosperity through unhindered Markets"; and "Liberty tempered by Virtue." Far to the north, the "About Us" page of the Maine Tea Party/Maine ReFounders website features "Pete the Carpenter" explaining that "We are fighting to preserve our Const.i.tution, Country and hold true to the visions of our founding fathers."2 Likewise, thousands of miles into the U.S. heartland, meeting on the third Thursday of each month at the Eagles Club in a small town in the northwestern corner of Nebraska, the Crawford Tea Party describes itself simply as "a group of concerned citizens ... who desire to see a restoration of Const.i.tutional government."3 Just as Rick Santelli invoked Founding Fathers to excoriate an Obama mortgage-a.s.sistance measure, so do Tea Party groups across America link their present-day activities to a constantly restated reverence for the country's founding doc.u.ments: the Const.i.tution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.

Const.i.tutionalism in Practice.

Const.i.tutional reverence is not just in cybers.p.a.ce. The U.S. founding doc.u.ments are woven into the warp and woof of Tea Party routines. Pocket-sized versions of the Const.i.tution appear on merchandise tables at Tea Party meetings, arrayed alongside bejeweled necklaces and teapot pins (made in China), "Don't Tread on Me" T-s.h.i.+rts, "TEA Party: Taxed Enough Already!" b.u.mper stickers, and biographies of conservative celebrities such as Sarah Palin. Video tutorials are available to explain the Const.i.tution and Declaration in a few easy lessons. And for Tea Partiers willing to sit still and pay good money, there are regular seminars, day-long workshops, even multiday courses, where right-wing professors or advocacy group experts go through the founding doc.u.ments line by line, explaining how they apply to today's political battles. Elaborating the meaning of the U.S. Const.i.tution, the Declaration, and the Bill of Rights is a lucrative business for many a roving lecturer looking to make a profit off the gra.s.s roots. Yet Tea Partiers also use the revered doc.u.ments as gifts. In Arizona, one of the authors (Vanessa) was given a pocket copy of the Const.i.tution as a "thank you" for her interest in the Tea Party. And when New Hamps.h.i.+re Tea Party leader Jerry DeLemus arrived to give a talk in neighboring Maine, he greeted one of the two women who lead the York County Const.i.tutionalists with a warm hug and a special gift: a pocket Const.i.tution autographed by Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican who leads the House Tea Party Caucus.

"Const.i.tution talk" bubbles through discussions in Tea Party gatherings, and is used to bolster a wide range of beliefs. Sandra Asimov explained that "smaller government, the Const.i.tution, and personal responsibility" are the Tea Party's core principles, while fellow Virginia activist Ben Jones summarized Tea Party values as "honesty, transparency, adherence to the Const.i.tution." References to the Const.i.tution are often used to justify stands on particular issues; indeed, the invocation of Const.i.tutional authority seems intended to render particular views incontestable. As Harvard historian Jill Lepore points out, Tea Partiers are "historical fundamentalists" who project directly accessible and unchangeable meanings onto past events and doc.u.ments.4 In Arizona, Tea Party members invoked the Const.i.tution to reinforce state sovereignty and highlight the sanct.i.ty of any and all gun rights, while in Virginia, the emphasis was on the state's capacity to opt out of health care reform. Of course, whatever any Tea Partier wants to do with his or her private property is everywhere justified in exalted Const.i.tutional terms.

Even the current priorities of religious conservatives in the Tea Party are attributed to America's founding doc.u.ments. Although the Southwest Metro Tea Party in suburban Chanha.s.san, Minnesota, highlights apparently libertarian and fiscally conservative principles on its homepage, just one click on "Principles" reveals the group's firm refutation of "the secularist demand for separation of church and state." "Sanct.i.ty of Life" and "Traditional Marriage" are given billing equal to "Individual Liberty" and "Religious Freedom" in the full list of group principles, all in the name of authentic Const.i.tutionalism.

Despite their fondness for the Founding Fathers, Tea Party members we met did not make any reference to the intellectual battles and political compromises out of which the Const.i.tution and its subsequent amendments were forged, let alone to the fact that key Founders were Deists, far from any brand of evangelical fundamentalism. Nor did they realize the extent to which some of the positions Tea Partiers now espouse bear a close resemblance to those of the Anti-Federalists-the folks the Founders were countering in their effort to establish sufficient federal authority to ensure a truly United States. The Tea Partiers we met did not show any awareness that they are echoing arguments made by the Nullifiers and Secessionists before and during the U.S. Civil War, or that their stress on "states' rights" is eerily reminiscent of dead-ender white opposition to Civil Rights laws in the 1960s.

For Tea Partiers, as for most people engaged in politics, history is a tool for battle, not a subject for university seminar musings. Political actors regularly invoke the past for reasons other than intellectual debate or verisimilitude. Invocations of the past are didactic and metaphorical. At the gra.s.s roots, the Tea Party is an effort at restoration, and we will need to figure out exactly what people are trying to save and "refound"-to use the telling phrase of the Maine ReFounders. But we can be sure that today's Tea Partiers are fighting about the here and now-using references to the "true meaning" of the Const.i.tution in their struggle to shape the nation's future-rather than actually trying to return to any given moment in America's past. They are doing what every political endeavor does: using history as a source of inspiration and social ident.i.ty.

Just like other political actors, past and present, Tea Partiers stretch the limits of the Const.i.tution, use it selectively, and push for amendments. Tea Partiers have argued for measures such as restrictions on birthright citizens.h.i.+p, abridgements of freedom of religion for Muslim-Americans, and suspension of protections in the Bill of Rights for suspected terrorists. Some parts of the Const.i.tution are lauded over others. In a telling aside during a question and answer period with members of the York County Const.i.tutionalists, Jerry DeLemus mentioned that he might prefer to limit the amendments to the Const.i.tution to the first ten, those in the Bill of Rights, omitting the rest altogether.5 In practice, Tea Partiers are in the thick of ongoing arguments over how the Const.i.tution is to be interpreted and how it might be amended.

