Professor David Lewis Baker david.lewis.baker@gmail.com “Markets Against Democracy – the Political Economy of the Tea Pa

1. Professor David Lewis Bakerdavid.lewis.baker@gmail.com“Markets Against Democracy – the Political Economy of the Tea Party Movement.” Taft Research Centre Lecture Sponsored by the Department of Political Science University of Cincinnati Thursday May 19th, 2011, 3.00 pm.

2. Persecuted Majority....

3. Or Poisonous Movement?

4. Why ‘Markets against democracy’? • The goal of the Tea Party is to achieve a decisive and irreversible increase in the balance of power in favour of the free market relative and the state. • Markets are going to be used against the existing ‘socialized democracy’ in the US to create a ‘Free Market Democracy’. • This lecture will also consider the impact of this fundamentalist position on the workings of pluralist democracy in the US.

5. Political Economy. • Political economy as understood here is to study the interface between markets and states and assess how power relations dictate particular economic structures and outcomes. • “A political economy approach “interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises.... in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behaviour not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained.” Charles S. Maier In search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy, pp. 3-6.

6. Two issues of political economy and one of democracy are the central focus here: • The political economy of the Tea Party (TP) Movement itself • The possible wider impact the Movement on the present and future political economy of the US. • The impact of the TP on the ability of pluralist democracy to function in the US.

7. Pluralist Democracy • Robert A. Dahl, and Charles Lindblom championed Polyarchy (or Pluralistic) view of political elites and governance in the late 1950s and early 1960s. • No single, monolithic elite controls government and society, rather a series of specialized elites compete in elections and markets and bargain with one another for control. • Thus fierce but peaceful competition and compromise between elites in politics and the marketplace that drives free-market democracy and allows it to thrive. • However, Lindblom saw shortcomings in Polyarchy with regards to ‘democratic governance’. In his best known work, Politics And Markets (1977), Lindblom noted the "Privileged position of business in Polyarchy". Dahl later agreed Polyarchy was skewed to certain elites.

8. The New Right Primacy of Markets Position • Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants to reduce government down to a scale where he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” (May 25, 2001.) • An exclusively negative definition of ‘freedom’ - freedom from restraint by government. • Against ‘positive’ freedom to achieve national goals by enhancing the capacity for liberty (including markets) through public means - a so-called “socialized democracy” viewed as a form of totalitarian ‘Communism’ or ‘Nazism’.

9. Free Markets and Democracy – a ‘natural’ link? • Markets are ‘a-political’ and ‘a-moral’ – and not linked to democracy as such. • Markets pre-existed democracy, functioned with slavery, operate in authoritarian China today and in Nazi Germany. • The slums of India and the Favelas of Sao Paulo are non-socialized free market societies in democratic countries. Full of self-reliant, hard working, low wage workers. • Money laundering, drugs and prostitution already thrive in a unregulated free markets.

10. A Strong State for Ultra-Free Market Democracy? “The strong state that is needed so that this economy may remain free is a state able to conduct effective surveillance and policing of the unemployed and the poor, able to confront and defeat any union challenge, able to contain any upsurge of terrorism or public disorder.” (Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism, 1988, p. 236)

11. Populism Defined • Can be on the right, the left, or in the center. • Can be egalitarian or authoritarian, and can rely on decentralized networks or a charismatic leader. • Can advocate new social and political relations or romanticize the past. • Promote forms of anti-elitism that target known structures of oppression, or scapegoats alleged to be part of a secret conspiracy. • They can define “the people” in ways that are inclusive and challenge traditional hierarchies, or in ways that silence or demonize oppressed groups and support existing hierarchies.

12. What Causes Regular Upsurges of Populism in the USA • Inequalities (real and perceived) fuelled by social, political, racial, cultural and economic tensions. • Atlantic Seaboard and Northeast elites repeatedly challenged by newer, outsider elites, employing populist antielite conspiracism. • Perceived special treatment of ‘rival’ groups. • Successive waves of populist movements have established a tradition of demagogic appeals to “the people” against “the establishment” and/or ‘undeserving parasites.’

13. Most right-wingpopulist groups reflect the views of two different social groups in combination. • Middle-level groups in the social hierarchy, notably middle- and working-class Whites, who have a stake in traditional social privilege but resent the power of upper-class elites over themand/or feel real economic distress. • “Outsider” factions of the elite, who include anti-elitist propaganda as part of their own bid for greater power.

