‘RUN SARAH, RUN!” they chanted. Nashville last weekend hosted the boisterous first national convention of the Tea Party movement, the grassroots populists at the cutting edge of conservative anti-Obama protests across the US. And as delegates made clear, they and former vice-presidential candidate and star guest Sarah Palin were made for each other. She said she was still “considering” a 2013 run.
Taking aim at the Obama change agenda, the T-shirts proclaimed “Keep the change . . . Ill keep my freedom, my guns and my money!” The message was simple: small government, lower taxes, greater individual liberties, more power to the states. And the Palin presidential themes: the idea that Washington is another country and that Obama is a socialist if not a Bolshevik.
But there was another nasty strain to the convention. Former congressman Tom Tancredo, known for his attacks on illegal immigration and now harking back to the Jim Crow South, suggested a “literacy test” for voters and gave liberals who accuse the movement of racist and nativist tendencies plenty of cause. Obama was elected, he told delegates, “mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country . . . People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House”.
Determined not to set up their own new political party, the activists are likely to merge into local Republican organisations, strengthening the latter’s ultra-conservative base. In doing so, ironically, they may add to that party’s woes. Despite the opportunities presented by the dramatic decline in Obama’s popularity, it remains dominated by conservative and evangelical ideologues, finding it difficult to appeal to centrist voters wary of extremism.
Like Ms Palin the new kids on the block have difficulty reaching beyond their immediate core group, as a Washington Post-ABC News poll this week testifies. Although two-thirds of Americans are "dissatisfied" or "angry" about the way the federal government is working, a similar proportion say they know little about what the groups stand for. And 55 per cent have unfavourable views of Ms Palin while more than seven in 10 – and a majority of Republicans – now say she is unqualified to be president. Even among Republicans, only 37 per cent now hold a "strongly favourable" opinion of her, half the level she had when she was announced as John McCain's running mate. The tea is going cold.