Tea Party, Republican Party
The Republican Party is a diverse thing, allowing for both business leaders who hold fiscally conservative policies and for small-town farmers who have no interest in larger business to lay claim to membership. But perhaps no greater example of the Republican Party’s extended membership exists than the Tea Party activists, in all their enraged glory. Technically speaking, at Tea Party rallies, it is made clear that the Tea Party has nothing to do with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but it is also then made clear what the objectives of the Tea Party activists are: unseating the Democrats whom they blame for the unfortunate situation in America right now. It is also clear who the Tea Party activists are: as reported by Ari Rabin-Havt of the Huffington Post, there were no cheers when the speaker asked for Democrats present, and there were ample cheers when the speaker asked for members of the Republican Party who were present. The most cheers were, of course, from when the speaker asked for Americans present.
The Tea Party activists represent a growing body of Americans which is really separate from the Republican Party to which most of them belong. It is a strange group of Americans whose primary shared trait is anger, outrage, and an almost dangerous passion for change, without an understanding of exactly what change to implement, or even what change is desired. In essence, whereas some important politicians in the Republican Party can genuinely outline and explain their plans and desires for America, the Tea Party activists are infected with the irrationality which is so representative of the popular image of the Republican Party today.
In essence, these people are not truly part of the Republican Party; or rather, they are, but they are to the Republican Party what a sword is to feudal knight, or what a gun is to a modern-day soldier. The group is a weapon, unthinking, unknowing, and dangerous, but capable of being directed towards a target and used to great and deadly effect. And the reason they are the sword of the Republican Party is that it is several high-ranking, powerful members of the Republican Party who have learned how to direct this powerful and dangerous weapon towards a goal.
This isn’t to say that the Democratic Party is without its similar group of people, people who are easily incensed, without necessarily coming to understand the issues about which they hold such strong opinions. But the Democratic Party wields its equivalent group of people with a subtler touch; it does not use them as a striking attack, in which barely anyone thinks about the next blow. The Republican Party, however, seems to have unleashed a weapon and force that potentially it cannot control anymore. As has been mentioned, the Republican Party still counts many of these people as members, but more and more they are dragging the Republican Party away from its perceived status as the legitimate, rational opposition to the Democrats.
It seems that perhaps the best option for the Republican Party may be to let the Tea Party activists go. Many powerful strategists of the Republican Party would likely look down upon this option, but this is only true because cutting loose the Tea Party activists, letting them form their own party, would significantly deplete the Republican Party’s ranks. But it would also prevent the Republican Party from moving down a path towards irrationality, a path that has at its end a conflict not between liberal and conservative, but between thinking voter and non-thinking voter. That is a conflict that any political party would do well to be on the correct side of.