14. Major right-wing populist themes producerism, demonization, scapegoating, conspiracism, apocalypticism, and millennialism. • Producerism, champions the so-called producers in society against both “unproductive” elites and subordinate groups defined as lazy or immoral. • Scapegoating often targets socially disempowered or marginalized groups. At the same time, the scapegoat is often portrayed as powerful and/or privileged. • Demonization usually emerges from fundamentalist religious beliefs as do apocalypticism, and millennialism. • Conspiracism – a belief that devious elites (Communists, Bankers, Jews) are plotting a ‘one world government’ aided by liberal dupes throughout society.

15. Christian Right is motivated and mobilized by apocalyptic and millennialist themes • A belief in an approaching confrontation, cataclysmic event, or transformation of epochal proportion, about which a select few have forewarning. • US ‘Patriot Movement’ and John Birch Society is also inspired by these beliefs. • Apocalypticism principal source for what Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style” in American politics.

16. Mainstream Populist Republicanism • The anti-Clinton campaign of the 1990s involved mainstreaming of populist conspiracism. • Accused Clinton of involvement in drug running, bribery, even numerous murders, to keep word of his crimes from leaking out. • “Clinton is the quintessential slippery lawyer. Just as a weasel sucks the blood from its prey, so Clinton sucks the ordinary meaning out of words to deceive others.. . . Clinton is a filthy-minded, self-centered man who fits the criteria of a sociopath.” (Christopher Ruddy .) • Ultimately a mixture of demonization, dehumanization and conspiracy accusations.

17. Defining the Tea Party Movement. “..we should regard the Tea Party as a new variant of conservative mobilization and intra-Republican party factionalism, a dynamic, loosely-knit, and not easily controlled formation of activists, flinders, and media personalities that draws upon and refocuses longstanding social attitudes about federal social programs, spending, and taxation. Fashioned at a moment of challenge for conservatives in and around the GOP, when the “Republican” label was tarnished, the Tea Party has helped to sharpen and refocus conservative activism in our time.” The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin, Perspectives on Politics, March 2011: Vol. 9/No. 1 25-43.

18. TP Headline Policies: • Permanent reduced government spending and scope • Opposition to ‘unjust’ taxation • Abolition of the national debt and federal budget deficit and balanced budgets • Anti-abortion, pro-’family values’ anti Gay • An originalist and fundamentalist Christian interpretation of the United States Constitution

19. Glen Beck Fox News Broadcaster “…the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters,” seen not merely as an entertainer, like Rush Limbaugh, but as an “educator.”(Opinion Poll, July 2010 Democracy Corps.) • Beck’s values grounded in neo-John Birch Society conspiracism and apocalypticism, viewing - America as being taken over by the conspiracies of totalitarian communists including various American Presidents.

20. Tea Party events have become magnet for other groups and causes —gun rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, absolute libertarians, militia organizers, “birthers” who doubt Obama’s citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states rights movement. • “Proud Right-Wing Extremist.” A popular T-shirt at Tea Party rallies.

21. Why did the Tea Party Movement arise? • According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, the bailouts of banks by the Bush and Obama administrations triggered the Tea Party's rise: "They think federal spending, deficits and taxes are too high, and they think no one in Washington is listening to them, and that latter point is really, really important."

22. 73% disapprove of Obama's policy of engaging with Muslim countries • 88% approve of the immigration law recently enacted in Arizona • 82% do not believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the legal right to marry • 52% believed that "lesbians and gays have too much political power." University of Washington poll of 1,695 registered voters in the State of Washington http://www.washingtonpoll.org/results/June1_teaparty.pdf

23. A Bloomberg News poll found that Tea Partiers are not against increased government action in all cases – only for the ‘undeserving’. • More than half of Tea Party supporters said that global warming would have ‘no serious effect at any time in the future’, while only 15 percent of other Americans share that view. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21climate.html

24. TPs mass appeal comes from a far-reaching social, political, cultural, and economic crisis cause by Globalization and relative decline in economic, political and military power in the US which: “…portended the collapse of the “American Dream”—the apolitical, perpetually prosperous, militarily invincible, and deeply self-absorbed and self-righteous “mainstream” American culture was shaken to its foundations by developments over this period. Commonly held concepts of nation, community and family were transformed, and no new principle of cohesion, no new cultural center, emerged to replace them.” (Michael Omi and Howard Winant Racial Formation, pp. 121-22).

