TruthOut10
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- Dec 3, 2012
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Dave Weigel: Why the Tea Party Failed in 2012 - And why its next battle will be with the GOP.
The day after the election, FreedomWorks and its key state-to-state organizers dialed into a one-of-a-kind conference call. For the first time ever, they would be discussing a crushing defeat. Their Take the Senate campaign had ended with Democrats in greater control of the upper house. Their turnout game, powered by a new web-based canvassing app, was swatted aside by labor and the Democrats. Richard Mourdock, the Indiana politician whod been with Tea Partiers since the 2009 Taxpayer March on Washington, had lost one of the partys safest seats.
And now John Boehner was selling them out. The speaker of the House had just jimmied open the door to new revenue, which conservatives hearcorrectly, typicallyas new taxes.
People were upset, remembers Brendan Steinhauser, FreedomWorks director of state campaigns. Does Boehner cave in to what Obama and Reid want to do, or does he at least stay relatively strong on these issues? Hes probably going to a lot of these Republican, Tea Party folks, and say: OK, guys, heres what we need to do to stay in power. Thats the fear.
How does the Tea Party stop it? Good question. What else does the Tea Party want to halt? Better, more complicated question. The movement, which starts its second four-year term in February, was built on opposition to the presidents stimulus and health care law. Theres no real chance of a new stimulus bill, and the health care law is safe until at least 2017. In the foxhole, when the only goal was defeating Obama, there were no real disagreements among Tea Partiers and the rest of the conservative base. Thats over, too.
Over the last few days, as theyve processed data from the election, the rights Obama-era grass-roots groups are divided over what went wrong and what to do next. FreedomWorks get-out-the-vote app was called Political Gravity. It had been developed by American Majority, a grass-roots group run by Ned Ryun, which had its own offices in swing states and its own literature telling voters to save their children from the rampaging national debt. On Thursday, Ryun was downright dismissive of how the software had been used. Teams of Tea Partiers went to homes and tried to talk to residents about their terrific Senate candidates. If no one was home, they put information at the door.
The Tea Party lost big on election night and must now work with GOP to bounce back. - Slate Magazine
The day after the election, FreedomWorks and its key state-to-state organizers dialed into a one-of-a-kind conference call. For the first time ever, they would be discussing a crushing defeat. Their Take the Senate campaign had ended with Democrats in greater control of the upper house. Their turnout game, powered by a new web-based canvassing app, was swatted aside by labor and the Democrats. Richard Mourdock, the Indiana politician whod been with Tea Partiers since the 2009 Taxpayer March on Washington, had lost one of the partys safest seats.
And now John Boehner was selling them out. The speaker of the House had just jimmied open the door to new revenue, which conservatives hearcorrectly, typicallyas new taxes.
People were upset, remembers Brendan Steinhauser, FreedomWorks director of state campaigns. Does Boehner cave in to what Obama and Reid want to do, or does he at least stay relatively strong on these issues? Hes probably going to a lot of these Republican, Tea Party folks, and say: OK, guys, heres what we need to do to stay in power. Thats the fear.
How does the Tea Party stop it? Good question. What else does the Tea Party want to halt? Better, more complicated question. The movement, which starts its second four-year term in February, was built on opposition to the presidents stimulus and health care law. Theres no real chance of a new stimulus bill, and the health care law is safe until at least 2017. In the foxhole, when the only goal was defeating Obama, there were no real disagreements among Tea Partiers and the rest of the conservative base. Thats over, too.
Over the last few days, as theyve processed data from the election, the rights Obama-era grass-roots groups are divided over what went wrong and what to do next. FreedomWorks get-out-the-vote app was called Political Gravity. It had been developed by American Majority, a grass-roots group run by Ned Ryun, which had its own offices in swing states and its own literature telling voters to save their children from the rampaging national debt. On Thursday, Ryun was downright dismissive of how the software had been used. Teams of Tea Partiers went to homes and tried to talk to residents about their terrific Senate candidates. If no one was home, they put information at the door.
The Tea Party lost big on election night and must now work with GOP to bounce back. - Slate Magazine