Tea Partiers do not see their use of history as interpretive, however, and they are resistant to notions that historians or lawyers might be needed to make sense of the Const.i.tution and apply it to ongoing disputes. For regular Tea Party partic.i.p.ants, the Const.i.tution is a clear-cut doc.u.ment readily applicable to modern political issues. They evince the democratic conviction that they themselves, as average Americans, can read and interpret the Const.i.tution. "It's amazing how quickly the Const.i.tution became a second language," marvels Sandra Asimov. At most, they might need to study the doc.u.ment and learn its full meaning. But Tea Party members do not doubt that they can do this.

A belief that foundational written doc.u.ments are immediately accessible and obviously clear, that they can be understood by each person without the aid of expertise or intermediaries is a long-standing conviction in populist movements. The English Levellers felt that way, as did the Jacksonian Democrats in nineteenth-century America. Most fundamentally in Western history, the Protestant reformation against the Catholic Church was based on the tenet that each Believer could read and interpret the Bible, to attain a direct understanding of the Word of G.o.d unmediated by priests-let alone by ecclesiastical or secular lawyers.

Many Tea Party members are Protestant evangelical Christians who have transferred the skills and approaches of Bible study directly to the Const.i.tution. Tea Parties across the country partic.i.p.ate in "Const.i.tution Study Groups," and in such groups they tackle commentaries as well as the original texts themselves. At suppertime, Jerry DeLemus requires his children to read from the Bible and the Const.i.tution, the two holy texts in his household.6 In a more public ritual setting, readings from the Const.i.tution are performed at the start of each monthly Tea Party meeting in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The Five Thousand Year Leap is a book popular with many Tea Partiers for its elucidation of ties between the Bible and the Const.i.tution. Written in 1981 by ultra-right ideologue Cleon Skousen, this book explains the U.S. Const.i.tution and the founding of the United States in Biblical terms.7 All but forgotten for many years, the book found new life after then-Fox News anchor Glenn Beck dubbed it "divinely inspired." Arizonan Tea Party regular Gloria Ames, for instance, calls the book "one of our Bibles." Tea Party websites often refer to the book's conclusions in their discussion of America's religious heritage. In South Carolina, the Greenville Tea Party's website claims that the Founding Fathers used "28 fundamental beliefs to create a society based on morality, faith, and ethics," and that "more progress was achieved in the last 200 years than in the previous 5,000 years of every civilization combined"8-two claims drawn directly from Skousen's book. For these Tea Party members, Skousen provides proof that America is a "Republic with Christian-Judeo influences."9 A splendid depiction of the fundamentally religious understanding of the U.S. Const.i.tution prevalent in many Tea Party circles appears in a painting by Utah artist Jon McNaughton, ent.i.tled "One Nation, Under G.o.d." In the painting, Jesus Christ is shown holding up a copy of the United States Const.i.tution, while American historical figures from Abigail Adams to Ronald Reagan stand admiringly behind him. The crowd in the foreground is divided into two groups. On Christ's right, people including a Marine, a farmer, and the mother of a disabled child look admiringly towards the Const.i.tution and Savior. A college student is shown holding a copy of Five Thousand Year Leap. On the left of Jesus, however, one finds a less pious crowd, with faces turned away from Jesus and the Const.i.tution. These figures include a liberal news reporter, a politician talking on his cellphone, a smug professor carrying The Origin of Species, and, dimly visible in the background, Satan.10 Though McNaughton himself is not a Tea Party activist, his work has inspired widespread praise among Tea Party members, with videos explaining the symbolism of his painting appearing on Tea Party blogs from Michigan to Florida. As Newsweek reporter Andrew Romano puts it, the Const.i.tution is for Tea Partiers a "sacred text" and a comforting "authoritarian scripture."11

Skepticism about Expertise.

A persistent refrain in Tea Party circles is the scorn for politicians who fail to show suitable reverence for, and detailed mastery of, America's founding doc.u.ments. Catering to Tea Party supporters, the GOP-led House of Representatives launched the 112th Congress by staging a public reading of the Const.i.tution (though omitting touchy pa.s.sages about slaves). Tea Partiers told us that they appreciated this ritual gesture. They are even more enthusiastic about a newly adopted rule that each piece of legislation debated in Congress must cite how it follows from specific pa.s.sages in the Const.i.tution.

Although he served for twelve years as a law professor at the University of Chicago, President Obama comes in for particular criticism from Tea Partiers for alleged irreverence toward the Const.i.tution. In Virginia, several Tea Party members confidently told us that President Obama had misquoted the Const.i.tution and the Declaration of Independence. In one case people found telling, Obama paraphrased one of the most famous lines of the Declaration of Independence and omitted the reference to "the Creator" as the source of man's inalienable rights.12 Virginia Tea Party activists were very aware of this incident, and made repeated reference to it in interviews. For them, it revealed that Obama does not hold the Const.i.tution sacred, and no doubt the incident heightens suspicions about his religious beliefs, as well.

Obama's former employment as a university professor hardly impresses Tea Party people, anyway. They do not defer to experts, and we heard many expressions of scorn about educated people who try to devise plans for regular citizens, or tell them what to do. Again and again, we heard Tea Partiers express derision about legislators who vote without reading every page and word in proposed legislation, as well as about federal officials who discuss measures they had not read. Ben Jones noted that Attorney General Eric Holder threatened to file suit against Arizona's 2010 immigration law without having read the law himself. When we asked if it was reasonable for a busy public figure to entrust the reading of a legal doc.u.ment to lawyers on his staff, we were told in no uncertain terms that this approach is inadequate. After all, Ben noted, the entire bill was "only ten pages." The clear implication was that the Attorney General was derelict in his responsibilities. Without having read a doc.u.ment personally, Tea Partiers feel that a citizen or official cannot be sure of what it contains.

