The Tea Party Movement

After the 2008 election, while the Democrats were gaining popularity with rising cohorts of younger and minority voters, the Republicans were still in a mess, having difficulties to reunite under their new party leader. Although the new president’s promise to ‘transform America’ was welcomed by the young generation of the US, it was perceived as a threat to the middle-class, well educated, white Americans aged above 45. For example, they believed that increasing taxes on people like themselves to finance larger amount of governmental spending towards the lazy and the undeserving was going to be a threat to the country’s well-being. But since there was no notable political rival against the Democrats, those right-wing conservatives united under

That is to say, mobilization of the Tea Party movement involved not only those individual activists, but also the partisan media as well as the wealthy free-market advocates. Continued coverage on the conservative media channels, such as Fox News, the right-wing blogs as well as the radio talk shows, played a critical role in drawing wider public attention and in forming the collective identity. The media also contributed in streaming out biased information to a quarter of Americans in order to keep them “in a constant state of anger and fear about the direction of the country and the doings of government officials.” Furthermore, unlike other mass rebellion, Tea Party operated with the support from corporate billionaires and political consultants. Those people wanted to use grassroots activism to gain advantages to reach out to the conservatives and to promote their implausible ideas, thus making as if those agendas enjoyed broad support. As such, both the media and right-wing organizations were significant components of this

But on the other side, this movement posed some danger. Compared to activists’ remarkable willingness to master American political process, due to the skewed media channels, people were usually equipped with wildly inaccurate facts regarding the role of government, its financing strategies, and key contents of the legislations they are fighting against. Also, “Tea Party groups… combined a generous, tolerant interaction within the group with an almost total lack of empathy for fellow Americans outside the Tea Party circle”. Along with incorrect stereotypes injected by conservative channels, this idea of ‘us against them’ led to polarization in American society as well as in politics. Their hatred towards non-Tea Partiers grew to the extent that they wanted to exclude the non-white from their society. Since the politicians needed to sustain their popularity for votes, they could no longer be ‘moderate’ Republicans, but rather be ultra-conservative ones, meaning that there would no longer be any easy compromises with the Democrats. As a result, the Tea Party activism led to out-group intolerance based on misinformation, where political legitimacy of the opponents was no longer recognized and core values of democratic process were severely