The events of January 6 were the logical culmination of the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. Donald Trump was the progeny of that movement and the authoritarian bent of Mr. Trump and his followers, both the professional politicians and ordinary Americans, is just an extension of the core beliefs of the Tea Partiers. Let's remember that Tea Partiers preached "smaller government" and preventing the "government from interfering" in the business of Americans but that was just propaganda. Their real goal was to use the power of government to punish anybody that did not share their beliefs and goals, which included outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage and making certain that America remained white, male, straight and Christian.
When they first showed up the Tea Partiers were rather extreme right-wingers for their time and they have tacked farther right since then, regardless of whether they failed, such as the two elections of President Obama, or succeeded, such as electing Donald Trump. That did not stop the Republican establishment from embracing them. They saw that the Tea Partiers could be a source of votes, funding and organization and although some expressed some reservations about bringing them into the Republican fold they were voices in the wilderness.
For awhile it worked. The Republicans enjoyed much success but like all radical groups that are used by more established organizations they outgrew their sponsors and eventually took it over. It was quite entertaining watching the more establishment candidates for the Republican nomination becoming increasingly terrified by the rise of Donald Trump in 2016.
And there is the problem. The Tea Partiers have been so energized by the election of Donald Trump and his subsequent loss of the presidency that they are in the position to hold the Republican Party hostage. While most Americans, including the Republican establishment, were outraged by the insurrection on January 6, Trump supporters were energized by it. They do not see anything wrong with what they did. They will not slink back under a rock feeling humiliated and remorseful. In fact they feel the exact opposite. They feel vindicated. They are going to continue to work to push their objectives on to the Republican Party. They are outnumbered by the more reasonable Republicans in the US but they are numerous and motivated enough to cause them troubles for the foreseeable future. For awhile the Tea Partiers were the tail that wagged the Republican dog and that is only going to become more pronounced in the coming years.
Before Donald Trump the Tea Partiers were an amorphous group. They did not have a single leader that their opponents could point to and say "Look that person is dangerous." That is no longer the case. The movement now has a standard bearer and that standard bearer managed to convince over 80 million Americans to come out and vote against him on November 3 and it managed to convince millions of Georgians to come out on January 5 to replace two incumbent Republican senators with Democrats. As long as Donald Trump is still around and as long as he is still someone his followers can rally around he is going to motivate large numbers of people to come out and vote for and against him and in the two cases where that really mattered, in the past three months, the Republicans lost.
This is not to say the Republicans will always lose but Donald Trump could be a drag on their electoral fortunes for some time and in a political climate where margins of victory are often not much greater than 1 percentage point that could be trouble for the Republicans.
No comments:
Post a Comment