Tea Party skepticism about experts is part and parcel of their direct approach to democracy, their belief in citizen activism. To guard against possible bamboozlement-and to demonstrate their own virtue and skill as informed democratic citizens-Tea Party members arm themselves for confrontations with their legislative representatives by reading particular bills themselves (and, impressively to us, many groups have formed subcommittees to track legislation, and refer to bills by their official numbers, as in "H.R. 1"). Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, bragged that at the August 2009 town hall meetings where right-wing protestors confronted Congressional Democrats, the Tea Party partic.i.p.ants frequently "knew the bills better" than the Representative who convened the events. With a chortle, Tea Party interviewees repeatedly offered their own stories of seeing an elected representative caught in a misstatement by a Tea Party activist.

The importance of first-hand reading dominates Tea Party discussions of health care reform. In point of fact, Tea Party members we interviewed were deeply misinformed about the Affordable Care Act of 2010.13 One Virginia Tea Partier regaled us at length with (a completely factually untrue) account of the strong public option supposedly contained in the law, a measure she said would kill the private insurance companies. In a voice shaking with fear more than anger, another Virginia Tea Party member told us that the Affordable Care law includes "death panels" and would abolish Medicare-prospects which, she said, terrify the 92-year-old woman in her nursing care. The Affordable Care Act contains no such provisions, of course. But no matter if Tea Partiers themselves are misinformed. They are certain that the politicians who voted for what they derisively call ObamaCare were ignorant of its dangerous provisions. The Senate health reform bill, several interviewees noted, had been pa.s.sed late at night on Christmas Eve 2009, when the politicians themselves could not possibly have read the thousands of pages of the final legislation.

For Tea Party activists, in short, any hint that a legislator or expert has not personally read every line of a bill is a "gotcha" moment, and a d.a.m.ning indictment. It is symbolic evidence of a larger truth that public officials are either out to "put one over" on average Americans, or are being tricked themselves. The constant reference to the Founding Fathers harkens back to an imagined time when politicians were seeking a higher good.

DO THEY REALLY HATE GOVERNMENT?.

Americans have ambivalent, even contradictory reactions to government. Asked about it in the abstract, most unhesitatingly prefer "the free market" or "individual responsibility." But reactions to concrete public programs are quite different. Large majorities of Americans approve of public education, subsidized health care, veterans' benefits, and Social Security-and they appreciate many other specific government activities, too. Even programs to aid disabled or low-income people win broad approval, as long as the beneficiaries are seen as deserving of community support. That Americans are, simultaneously, "ideological conservatives" and "operational liberals" has been doc.u.mented for as long as social scientists have been able to probe and measure public opinion.14 Tea Partiers are said to be different. Observers from all over the map portray them as firm and consistent in pure opposition to taxes, big government, handouts to business, and expensive social programs and intrusive regulations-suggesting that today's gra.s.sroots partic.i.p.ants in the Tea Party are different from regular, middle-of-the-road Americans who hold mixed ideas about government.

A lazy conflation of elite and popular strands of Tea Partyism is at work in such claims. Professional ultra-free-market advocates like d.i.c.k Armey are all over the television-spouting their views about cutting taxes, privatizing Social Security, and sweeping away regulations-and claiming to speak for gra.s.sroots Tea Party members. So it is easy for observers to presume that local Tea Party members have signed on to the FreedomWorks program, when in fact they have not. Wishful thinking is also rampant, as every elite faction in and around the GOP imputes its preferences to gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers. Influential establishment GOP commentator Peggy Noonan, for example, praises the Tea Party as a supposedly new kind of Republican ma.s.s force-a consistently principled popular movement that will force the party to return to a (putative) golden age when, above all, it pursued fiscal responsibility.15 Reality on the ground does not fit these portrayals. In our individual interviews, and in the group discussions we heard, regular Tea Party people, like all Americans, can be quite inconsistent about government. At the abstract level, all of them, to be sure, decry big government, out-of-control public spending, and ballooning deficits. "The nation is broke. It is bankrupt," Virginian James Rand insisted in a typical declaration.16 Rand expects that foreign borrowers will soon cease to accept the dollar as a reserve currency. He sees the United States as headed for a catastrophic default in the very near future-a prophesy of financial and societal Armageddon we heard quite often, interspersed with everyday chit-chat. At the abstract level, Tea Partiers claim that the United States is headed for ruin unless many trillions are instantly cut from the federal budget.

But when governmental specifics come into view, it is a different story. Queried about whether there is "anything they like" about government, our interviewees were, at first, genuinely startled: "I did not see that one coming," quipped one person. Shaken from their typical talking points, Tea Partiers often answered in ideologically "off message" ways. One woman loves the national parks (seemingly oblivious that GOP Tea Partiers in Congress were about to slash funding for them); another spoke of the importance of public health care for children through Medicaid (another kind of funding on the GOP chopping block); and still another woman remarked that when she went to Was.h.i.+ngton DC to protest ObamaCare, she was impressed by the beauty and grandeur of the government buildings. They made her feel proud as an American!

