Everywhere I turn, I hear Democrats asking the same question: Is it time for a liberal Tea Party?
I was asked a version of that question this week on MSNBC. I’ve seen that question in publication after publication. I understand the impulse. In retrospect it seems that Republican confusion and despair after Barack Obama’s decisive victory in 2008 lasted for a remarkably short time. It certainly seems that the Tea Party gave the Republicans a blueprint for defiance and ultimate triumph.
But I see things differently. As a conservative who once represented dozens of Tea Party organizations in court I’m here to answer that question with an emphatic no. A new Tea Party wouldn’t work for the Democrats the way it worked for Republicans, and more important, it would be terrible for the country. The Democrats would fight fire with fire, and we would all get burned.
The Tea Party was born toward the end of the first full month of Obama’s first term. On Feb. 19, 2009, a CNBC editor, Rick Santelli, went live on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade and delivered a rant against Obama’s mortgage bailout plan.
As the traders on the floor loudly egged him on, Santelli condemned the use of federal dollars to provide relief for people who couldn’t pay their mortgages. “This is America,” he said. “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and they can’t pay their bills?” As the people around Santelli booed, he yelled, “President Obama, are you listening?”
The Tea Party was never a formal organization; it was a collection of organizations, of local clubs and grass-roots groups, from across the nation that had a common ethos and — this is key — attitude. And it’s the angry defiance of the Tea Party that Democrats most seek to emulate.
Senator Chuck Schumer’s decision last week not to filibuster a Republican continuing resolution is a perfect illustration of the contrast. We know from the Obama years that Tea Party conservatives were happy to shut down the government to try to coerce concessions from Obama — even if they had no hope of achieving their ultimate aim, repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Countless Democrats were (and are) furious at Schumer. They wanted to force a showdown with the administration, even if a government shutdown might empower President Trump in the short term to fire or furlough even more government employees and shutter even more government programs.
And this brings us to the Tea Party’s additional appeal. It wasn’t just angry at Democrats; it was also angry at the Republicans it believed had led the party astray. It was a grass-roots insurgency aimed at two enemies: the opposing party and the party establishment. Tea Party members called more moderate Republicans RINOs (Republicans in name only) and referred to Republicans in power as the G.O.P.e. (G.O.P. establishment).
You can see the same appeal for the Democrats. Many members of the Democratic base aren’t just furious that Schumer supported the continuing resolution; they’re furious at the establishment decisions — including initially closing ranks behind an infirm President Joe Biden — that they believe led to defeat.
The Democratic Party’s approval rating is at 27 percent, a record low, with only 7 percent of voters very pleased with the party. A party doesn’t achieve a rating that low unless millions of its members turn on the leaders of their tribe.
At first, however, the Tea Party felt like something more than simply oppositional. For a moment, it actually inspired me. I was talking to grass-roots activists who were reading the Constitution for the first time. Local Republican Party volunteers were passing around copies of Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” and talking about the dangers of central planning. My clients rented spaces in local libraries to host lectures about the founders and framers.
There was a palpable sense that the Republican Party was experiencing a renaissance; a new party was already emerging from the ashes of defeat, and it was even more purely focused on the Constitution and economic freedom than the Republican Party of George W. Bush and John McCain.
But it all turned bad, and the reasons it turned bad are directly relevant to Democrats today.
Republicans built a movement around both anger and ideology. My mistake was in believing that the ideology was more important than the anger, but it was the anger that gave the Tea Party its political momentum, and that anger eventually swallowed the ideology. Rage is now the defining characteristic of Trump’s Republican Party.
I don’t think that anger is always wrong. Injustice should make us angry, but anger should be subordinate to — and in service of — higher values. Scripture captures this idea with a single simple sentence: “Be angry and do not sin.”
My first interpretation of Tea Party anger was precisely that it was in service of higher values, specifically a return to founding constitutional principles and an embrace of free markets and fiscal responsibility. But that was wrong. The ideology mattered only if it could serve the anger.
Another way of putting it is that Tea Party members embraced constitutional conservatism and libertarianism as a tactic, not as a principle, and the instant that a different, Trumpist ideology emerged — a better vehicle for the party’s raw rage — they welcomed it with open arms.
But I had doubts about the Tea Party even before it embraced Trump. I represented small grass-roots groups that were struggling to get tax exemptions from the I.R.S. under Obama, but by 2015 it was plain that many members of the Tea Party weren’t just reading Hayek; they were immersing themselves in conspiracy theories, and they were ferociously intolerant of disagreement. The anger had already swallowed the ideology and, in some cases, even reason itself.
