AMERICA:64 per cent of Tea Partiers said it was 'not a problem if some have more chances in life', writes LARA MARLOWE
IF THEY re-christened the Grand Old Party as God’s Own Party, there’d be a special place in the inner sanctum for the Tea Party, which in less than two years has resurrected the American right.
A seminar this week at the Brookings Institution, entitled “The Tea Party, the Religious Right, and the American Religious Landscape”, provided an overview of the movement and its ideology, how it overlaps and differs with Republicans and the rest of America.
The session brought together a half dozen academics and political scientists to launch the third American Values Survey, based on two weeks of polling by the non-profit, non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
The PRRI found that 82 per cent of the Republican Party are white Christians, while the Democrats attract Hispanic and black Christians, as well as non-religious Americans. Sixty-four per cent of religiously unaffiliated voters lean to the Democrats.
Thirty-six per cent of Republicans and Tea Partiers describe themselves as white evangelical Protestants – 15 percentage points higher than their strength in the population at large. In most measures of religiosity – church attendance (46 per cent go at least once a week), a literal reading of the Bible (47 per cent), and a personal relationship with God (64 per cent) – Tea Partiers are ahead of Republicans but trail the white evangelicals.
The Tea Party and white evangelicals differed significantly only on issues of social justice. Sixty-four per cent of Tea Partiers said it was “not a problem if some have more chances in life”, compared to 50 per cent of white evangelicals. Fifty-eight per cent of Tea Partiers said that over the past two decades the government “has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities”, a viewpoint shared by only 38 per cent of white evangelicals.
“Those attracted to the Tea Party are more comfortable with white supremacy,” explained Rev Susan Thistlewaite, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, who participated in the launch of the report. “White evangelicals give to and work with charities. Caring for the ‘least of these’ is an evangelical value that is less important to the Tea Party.”
The milk of human kindness is apparently alien to Tea Partiers. While 67 per cent of Americans support increasing the minimum hourly wage from $7.25 (€5.20) to $10.00 an hour, 50 per cent of Tea Partiers oppose it.
The Tea Party stands out for its desire to tax the poor and let the rich off – perhaps reflecting the views of their billionaire backers. Against immigration and environmental protection too, the Tea Party takes the hardest, most hostile line.
The majority of Tea Party members are white males over the age of 50, notes Thistlewaite: “2010 may be the tipping point when more babies from racial minorities are born than white babies.” She sees in the overwhelmingly white Tea Party “an attempt to redefine whiteness and to see whites as victims.”
Hatred of big government – even more than religion – is the defining issue for the Tea Party. Eighty-three per cent of Tea Partiers say that government has grown too big because it is involved in things that people should be doing for themselves, compared to 56 per cent of the general population.
“The ideological debate on the role and size of government has come to dominate politics in America,” says Michael Gerson, a columnist for the Washington Post.
If the Tea Party wins dozens of seats in Congress in November, he predicts its differences with the GOP will quickly surface.
“I would not want to be Speaker [John] Boehner, with 30 or 40 members who will not vote for any appropriations Bill,” he explains.
In some ways, the Tea Party is reminiscent of earlier movements. “They look a lot like the Ross Perot voters from 1992,” says Karlyn Bowman, an analyst of opinion polls at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Looking for the movement’s leader is like asking for the boss of the internet.”
Robert Jones, the founder of the PRRI, says it’s difficult to assess the strength of the Tea Party. “If a pollster asks, ‘Are you a supporter or sympathiser of the Tea Party movement?’ up to one-third say yes. If you ask, ‘Are you a member?’ it’s about 7 per cent.”
The PRRI asked: ‘Do you consider yourself to be part of the Tea Party movement?’ Eleven per cent of respondents said yes.
There is considerable overlap between the Tea Party, the GOP and the conservative Christian movement. Virtually all of the Tea Party leaders are paid consultants to Fox News, and 57 per cent of Tea Partiers say that Fox is their most trusted source of information, significantly higher than Republicans or other conservatives. Eighty-four per cent of Tea Partiers say they admire Sarah Palin.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of Sarah Palin and Fox News,” says Jones. “These two things are playing architectural roles.”