Small examples aside, Tea Partiers are not opposed to all kinds of regulation or big tax-supported spending. Rank-and-file Tea Party partic.i.p.ants evaluate regulations and spending very differently, depending on who or what is regulated, and depending on the kinds of people who benefit from various kinds of public spending. Contrary to pundits like Noonan who imagine Tea Party pa.s.sions as a fresh departure, we find them to be updated versions of long-standing populist conservative ideas. At the gra.s.s roots, Tea Partiers want government to get out of the way of business. Yet at the same time, virtually all want government to police immigrants. And the numerous social conservatives in Tea Party ranks want authorities to enforce their conception of traditional moral norms. More telling still, almost all Tea Partiers favor generous social benefits for Americans who "earn" them; yet in an era of rising federal deficits, they are very concerned about being stuck with the tax tab to pay for "unearned" ent.i.tlements handed out to unworthy categories of people.

The Purposes of Government Regulation.

When fifty members of the Jefferson Area Tea Party in Charlottesville, Virginia, gathered in February 2011 to discuss their priorities for coming months, ambivalence about government regulation was on full display. People mocked business regulations and zoning rules, citing the example of a local fast-food franchise owner who was required to change the colors used in his business signs. Charlottesville Patriots talked about keeping a wary eye out for new state or national regulatory legislation, and discussed possibilities for running candidates for local boards in order to block or roll back regulations on enterprises and homeowners. Our observations around the country reinforce what we saw in Charlottesville: Tea Partiers are p.r.i.c.kly about any use of government regulations to limit the pure autonomy of businesses and owners of private property.

From time to time, journalists suggest that Tea Partiers are just as skeptical of big business or business abuses as they are of government.17 But there is little evidence of this. Tea Partiers speak of corruption in government and in labor unions they see as closely tied to government and the Democratic Party.18 Business, by contrast, is idealized as a free-market, entrepreneurial force. More than one Tea Partier we spoke to told us they thought of themselves as "proud capitalists," and of course many are small business people. Like other conservatives, Tea Party members perceive small business owners and potential entrepreneurs as in the same boat with the wealthiest of corporate CEOs. They often project small business irritations about rules and taxes onto business in general. We heard occasional scorn about Wall Street or wasteful business practices but no calls for government regulations to set things right. Tea Party members resist any and all suggestions that the financial sector or other businesses need to be subject to regulation in the public interest. The market, left unhampered, will resolve any unfairnesses, in the Tea Party estimation.

But in the same Charlottesville meeting where typical Tea Party antipathies toward government regulation were aired, members took a very different view of the use of government powers to police disfavored groups with whom they do not identify. Speaking with visible emotion, one man insisted that local police should start checking the immigration status of everyone they encounter, including people pulled over for routine traffic violations. The local police had told him they could not afford to do this, that it would bust their limited budget, but the man said he didn't care, and urged the group to support a new law to force action. When it comes to law enforcement, Tea Party members support strong governmental authority, even at the expense of budgetary constraint.

Concern about illegal immigration is widespread in Tea Party circles, and draconian remedies are in vogue. In a national survey, a whopping 82% of Tea Party supporters said that illegal immigration is a "very serious" problem (compared to 60% of Americans overall, including the Tea Party supporters combined with all others).19 Sealing America's border with Mexico and dealing with Latin immigrants are prime challenges for the nation to tackle, as Tea Partiers see it. A Tea Party b.u.mper sticker boldfaces "LAW & BORDER" on top of a U.S. flag background. One Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party member said that after reading the latest immigration news on the conservative blog Red State, she felt like she wanted to "stand on the border with a gun." And a Virginia Tea Party member described in considerable detail a joking proposal to curb unauthorized immigration. Americans, he suggested, could be paid by the government a flat fee for every rattlesnake caught, which could then be gathered together and dropped en ma.s.se along the southern border. Jokes aside, it is clear that, when it comes to controlling immigration, Tea Partiers endorse a heavy-handed government response.

Another regulatory crackdown also evoked a wave of approval in Charlottesville-more than any other matter mentioned in the entire two-hour meeting. The a.s.sembled Charlottesville Tea Partiers were visibly elated when one woman brought up a just-enacted Virginia law that requires abortion clinics to operate as if they were full-fledged hospitals. The law may force the closure of up to two-thirds of these clinics, which offer an array of reproductive services to a largely poor and minority clientele, because the facilities are small, underfunded operations that cannot afford to widen hallways and hire additional staff. To the same group that had just decried rules for businesses, death-by-pettifogging regulation for women's health clinics sounded just fine, indeed morally necessary.

Tea Party support for government regulation of marriage and childbearing is certainly not limited to Charlottesville. Although the Tea Party includes a significant portion of libertarians who think differently, Tea Partiers are more likely than Americans in general to oppose legal recognition of gay marriages or civil unions. About two-thirds of all Americans favor one or another of those forms of recognition, but less than half of Tea Party supporters do-and 40% of them advocate "no legal recognition" of any kind.20 Tea Party att.i.tudes on abortion rights are similarly skewed. Whereas a 58% majority of all Americans approve of the decision of the Supreme Court to establish a "Const.i.tutional right for women to obtain legal abortions in this country," only 40% of Tea Partiers approve of that court decision and 53% consider it a "bad thing."21 As these national survey results show, many Tea Partiers fervently believe that government regulation and authority should be used to embody and enforce their understandings of traditional "family values," even as they grumble about regulatory "tyranny" toward business people and homeowners.

