Liberal bloggers and commentators have been unanimous: The Tea Party is, if not dead, dying.
“Ding Dong – the Tea Party is dead!” blared the Daily Kos last Tuesday after Mitt Romney won the Florida primary and not a single candidate even mentioned the phrase “Tea Party” in his speech.
In December, Salon.com asked “is there any bottom to the Tea Party’s decline,” concluded that it is in “an inevitable long-term decline,” and speculated that “the American people have already written it off.”
The mainstream media have picked up on this storyline as well. U.S. News & World Report says that “for a number of reasons, it won’t have the same driving, central role in GOP primary politics,” and that if 2010 was the year of the Tea Party, “2012 is shaping up to be the cycle in which the establishment strikes back.”
The Cook Political Report has speculated that many of the Republicans who cast Tea Party votes regret their decision because of poor candidates and the debt-ceiling disaster last summer.
Even one of the Tea Party’s co-founders has become vocal regarding the movement’s decline. “The Tea Party movement is dead. It’s gone,” declared Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council, a statewide coalition of Tea Party groups in Ohio.
“I think largely the Tea Party is irrelevant in the primaries. They aren’t passionate about any of the candidates, and if they are passionate, they’re for Ron Paul,” Littleton said.
To be sure, the Tea Party’s support and influence has undoubtedly become less strong since its dominant effect in the midterm elections in 2010. Recent polling confirms that the Tea Party’s popularity has diminished significantly.
A Rasmussen Reports survey released last month reported that just 31 percent of likely voters have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party — down 20 points from April 2009, when the movement began — while 47 percent are unfavorable.
This is consistent with findings from a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November. Pew found that 27 percent of voters disagree with the Tea Party, while 20 percent agree, which marks a reversal from November 2010, when 27 percent agreed and 22 percent disagreed.
Among voters in Tea Party strongholds — congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, 23 percent say they disagree with the Tea Party, while one-quarter agree. This marks a 10-point drop among those who agreed in November 2010 from 33 percent, and a 5-point increase among those who agree from 18 percent.
The decline in support for the Tea Party is largely attributed to the hard-line approach it took during the debt ceiling and deficit reduction debate last summer. In the Rasmussen survey, by 43 percent to 30 percent, voters say the Tea Party has made things worse for the country in terms of the ongoing budget debate in Congress rather than better.
The Tea Party was also weakened by some candidates in the midterm elections who were not perceived as credible, such as Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell.
These two candidates lost Senate races the Republicans could have won had more viable candidates run. While conservatives have made efforts since the midterm elections to ensure that stronger conservative candidates run in 2012, voters think the Tea Party will hurt rather than help the Republican Party in the upcoming elections, 46 percent to 26 percent.
Despite the waning influence and support of the Tea Party, it would be a mistake to write off the Tea Party entirely. The movement is not as weak as the mainstream media would like to claim it is; in fact, inside the Republican Party, the Tea Party is quite strong.
Rasmussen found that 59 percent of Republicans view the movement favorably, and a majority (52 percent) of Republicans thinks the Tea Party will be good for them in the upcoming elections.
Further, the Tea Party is responsible for the energy and enthusiasm within the Republican Party. The movement was the engine inside the Republican Party that precluded the grand bargain last year between House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama.
They moved the Republican Party to the right, pushing Republicans to oppose any tax increases, no matter how many spending cuts are involved.
While this may have negatively affected the opinions of the Tea Party among the electorate at large, 55 percent of Republicans say the Tea Party has made things better for the country during the budget debates.
Republicans see Tea Party voters as the intellectual center of their party as well: 65 percent of Republican voters believe the average Tea Party member has a better grasp on the nation’s problems than the average congressman does.
Despite the limited support among the Tea Party for Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, the Tea Party’s influence can be seen clearly in the primary race thus far.
The movement has pulled Romney and all of the Republican primary candidates far to the right, and has made government spending and reducing the deficit and the debt central issues in the campaign.
Tea Party voters gave Rick Santorum his victory in Iowa and Newt Gingrich his victory in South Carolina. In Iowa, almost two-thirds (64 percent) of caucus-goers described themselves as Tea Party supporters, and Santorum won 29 percent of their vote, with Romney and Ron Paul tied for second with 19 percent each.
In South Carolina, two-thirds said they were Tea Party supporters, and Tea Party voters supported Gingrich over Romney, 64 percent to 45 percent. And while Gingrich lost solidly in Florida, he still received 38 percent of the Tea Party vote, just three points shy of Romney’s 41 percent. Those in Florida who said they strongly support the Tea Party favored Gingrich over Romney by 45 percent to 33 percent.
Thus, it is clear that the Tea Party is the driving force behind the Republican Party. At the same time, the party is widely perceived as too narrow, too limited and too inflexible.
Indeed, Rasmussen found that just 13 percent of all voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement. Even among Republicans, only 23 percent consider themselves Tea Party members.
Furthermore, the Tea Party lacks cohesive leadership, which has hindered the movement’s ability to come together and grow stronger. Instead, the Tea Party itself looks like it is developing factions, as there are groups within the Tea Party fighting with each other.
While the Tea Party’s influence has certainly waned, to count it out and say that it is not critically important would be a mistake, given the makeup of the Republican Party, the position of the presidential candidates, and the positioning of the Republicans in Congress.
The party’s influence on the 2012 elections will likely be mixed, but the movement will continue to shape the Republican Party and the national dialogue past 2012.
Pollster and Democratic political strategist Doug Schoen was a political adviser to President Clinton and more recently co-authored with Scott Rasmussen “Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party movement is fundamentally remaking our two-party system.
