Quo vadis, Tea Party

Kaleidoscope
By Perry Diaz

Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio

Riding the crest of the Tea Party tsunami that hit the United States in the 2010 midterm elections, three young conservatives – Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio – are now in the forefront of the Republican Party’s attempt to take back the White House in 2016.

Looking back to the victory of the Tea Party congressional candidates in 2010, it seemed that the shellacking of the Democratic Party had doomed President Barack Obama’s run for reelection in 2012. By taking back the House of Representatives and demolishing the Democrats’ filibuster-free “supermajority” status in the Senate, the Republicans positioned themselves to block President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda; thus, hurting his reelection chances in 2012. Yes, the Republicans – particularly the Tea Partiers — unabashedly gloated that Obama would be a one-term president.

The Tea Partiers’ ebullience and optimism had caused the Democrats to cringe and retreat to their safe havens in blue states. But even “blue states” – strong Democratic strongholds – cannot guarantee that they can stop the Tea Party assault. The Tea Party had set its eye to total takeover of the Executive and Legislative branches of government in 2016.

Tea Party takeover

In 2011, the first year of a Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives, they smashed Obama’s legislative agenda, which included jobs and infrastructure bills. They negotiated a deal with Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts by one year in exchange for… nothing! Yes, nothing! What the heck was Obama thinking?

Well, one reason was Obama might have been hoping that by being nicer and kinder to the Republicans, the Republicans would reciprocate by being nicer and kinder to him, too. But it wasn’t so. Instead the Republicans – who seemingly thought that Obama had capitulated – treated him harshly.

Obama must have realized then, but rather too late, that negotiating a compromise with the Tea Partiers was one way, all the way, their way. The Tea Party mantra is: “What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine, too.”

Speaker John Boehner, a moderate conservative, couldn’t come up with a fair agreement with President Obama, only because of pressure from the Tea Party. Evidently, the Tea Party’s influence over Boehner had forced him not to give any concession to Obama. And Obama couldn’t do much but vent his displeasure in televised public appearances.

Obama victory

But despite the Republicans’ negative propaganda and disinformation against Obama, he won a second term in a landslide in 2012. It was an upset victory. The Republican Party leaders were optimistic that their presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a moderate Republican, and his running mate Paul Ryan, a Tea Party favorite, would win. Their defeat at the polls dumbfounded the GOP ticket’s donors, which included billionaires like the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson, and others. Didn’t they realize that money alone couldn’t win elections? Obama, on the other hand, knew the power of grassroots campaign – it works wonders.

The trashing of the Romney-Ryan ticket left a leadership vacuum in the Republican Party. But it didn’t take too long for a new breed of GOP leaders to emerge, to wit: Tea Partiers Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, and Sen. Marco Rubio; evangelical Christian Rick Santorum; conservative Rick Perry; and moderate Republican Gov. Chris Christie. And who knows, Herman Cain might give it another quixotic try to convince Republicans that his “999” tax formula would work like magic. Ambitious and motivated, Cruz, Paul, and Rubio are expected to make the Republican primaries more entertaining – and nastier — than the bloody 2012 primaries.

Defunding Obamacare

Ted Cruz’s Defund Obamacare

But Cruz’s campaign to defund Obamacare and shut down the government had hurt the Tea Party across the board. After 16 days without a functional government, the people seemed to have lost confidence in the Republicans. And with a 22% approval rating, it makes one wonder if the GOP had already lost the battle before it got started.

However, Cruz became a folk hero among Tea Party fanatics, whose “take no prisoner” stance is making a lot of people scared of the perceived consequences of electing a right-wing extremist who is farther to the right of Barry Goldwater. It must be remembered that Goldwater’s right-wing politics had brought down the GOP ticket by a record margin in 1964. Simply put, the American voters had traditionally shied away from extremists from either end – far right and far left — of the political spectrum. Only a candidate who runs on a centrist platform can win the presidency.

2016 elections

With an array of Republican right-wing extremists running for president, the Democrats are assured of victory in 2016 provided that they stay within arm’s length of the middle ground to attract the independent voters. And there is nothing that an independent voter detests than candidates with extremist views.

It’s interesting to note what the late ex-president Richard Nixon told Bob Dole who was then running for president in 1996. “To win the Republican nomination,” Nixon told Dole, “you have to run as far as you can to the right because that’s where 40% of the people who decide the nomination are. And to get elected you have to run as fast as you can back to the middle, because only about 4% of the nation’s voters are on the extreme right wing.”

That’s precisely what Mitt Romney did in 2012 to win the Republican nomination for president. Romney, who was derisively called by some Republicans as a “Massachusetts moderate” — a code for “liberal” — won the conservative vote in the primary and then tried to run back to the middle during the general election campaign. But Barack Obama stopped him at every turn, reminding voters what Romney’s stand was on issues. And in today’s technology where everything Romney said during the primary was digitally recorded, Romney was doomed.

Ted Cruz and Tea Party supporters

And it’s for that same reason that whoever wins the Republican nomination for president in 2016 would have the same problem as Romney did. Tea Partiers Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio wouldn’t have any problem running to the right, they’re already on the right. But running to the middle could really be a big problem for them. They’re just too much engrossed in right-wing politics that they’d look silly and hypocritical if they ran a middle-of-the-road campaign. The American voters aren’t that gullible.

But Ted Cruz hasn’t learned his lesson from his failed attempt to defund Obamacare. He’s now back on the bully pulpit telling the American people that he “isn’t quite finished with his crusade against Obamacare” and called for its full repeal… for the 47th time! Hasn’t he had enough yet? Clearly not.

Quo vadis, Tea Party?

(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)