No wonder Tea Party heroes include politicians such as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who makes a big deal about opposing gay rights and doing all he can to wield rulings and legal interpretations against abortion providers. Relatively secular Virginia Tea Partiers may not cheer on such doings by Cuccinelli, but they probably stay quiet in deference to the heartfelt feelings of the social conservatives who sit beside them in meetings.22 To cover all right-wing bases, the Virginia Attorney General offers just as much red meat to Tea Partiers who place higher (or sole) priority on gutting or blocking government regulation of businesses. Cuccinelli is at the forefront of the Tea Party war against ObamaCare as a supposed threat to the "Const.i.tutional liberties" of citizens. And he is also on the warpath against university scientists in Virginia who dare to suggest that global climate change is a real threat; the Tea Party-oriented Virginia Attorney General thinks nothing of using government powers to demand their emails.23 Ken Cuccinelli is, overall, the perfect embodiment of the Tea Party att.i.tude toward government regulation: regulations are good to hara.s.s my enemies and enforce my values, policy preferences, and preferred definitions of American social ident.i.ty; but regulations are bad for the kinds of businesses and endeavors me and mine are engaged in. This stance is certainly not new. For generations, conservatives in the United States have supported strong restrictions on social behavior they consider threatening while opposing regulation of business pursuits they perceive as vital to America's prosperity.24

Public Spending-for the Deserving.

Tea Partiers are thought to be even more exercised about "big government" taxes and spending than about regulatory impositions on business and personal freedom. But here again, their views turn out to be complex, ambiguous, and not so different from longtime conservative stands on public social provision. Most Americans, including conservatives, value public benefits they feel are earned by upstanding citizens, but conservatives are less willing than other Americans to countenance public spending on the "undeserving."

We confess to having felt skeptical from the start that Tea Partiers opposed major U.S. ent.i.tlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the obvious demographic facts of Tea Party life. The contradictions between Tea Party ideology and the personal reliance of Tea Party members on government a.s.sistance were very much on display at the February 2011 meeting of the Charlottesville Tea Party. More than an hour into the supper gathering, after the group had discussed priorities, the speaker for the evening arrived-a flamboyant, pony-tailed, right-wing radio talk-show host named Joe Thomas, who came after the end of his regular local broadcast. Thomas is clearly a very popular figure among Charlottesville area conservatives. Partway through his riveting remarks, he commented on the possibility that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives might shut down the federal government to demand drastic cuts in federal spending in its budgetary war against Obama and the Democrats. "I almost hope the government shuts down," Thomas said. The sun would "rise the next day," you would "kiss your wife," and we would all "have to get on with it." Thomas is middle-aged, but he was speaking to a room full of elderly Tea Partiers, of whom many were regularly cas.h.i.+ng Social Security checks, or soon would. Quite a few of his listeners were also enjoying tax-subsidized health care from Medicare or from programs for U.S. military veterans and retirees. Yet Thomas's claim that a federal shutdown would be of no consequence evoked not so much as a peep from anyone in the room.25 The irony was clear to an outside observer, because most of Thomas's listeners would surely feel the effects of a federal shutdown quickly and significantly.

How can Tea Party members simultaneously benefit from the biggest taxpayer supported domestic social programs, and yet be so fiercely determined to slash taxes and federal spending? Some observers have suggested that Tea Partiers don't know that they benefit from government programs, citing a Tea Party sign reading "keep the government's hands off my Medicare." But we found no evidence of such naivete. Tea Party people know that Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' programs are government-managed, expensive, and funded with taxes. It is just that they distinguish these programs, which they feel recipients have "earned," from other social benefits, which they feel unnecessarily run up expenses, or might run up public costs in the future-placing a burden on hardworking taxpayers to make payments to freeloaders who have not earned public support. Much of the Tea Party brouhaha about the "federal budget deficit" is a preemptive strike against funding for unworthy programs and recipients, not a call for cutting off spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security that currently benefit people like them. According to the April 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll, about half of Tea Party supporters say someone in their household receives Medicare or Social Security benefits, and 62% of Tea Party supporters believe these programs are "worth the costs ... for taxpayers."26 In part, this conviction comes from recognition of their own need and the need of others in their social orbit. As Arizona retiree Stella Fisher told us, "You don't take Social Security from someone when that's what they live on." Medicare is "in everyone's estate planning" explained Virginian John Patterson. But there is also a strong sense among Tea Party people that they have earned these social protections through lifetimes of hard work. As a Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party activist, Nancy Bates, explained in a typical remark, "I've been working since I was 16 years old, and I do feel like I should someday reap the benefit. I'm not looking for a handout. I'm looking for a pay out of what I paid into." Social Security and Medicare are seen as acceptable government expenses because benefits go to those who have contributed to the system. As Virginia Tea Partier James Rand explained, "I use the VA [Veterans' Administration health care], which I am ent.i.tled to. I earned it. I also pay for my Medicare/Medicaid and the [prescription drug] supplement. This is a collective ent.i.ty except I have the right to choose [the doctor] who I go to or don't go to.... As far as SS [Social Security] is concerned I started paying into it in 1954 ... so I have paid a very large sum...."27 Nor do Tea Partiers apply a const.i.tutional test. They are sure that Obama's Affordable Care Act is unconst.i.tutional but elide this standard for their own ent.i.tlements. Virginian Ben Jones, who is "getting Social Security now," acknowledges that "Social Security and Medicare are interesting because ... neither of those are in the Const.i.tution.... How do you add those things up?" He left the question hanging and moved on. Others we spoke with engaged in no such ruminations. Only one Tea Party member out of dozens we engaged in interviews, meetings, and through questionnaires said that when she becomes eligible in a few years, she might not enroll in Social Security and Medicare. This would be in part out of ideological principle, explained Virginian Mandy Hewes-and anyway, she loves her work as office manager in her family business and has no intention of retiring at all. Mandy also pushed aside the thought that tax breaks in the new Affordable Care law could help her business afford health insurance. She knew the details, and explained that she prefers a tax-advantaged Medical Savings Account to cover routine costs while bearing the risk of paying for a major illness herself.