25. Impact of Globalisation on ‘middle America’ “Darwinian demands of global competition have led to waves of corporate downsizing. Real median incomes haven’t moved much for two decades. While the earnings gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has widened. This has heightened workers’ economic insecurity and sown doubts about the future.” [The New Populism, Business Week, March 13th 19195, p. 73].

26. Tea Party’s political economy An attempt to return to the basic doctrines of the “old American liberalism” containing: • an emphasis on individual autonomy • hostility to the planned reordering of social life • enshrining the market mechanism as institutional and ethical manifestation of human liberty and democracy • renewed populist hatred toward the state • hostile attitudes toward intellectuals and expertise • returning political control to the State and local spheres.

27. TP Political Economy also Implies: • A new economic culture centered on the entrepreneur, around capital and competition • A new legitimation of American capitalism • Anew scepticism of all forms of collectivism, especially unionization • A new toleration of economic royalism in the form of worship of the entrepreneur • A greater predisposition toward forms of social authority based on wealth and market success

28. Essentially the depoliticization of markets and economic life under global capitalism. • Capitalism as a neutral and power-free market environment, perfectly tuned to the American dream. • An absolutist belief in individualism and the sanctity private property. • A reordering of civil society and politics as subordinate to the ‘natural equilibrium’ imperatives of the market.

29. Views, Membership and Demographics • Polls show that Vast majority of Tea Party participants are conservative Republicans, many of whom have been politically active in the past. • October 2010 Washington Post Gallop poll of local Tea Party organizers found 87% saying "dissatisfaction with mainstream Republican Party leaders" was "an important factor in the support the group has received so far.“ • Weakest support in the urban areas of the East and West Coasts, Strongest in the Sun Belt and South.

31. Typical demographic of TP participant: OIder, white, and middle class. • 55 - 60 % are males • 80% are white; • 70-75 % over 45 years old. • 44% "born-again“ Christians. Somewhat higher incomes than typical Americans on average.

32. 7 state study conducted from the University of Washington found that the strongest predictors of supporting the Tea Party are views of Obama, ideology, partisanship and anger at the way the government is operating. • After the economy the issue of illegal immigration comes second in most TP polls. • Social/Religious conservative issues tends to be less significant for TP members.

33. The New Right/TP self image : “…the new economic division pits the producers—businessmen, manufacturers, hard-hats, blue-collar workers, and farmers—against the new and powerful class of nonproducers comprised of a liberal verbalist elite (the dominant media, the major foundations and research institutions, the educational establishment, the federal and state bureaucracies) and a semipermanent welfare constituency, all coexisting happily in a state of mutually sustaining symbiosis.” William Rusher National Review Commentator.

34. A Genuine Grass Roots Movement • “…the Tea Parties are not operating under the guidance of official GOP institutions. Instead, a mix of local networks, resource-deploying national organizations, and conservative media outlets constitute Tea Partyism and give it a great deal of dynamism and flexibility at a pivotal juncture in US politics.” • “At the grassroots level, Tea Parties are small, loosely interrelated networks, assembled at the initiative of local and regional organizers, who often use online organizing tools. The website MeetUp…” The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin. Perspectives on Politics, March 2011: Vol. 9/No. 1 25-43.

35. Or Astroturfing? • National TP events draw resources from a small number of highly conservative business elites, “whose policy concerns primarily involve reducing government oversight and regulation and shrinking or radically restructuring broad social entitlements in the United States.” • Advocacy organizations most closely associated with the Tea Party The Tea Party Express and Tea Party Patriots. “The Tea Party Express (TPE) is a project of the Republican-run Political Action Committee…..TPE also channelled big money into Republican primaries. …. The Party Patriots (TPP), has been more closely associated with grassroots activism than TPE.” (Skocpol et al op cit, 2010, p28)

36. TPP is very closely linked with FreedomWorks, a multimillion-dollar conservative non-profit led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. • Other national advocacy organizations linked to the TP include Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group • Like FreedomWorks AFP is a spin-off of the 1980s free-market industry-funded think tanks which include Citizens for a Sound Economy; Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future; and The American Liberty Alliance, run by the conservative veteran Eric Odom.

