Everyone Likes a Party? Wrong

Everyone Likes a Party? Wrong Richard Bishirjian, Ph.D.

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The Tea Party popular uprising has scared the pants off leaders of both Republican and Democratic Parties. Democrats were mortified to learn that 30% of Tea Party activists are Democrats, and Republicans are mortified because Tea Party activists hate the leadership of the Republican Party. The recent dustup at the Republican National Committee is just another example of why there is nothing to like in our current political party structure.

This has enormous implications for the future stability of American politics which in recent years has demonstrated that it cannot attract politicians of character, commitment to principle and honesty. This is an age-old problem that arises whenever the stakes and the rewards are very high.

Let’s go back to the beginning and explore whether there is anything that can be done to improve our party politics or whether this is a human pageant which we should appreciate for its humor, stupidities, treasons, fornicators, adulterers, dishonesty, theft and posturing. After all, we can’t shoot elected officials when they exhibit the same character traits of the American population.

If capital punishment is taken off the table, what can we do?

The Tea Party popular uprising is an occasion to watch with wonder and amazement. For the most part, Tea Party activists are like the rest of us—complacent, disinterested in events external to our jobs and families, and non-political. That was before the meltdown in our financial system, 10% unemployment levels, a failed Bush presidency, unacceptable losses in Iraq, and the rise of a radical theocratic regime in Iran, and before the 2008 election. Especially, that was before it became apparent that the United States was near bankruptcy and that all the entitlement programs created over the past 75 years and all the financial commitments made by posturing politicians were killing the American economy. The reckless spending of the Bush and Obama Administrations have sent a message heard by tens of thousands of Americans who have had enough of reckless spending.

After the Inauguration of President Barack Obama and a triumphant Congress dominated by Democrats, American citizens who previously didn’t care what happened in Washington found their voice and began to enjoy spending weekends with other aggrieved citizens carrying tea bags. About two years ago I saw my first tea bagging event outside the offices of a U.S. Senator where Lipton’s Tea bags were being thrown into the water fountain outside the Senator’s office!

Elected politicians who cannot go to the grocery without loudly expressing their admiration for the excellent work of the staff and the good judgment of customers several hundred demonstrators is a wakeup call.

Unfortunately, if you are brain dead, there isn’t much to wake up, so members of Congress have begun to take the position that airplane passengers take when the pilot says “Prepare for sudden impact!” That posture is evident at the Republican National Committee that hasn’t had a restful night’s sleep since Republican donors began hanging up on staff who called for donations.

It’s generally agreed that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney— assisted by political pollster Karl Rove—destroyed the Republican brand.

The conservative commitment to limited government and the reductions in government spending that goe along with it were lost in the Bush/Cheney/Rove lust for power. Oh yes, there was a successful attack on American soil by Islamic radicals willing to kill themselves in order to strike their intended targets, but a successful invasion of Afghanistan was followed by an invasion and unsuccessful occupation of Iraq, creation of a new prescription medicine entitlement in Medicare, high tech monitoring of domestic communications of American citizens, creation of an enormous government bureaucracy called “Homeland Security” that spent much of its time dealing with natural disasters, and, of course, the intrusive police force that now delay air travel by conducting searches without reference to the threat of Islamic radicals. Grandma whose family came to Oregon in the 19^th century is searched while more likely potential terrorists are passed by out of respect to the American commitment to diversity.

What does all this mean?

Consider that the New Deal Coalition broke up when its constituents were displaced by other, more preferred, beneficiaries of government programs. There’s reason to believe that the Tea Party revelers are motivated in part by their sense that they too have been displaced by a new generation of beneficiaries that include illegal aliens, civil rights activists, community organizers, welfare recipients and those who “choose” their gender. They are asking themselves, what about my Medicare and Social Security benefits? And they now realize that there is a new constituency that is being fed by federal largess, and they are not a part of that new constituency.

That’s a part of what’s going on in America today. But, there is another, more ominous, aspect to our current discontents.

Western civilization since the Enlightenment has undergone a secularization and deculturation of what formerly constituted a universal Christianitas. Western culture was fundamentally Christian, and slowly those fundamentals were eroded.

The Culture Wars in America that became apparent several decades ago are a continuation of that deculturation process and are now full blown. A result is that the American people are divided as once they were divided in the Civil War. Most countries that undergo one disastrous Civil War do not leap to have another, but the Tea Party uprising is a warning sign that a significant portion of the American people has reached the limit of their tolerance.

Pronouncements of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and more recent pronouncements of the FBI that right wingers are the terrorists spray gasoline on the emotions of Tea Party revelers. And surveillance of Tea Party activist groups and events by American intelligence services does nothing to allay suspicions that something is terribly wrong in our nation’s Capital City. Many Americans—sophisticated and not sophisticated—are buying weapons and storing ammunition! Though Chairman Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee have made the news of late, the truth of the matter is that political party organizations are a side show. They converge after Congressional elections to vote for Congressional leaders, and they are organized to elect public officials, but the real action in America is elsewhere.

The real American can be found in other types of voluntary associations: teachers unions; labor unions; small businesses; large corporations, tax exempt charities; educational institutions, especially the public schools and, of course, the tens of thousands of churches that dot the American landscape.

That is the real America and those fellas and gals who are elected to Congress are just the “fringe” on top of a one horse buggy.

The problem that the real America now faces is how to gain control of that buggy.

Provided that the Obama Administration does not install martial law and suspend Congressional elections, it is highly likely that most leaders of both parties in Congress will be replaced—either in 2011 or in 2012.

Getting to that end goal is the problem that the Tea Party activists have to address and it is not clear that they’ve figured it out.

I met a Tea Party activist at a meeting that I attended in January. Previously she had run against an incumbent state legislator and won. I made a contribution to her campaign and wished her well. She lost that election because the Republican she displaced joined hands with the Democrats to deny her a seat in the State Legislature.

At the January meeting I saw her again and she had now really come into her own as a Tea Party activist and was furiously engaged organizing rallies, demonstrations, phone calls to legislators and otherwise having a wonderful time. She told me that her mind was divided and that she could not decide whether to run for the State Legislature again or organize Tea Party events.

What she decides to do with her commitment, time and energy will tell us whether the Tea Party is the solution to the current leadership crisis in Congress or whether it is just a popular expression of discontent that will disappear when people become tired of protesting.