Mandy aside, not a single gra.s.sroots Tea Party supporter we encountered argued for privatization of Social Security or Medicare along the lines being pushed by ultra-free-market politicians like Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) and advocacy groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. Even Timothy Manor, a Virginia man who calls Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," noted that the Bush plan for the privatization of Social Security, which he supported at the time, would have been disastrous for seniors in this economy. Arizonan Larry Fisher believes there is almost nothing done by government that the private sector cannot do better. But when pressed on Social Security, he stops short and gropes for a halfway point; he might privatize the administration, he tentatively suggests, but not the funds themselves.

When Tea Partiers expressed concerns to us about Social Security and Medicare, they focused on how to keep the programs solvent, even if additional taxes might be needed. Not surprisingly for regular consumers of Fox News, a number of the people with whom we spoke worry about imminent bankruptcy for beloved programs. Bonnie Sims, the Virginia private duty nurse in her early sixties we introduced at the start of this chapter, not only told us about the dread of her 92-year-old patient that "ObamaCare" will abolish Medicare; Bonnie also revealed her own sense of "betrayal" that Social Security will not be available when she retires in a few years. In truth, even with no reform at all, Social Security is fully solvent for decades.28 But Bonnie believes that DC politicians have stolen the money. "Social Security was supposed to have been there for us. When did they start borrowing against it?" she asks.

If Social Security and Medicare run short of funds, what to do? A few Tea Partiers volunteered that they would be willing to entertain cuts to their own benefits. James Morrow explained that "as a Social Security recipient," he would not mind "taking a ten percent cut. That would help the system tremendously, if it stayed in the Social Security fund." Virginia physician Ellen Zinn took a surprisingly progressive approach, suggesting that cuts be aimed at the "upper income brackets." She offered that she "would not mind a tax increase to try to get the country right again." Only occasionally did we hear comments such as those of Arizona Tea Party activist Peggy Lawrence, who thought that older people who had already paid into Social Security should be protected, while "younger people" should shoulder cuts if necessary.

Indeed, broad surveys show that Tea Party supporters, like the vast majority of all Americans, prefer new revenues to sustain Social Security over the long haul. An especially pointed question on this matter was asked in January 2011 by Public Policy Polling.29 "Currently," the poll explained to its nationally representative sample, "workers pay social security payroll taxes on up to $106,800 of their salary. To ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, would you rather have people pay social security taxes on salaries above $106,800, or would you rather see benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69?" The results were overwhelming: 77% of all Americans wanted the payroll tax increase, and only 10% supported cuts and an increase in the retirement age. But the most eye-catching result was for avowed Tea Party supporters. Two-thirds of them support increasing the payroll tax to sustain Social Security, just like most of their fellow citizens. Only a fifth of Tea Partiers support benefit cuts and increasing the retirement age. Similar findings pertain in surveys asking about cuts to Medicare versus tax increases on the rich as tradeoffs for reducing U.S. budget deficits: Americans in general strongly prefer tax increases for the rich and fervently oppose cuts in Medicare; Tea Party supporters hold the same positions by only slightly smaller margins.30 Very similar results appeared in an unusually detailed February 2011 survey of the large proportion of South Dakota registered voters who claim to strongly or somewhat support the Tea Party.31 South Dakota supporters of the Tea Party, like all others, are mostly older white Republicans. Forty-three percent of them reported that members of their households currently benefit from Social Security; and 31% said that family members currently benefit from Medicare (with 11% indicating receipt of veterans' health benefits). But the margins of support for major U.S. social ent.i.tlements outran the numbers who are currently directly benefiting. Fully 83% of South Dakota Tea Party supporters said they would prefer to "leave alone" or "increase" Social Security benefits, while 78% opposed cuts to Medicare prescription drug coverage, and 79% opposed cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and hospitals (a big issue in rural areas where such health providers, if underpaid, may not be available to elderly patients). The South Dakota poll did not ask specific questions about new revenues for Social Security and Medicare, but 56% of the Tea Party supporters surveyed did express support for "raising income taxes by 5% for everyone whose income is over a million dollars a year."32 So much for the notion that Tea Partiers are all little d.i.c.k Armeys. When it comes to sustaining existing, well-loved social programs like Social Security and Medicare-programs that go to Americans like themselves who are perceived to have "earned" the benefits-Tea Party people put their money where their affection is. They are just like other Americans in their willingness to contribute the payroll taxes it will take to sustain Social Security, one of the biggest and most effective parts of U.S. social spending. Support for Medicare is also strong among Tea Party supporters, as among all Americans, though the long-term fiscal solutions are not as easy as the fix for Social Security. Clearly, however, slas.h.i.+ng the program itself is not going to go over well with Tea Party people. The ultra-ideological politicians and advocates who push privatization of beloved contributory ent.i.tlements are not registering demands from gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers. Like other Americans, Tea Partiers love the parts of government they recognize as offering legitimate benefits to citizens who have earned them.33 Tea Party support for social benefits and the revenues to pay for them goes beyond Social Security and Medicare. Bonnie Sims does not equivocate when it comes to what military veterans have earned: "I think they ought to be given the best." Mandy Hewes, says, "I don't think our soldiers make enough money. I wouldn't want to espouse anything that would cause our service people to feel it." Of course, some Tea Party partic.i.p.ants are themselves benefiting from military and veterans' programs, and we met and talked with some of them in all the states we visited. Many of the men are Vietnam-era combat veterans who receive military pensions and government-sponsored health care, either through the government-run Department of Veterans Affairs hospital system, or through the government-funded TRICARE insurance program for military retirees. They feel very comfortable taking these benefits. In South Dakota as well, 57% of Tea Party supporters reported having immediate family members who were either active or veteran members of the military, National Guard, or military reserve-and, not surprisingly, 96% want to sustain or increase veterans' benefits.34 Tea Party events often include some kind of recognition of the troops serving overseas. For example, the 2010 Tea Party Express bus tour featured a Gold Star mother, Debbie Lee,35 whose son, Navy SEAL Marc Lee, had died in combat in Iraq. However, in our in-depth interviews we did not find Tea Party support for America's men and women in uniform to be a function either of unalloyed hawkishness or of uncritical support for any and all defense spending. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provoked diverse and nuanced views both for and against continuing U.S. military engagement. Fiscal concerns were cited by some as a reason for pulling back (from Afghanistan, in particular), yet the rationale was also that the United States should not be trying to remake other countries. We heard only a little about the overall military budget-which, even excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has increased by 80% in the decade since 2000, reaching about $530 billion in 2010.36 Only one Tea Partier, a former military contractor, spoke caustically about wastefulness in defense contracts.