There is certainly enough anger in the Democratic Party to create its own Tea Party. Democrats loathe Republicans just as much as Republicans loathe Democrats, but there are important cultural differences between the parties that make a Democratic Tea Party less practical.
For one thing, the Democratic turn toward more-educated voters means that the Tea Party’s anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism would be a poor fit for millions of Democrats.
Also, the Democratic Party is more of a party of institutions — including government institutions — than the Republican Party is now. This means they’re less likely to want a demolition than to urge a renovation. If the Tea Party revels in being the bull in the china shop and glories in the wreckage, the Democratic Party might want better inventory or new management, but it doesn’t want to trash the place.
While the Democratic Party is institutionally different from the Republican Party, it is vulnerable to the same degree of anger, and that anger — once indulged — is difficult to control.
The same movement that embraced free speech and free markets is now waging war on political dissent and stifling free trade. The same movement that once reveled in the Constitution is trying to turn the entire constitutional structure upside down.
And the establishment Republicans who embraced the Tea Party soon discovered that they had to conform to its every demand or — best case — they’d face a primary challenger. Worst case? They’d endure a campaign of threats and harassment, especially after the rise of Trump, until they left office or capitulated.
Do Democrats think embracing Tea Party rage is the path back to power? Do they believe they can control that intense anger, once it’s unleashed?
I distinctly remember the last time Republicans were destined to win forever.
The year was 2004. George W. Bush had just won re-election, handing Republicans their first victory in the popular vote since his father’s election 16 years earlier. Republicans were so confident in their prospects that they were preparing for generational control.
There was no Tea Party in 2004, but there was talk radio, and many Democrats convinced themselves that they had to answer Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with Limbaughs and Hannitys of their own. So they turned to a struggling fledgling radio network called Air America.
It flopped. While there were some hosts who could gain a respectable audience, it never could match the audience for the conservative titans of radio. Air America was a poor match for a Democratic culture that still valued legacy media, and legacy media still reached vastly more people than even the most popular liberal hosts on Air America.
(Ironically enough, one of them was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He co-hosted a show called “Ring of Fire.”)
By 2010, the network was off the air. Now it’s a footnote in American political history.
Air America failed, but Democrats succeeded. In 2006 they won back the House and the Senate. In 2008 they won back the presidency and secured a brief filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And they did it in the most conventional way possible: through effective candidate recruitment that allowed them to make their case against Bush. When his administration faced crises, the Democrats were ready with responsible alternatives.
That was then, you might argue. Conventional politics don’t work now; after all, the least conventional politician in modern American history is president of the United States for a second time.
But that’s misreading the moment. The most unconventional politician is president for the most conventional of reasons: Voters were concerned about inflation and immigration. The Democratic Party’s failure was that it did not persuade tens of millions of Americans that this was an abnormal election, when concerns about democracy should override concerns about the economy.
As David Shor, a Democratic data analyst, told my colleague Ezra Klein, voters “cared about the cost of living more than every other issue.” And by a 60-point margin, they cared more about “delivering change that improves people’s lives” than about “preserving America’s institutions.”
I’m fully aware that liberals aren’t interested in hearing electoral advice from conservatives like me. So all I can do is share the lessons learned from my experience with the movement that started as the Tea Party, became MAGA and runs our government today.
The Tea Party became a slave to its own rage. No fury was too great — no contempt was too deep — for the Democratic foe. And now we endure a presidency motivated by vengeance and spite.
Opposition is necessary. Anger is natural. Courage is indispensable. But under no circumstances will we be better off if another Tea Party takes the political field.
Some other things I did
Last week I spent all my writing time on my Sunday Opinion piece about the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech and due process at Columbia University.
But that’s not all I did. Every week, I spend lots of time on podcasts and a little time on television. I thought I’d share some of those appearances.
That Tuesday, I talked about MAGA’s turn against Amy Coney Barrett, on “Advisory Opinions.” We also walked through Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation case and the Trump administration’s attacks on Georgetown.
Last Thursday, I was a guest on “Morning Joe” and discussed one of the most unusual aspects of Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders: that he’s not even trying to hide his unconstitutional intent.
And last Friday, I joined my friend Tim Miller on “The Bulwark” podcast and walked through Trump’s illegal attacks on universities and law firms.