37. Big Business & Media Support • Well-documented rightward shift by sectors of the US business community over last 30 years, especially after the 1974-1975 recessions. • Centred in the low-union Sunbelt and South which also received Vietnam War and Space technology boosts. • Free Market models came to dominate the Economics and Business Studies professions – initiated by the ‘Chicago School’ in the US.

38. A growing infrastructure of business-funded right wing think tanks, policy groups, and ‘experts’ have bombarded the media and web with studies, accusations and rumours, without the scrutiny of peer review or investigative journalism. • Right wing cable TV and radio stations, led by Fox News, have also widely disseminated pro- Tea Party events and ideas.

39. Several organizations promoting the TP, along with right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, have been bankrolled by a small number of far-right businessmen, most notably the libertarian Koch brothers, sons of Fred Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. • National organizations promoting the Tea Party are most closely tied to pro-business conservatism, rather than church-linked social conservatism.

40. Tea Party views were also spread by a number of widely followed conservative opinion leaders, including Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, George Will and Sarah Palin. All receive wide and positive coverage in the conservative web and TV media. • New phenomenon of ‘Viral’ videos and the blogosphere spread accusations, messages and ideas instantly across the country.

41. University of Maryland study on ‘misinformation’ amongst registered voters prior to the 2010 election discovered that Fox viewers: • falsely believe that most economists think that the fiscal stimulus of 2009 caused job losses • that most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit • that most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring • And that misinformation about the distribution of expert opinion increases with the frequency of watching Fox News.

42. Tea Party’s Republican local level organising. • The tea party's biggest successes in 2010/11 came from well-funded national groups headed by longtime political players who parachuted in to mobilize local support. • In upset victories in Alaska and Delaware, the Sacramento-based Tea Party Express spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising for Republican Senate candidates Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell.

43. Friends for Liberty and the Christian Coalition appeared in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. • They seek a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Obama, but much of the Republican establishment.

44. The Impact of the Tea Party Movement on Pluralist Democracy: • The U.S. political system is broadly ‘pluralist’, allowing for a range of political debate and conflict between different political organizations, factions, and tendencies finally resolved through ‘bipartisanship’ in US government. • However, most political and economic power is concentrated within a tiny group of wealthy elites the most dominant the US business elite. • And a dominant free market Consensus now exists amongst this elite, reinforced by the financial collapse of 2007-8 and the state bailout.

45. Since the late 1970s, the political center of gravity in the United States has moved steadily, and recently dramatically, to the right. • This shift is often identified with the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, but the Democratic Party has also embraced traditional right-wing positions regarding “welfare reform,” “crime,” “illegal aliens,” and “deficit pay down”. • Clinton’s ‘Triangulation’ policy of locating the Democrats just to the left of the Republicans.

46. Since the 1970s a growing uncritical reverence for free markets has been driven by both elite policymakers, neoliberal economists, and a range of mass based political movements. • But the Tea party, promoted and supported by Republican neo-liberal insiders, has been more successful in cementing this at the heart of official GOP ideology and policy than any other group.

47. Dangers of Normalizing Populism The populist pedigree of the Tea party approach is now clear in Republican politics: • In the ‘no surrender’ fundamentalism in the Republican caucus during the recent budget negotiations. • In the apocalyptic and scapegoating language adopted to describe the negotiations and the President by leading Republicans. • In the blurring of the line between official Republican and extreme-right discourse.

48. At a meeting with Congressional Republicans, Obama complained this was undermining efforts to find bipartisan solutions. • “The fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.’ ” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html

49. Tea Party members and other freshmen elected with its strong backing have dominated the agendas of the new Congress. • The Tea Party has turned out to be a formidable political force because they are both amateurs and fundamentalist populists, and therefore inflexible and uncompromising. • Many GOP old guard members fear for their seats if they don’t demonstrate impeccable ultra-market anti-state fundamentalism.

50. “These folks are conservatives across the board and want to win on both social and fiscal issues. But the majority care more about fiscal issues, as has always been the case in the Congress.” Vin Weber, former House member and prominent lobbyist.