Workers versus Freeloaders.

Compared to the huge chunks devoted to Social Security, health programs, and defense programs, only a tiny wedge of the federal budget pie goes for varieties of a.s.sistance for the poor that most people lump together under the label "welfare." The best-known welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was replaced during the Clinton presidency with a block grant to the states that left eligibility and spending decisions largely in the hands of governors and state legislatures. The basic block grant, Transitional a.s.sistance for Needy Families, or TANF, costs $16 billion annually, a fraction of a percent of total federal spending.37 Nonetheless, welfare spending is still a subject of much concern for Tea Party members. If Tea Partiers resemble most other Americans in holding Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits in high regard, they take a harsher stance toward public aid for the needy.

Rarely did we hear a Tea Partier speak positively about a program aimed at helping low-income people. In one unusual instance, a Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party member, Michael Pierce, volunteered that he had been "brought up on welfare." A retired police officer, Michael did not express any shame in this childhood reliance on public a.s.sistance because, after all, he "had to work [his] way out." But Michael's experience with welfare as a stepping-stone stands in sharp contrast to the more typical Tea Party view, articulated by former social worker Sandra Asimov, who explained, "I differentiate between ent.i.tlements and welfare."38 She and others like her paid into legitimate ent.i.tlements, Sandra believes, but welfare recipients have not earned what they receive. Ben Jones described welfare recipients as "generation after generation of people on the public dole." Reminded of the Clinton welfare reform, which imposed a five-year lifetime limit on federal welfare receipt, Ben was certain that "loopholes" continued to riddle the program, and that it required more oversight. Because of the support they have received from the government, people on welfare simply do not have the motivation to work, he concluded. "They just don't know any better."

Another Virginia interviewee, John Patterson, spoke with emotion about the disgust felt by his son, who works at Walmart, when people on welfare arrive at the beginning of each month to buy things with their benefit cards. John seemed especially upset that people on public a.s.sistance were able to act just like any credit-card holder, rather than being set apart as people who were spending without earning their pay. A well-marked distinction between workers and nonworkers-between productive citizens and the freeloaders-is central to the Tea Party worldview and conception of America. As Tea Partiers see it, only through hard work can one earn access both to a good income and to honorable public benefits.

Above all, Tea Party activists see themselves as productive members of society. Given that many in the Tea Party are retirees, productive work need not entail current employment. It can mean a lifetime of productive employment before retirement (or, in the case of the smattering of students who partic.i.p.ate in Tea Party groups, it might mean preparation for a lifetime of employment). When we asked our interviewees to tell us about themselves and what brought them to the Tea Party, people often launched into a narrative of their lives as workers. "My husband and I worked for everything that we got," says Bonnie. Sharon Little's self-description is similar: "I'm almost 66 years old and I'm still working." Linda Gordon calls herself and her husband "blue-collar working-cla.s.s people" who have "had to work very hard." Stanley Ames tells us that, "to some extent, you make your own luck. We worked hard." Others offer more specifics about how they have contributed to the country. For instance, men like Vietnam veterans Ben Jones and James Morrow, and Navy retiree Timothy Manor, immediately identify themselves with reference to their military service. Others mention civic contributions as well as employment as they recount their life stories. The specific melodies vary, but the basic tune remains: Tea Party members establish themselves as worthy Americans in terms of the contributions they have made-and contrast themselves to other categories of people who have not worked to make their way in society and thus do not deserve taxpayer funded support.

This moral social geography, rather than any abstract commitment to free-market principles, underlies Tea Party fervor to slash or eliminate categories of public benefits seen as going to unworthy people who are "free-loading" on the public sector. For Tea Party people, it is illegitimate to use taxes and public spending to redistribute wealth from productive taxpayers like themselves to people who have not earned their way. "You are not ENt.i.tLED To What I have EARNED," declares one Tea Party b.u.mper sticker. Another maintains that "YOUR 'FAIR SHARE' is NOT IN MY WALLET!" "I am not rich," explains James Rand, "but I am working hard to get there, and when I do, I would prefer that the moocher cla.s.s not live off my hard work."39 "Mooching" is indeed the key notion at work here. Even though most Tea Party supporters are more comfortably situated than the bulk of other Americans, they feel put upon by the governmental process-and see themselves as losing out to others profiting unfairly from government spending. "People no longer have to work for what they earn," Michael Pierce tells us, while fellow Bay State resident Steven Clark stresses that, "we shouldn't be paying for other people that don't work." In Tea Party ideology, redistribution transfers money from the industrious to the lazy, a process that is fundamentally unethical and un-American. As Stanley Ames explains, "redistribution of wealth is not the answer. What you do is earn your place." Instead of punis.h.i.+ng the successful, according to a catchphrase that appeared on Tea Party signs at rallies across the country, the government should "Redistribute My Work Ethic." Because they lack the work ethic of more successful Americans, purported freeloaders are understood to have corrupted government programs-which, in turn, place an unfair burden on productive taxpayers. "Keep Working," says a caustic Tea Party b.u.mper sticker. "Millions on Welfare Depend on You!"

