COMMENTARY | The Tea Party movement started off well and has held to its core beliefs of limited government and conservative values. It may seem a bit strange, then, that the same public that supported the movement is now disapproving of it. That isn’t really a surprise. The public has a limited attention span and even more limited patience. When the drastic changes that the Tea Party sought didn’t immediately manifest themselves, people took it as a sign that this group was like all other political groups: all talk and no action. The die-hard members of the movement will cite the liberal media with its rapid decline but that doesn’t hold when you consider that the media has changed a bit in the last two years. I was one of the founding members of the Tea Party movement in my local area. I designed the local website and filled it with content. I organized rallies and videotaped them. I no longer attend. I don’t need to see the same people voicing the same complaints, carrying the same signs and making the same speeches. There are three main reasons that the Tea Party Movement has lost the support of the public:
The Public is Bored
The public is bored with movements, be it the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street. They are bored with politicians that never seem to be doing anything but campaigning for the next election. In the not so distant past watching the nightly news was informative. New things were taking place all the time and it was a way to keep informed. Now every night is essentially a rerun of the night before. Every night it’s the same players, the same accusations, the same denials. The Tea Party movement is no different. Every speech, every gathering every ad in the paper is the same as the last one.
The Public has Unrealistic Expectations
Many people seem to think that once the right person is elected then everything will be fine and all the problems will go away. To that end, several Tea Party candidates were elected into office during the midterm elections. Not only was the public unrealistic but so were many of the candidates. These newly elected politicians had to learn how to do their jobs and often that included working with people that had different agendas from their own. The actual job of politics is not so much about compromise as it is about payback.
The Public is Hypocritical
The public not only doesn’t get it, it doesn’t want to get it. The people who are pro-choice are the same people who pushed through mandatory seatbelt laws. The Tea Party movement is pro-death penalty yet doesn’t trust the government. People want their taxes cut but they don’t want to lose the services that they personally use. There are those who want taxes raised, as long as it’s not their taxes being raised. When any movement sees its members elected but those in the movement aren’t getting their way, they become disillusioned. The Tea Party is a prime example.
The Tea Party movement had its time and that time is passed. It made its point and it’s now time to move on. I don’t see the Tea Party regaining political power. It didn’t really have all that much to start with.