Not only do Tea Party partic.i.p.ants think that public a.s.sistance for lower-income Americans is more expensive and open-ended than it is, they are also angry about huge new handouts like ObamaCare and other expanded benefits for younger, less privileged Americans championed by President Obama and legislated by Democrats in 2010. In part, Tea Party fears are overwrought and misplaced because most of them fall into income categories that have enjoyed tax cuts under President Obama, not tax increases. But it is also true that even the slightest federal efforts to give additional social support to non-elderly Americans are likely to exacerbate generational and cla.s.s fears about who gets what, and who pays. By the end of the twentieth century U.S. social programs were profoundly generationally imbalanced: generous for retired elderly Americans, but very spotty for working-age families, whose retirement and health benefits have also been shrinking in the private economy. When Obama and the Democrats arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton DC in 2009 determined to lighten the tax burden on most middle- and lower-income Americans, while providing additional federal support for students to attend college and for families to obtain health insurance, there were bound to be generational tensions. Older Americans already "had theirs," so to speak, and might not be so happy to see others helped, especially if there had to be trims to Medicare or slightly higher taxes on higher income people. Tea Party outbursts, as well as GOP campaign slogans, readily fanned the fires of generational resentment.40 In this vein, the Tea Partiers' a.s.sessments of the redistributive effects of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 are not entirely off the mark. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has dubbed the law one of the most redistributive and equality-promoting major pieces of legislation in decades, precisely because it promises generous new public subsidies to help make health insurance affordable for lower- and lower-middle-income Americans, mainly adults and children in younger working families, while the revenues to pay for the new subsidies are slated to come primarily from new fees on health care businesses and from slightly increased taxes on wealthy Medicare recipients and high-income earners.41 As older, relatively economically comfortable white Americans, a fair proportion of Tea Partiers are in the ranks of those who may pay slightly more-and others imagine they could be. And for what? To s.h.i.+ft social support to a younger generation of Americans, about whom Tea Partiers are often deeply suspicious.

SOCIAL FEARS IN A CHANGING SOCIETY.

Leaving aside general hostility to redistribution, can we hone in on which types of people, exactly, Tea Partiers believe are freeloaders? Who are the less productive, less successful "moochers" to whom wealth should not be redistributed via government programs? We listened carefully for the ways in which Tea Party people talked about the unworthy and, when appropriate, we asked directly who they thought were receiving government benefits unfairly. Most seemed surprised by the question, as if the cla.s.ses of freeloaders in American society should be obvious to any observer. Their responses usually took the form of anecdotes, often invoking immigrants or young people. Among the younger freeloaders, interestingly, were "black sheep" relatives whose failings in elder eyes provoked broader generational observations.

Racism in White, Black, and Brown.

As we listened to our Tea Party interlocutors talk about undeserving people collecting welfare benefits, racially laden group stereotypes certainly did float in and out of the interviews, even when people never mentioned African-Americans directly. Racial overtones were unmistakable, for instance, when a Virginia Tea Partier told us that a "plantation mentality" was keeping "some people" on welfare. These kinds of racially insensitive comments made in person were only a very faint echo of the racial slurs that appear rarely but persistently at Tea Party rallies across the country, including in signs with racial epithets and signs equating the presidency of Barack Obama to "white slavery."42 A sense of "us versus them" along racial and ethnic fault lines clearly marks the worldview of many people active in the Tea Party, although raw expressions of this outlook tend to occur in public political contexts more than in discussions or interviews.

At least one scholarly study suggests that problematic racial a.s.sumptions are widely held by Tea Party supporters.43 In a survey conducted in seven states by scholars at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton, Tea Party supporters tended to rate blacks and Latinos as less hardworking, less intelligent, and less trustworthy than did other respondents. Tea Partiers' views of minorities were even more extreme than other avowed conservatives and Republicans. Statistically, conservative Republicans tend to agree more than do nonconservatives with statements such as "if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites," but Tea Party supporters are even more likely than other conservatives to believe that racial minorities are held back by their own personal failings. It is important to note that, compared to other Americans, Tea Partiers rate whites relatively poorly on these characteristics, too. Tea Partiers have negative views about all of their fellow citizens; it is just that they make extra-jaundiced a.s.sessments of the work ethic of racial and ethnic minorities.44 Gra.s.sroots activists are very aware of the charges of racism leveled at the Tea Party, and they are quick to point out evidence to the contrary. Tea Party members avidly come to hear fiery black preachers and other black conservatives on the lecture circuit. When some Tea Party attendees say or do overtly racist things on occasion, organizers and leaders try hard to eliminate such lapses. At various planning meetings, several Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party members raised concerns that outsiders might "infiltrate" their protests with racist or otherwise inappropriate signs in order to make local activists look bad.45 Worries about racist interlopers were not limited to Ma.s.sachusetts; other Tea Party websites have posted guidelines about how to cope with such a situation. Tea Party members we spoke to were very concerned to a.s.sure us that they held no animosity toward black people.

By contrast, fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims were commonly expressed. This kind of prejudice was not invoked to talk about freeloaders or public spending but about terrorism and cultural change-even when the people being discussed were American citizens. Bonnie, for instance, said she had been hearing stories about "the Islamics wanting to take over the country." An Arizona Tea Party seminar on Islam was advertised as a way to "learn about the mindset of Muslims who follow these teachings and how the Islamic movement in our country has been affecting laws, culture, workplace, and teachings in our schools." The seminar advertis.e.m.e.nt suggested that partic.i.p.ants "START asking the t