Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has unveiled his long and in-depth plan to take down the Tea Party — but it isn’t going to work.
Why? Because Schumer fundamentally misunderstands the grassroots movement.
During a speech at the Center for American Progress on Thursday, the New York Democrat gave a strategy for Democrats to exploit what he sees as the biggest chink in the armor of the Tea Party: the divide between the powerful and the average man.
“The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite, plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants,” he told the audience.
Schumer said that the power structure of the Right-wing movement — namely Rush Limbaugh and Fox News — seeks to tear down government, making it into a “boogeyman” for all societal ills, while the ordinary Tea Party follower actually wants more government.
He provided an anecdote of a Tea Party heckler who was upset with the government for cutting his pension, drawing the conclusion that the man was representative of the movement as a whole.
“He was actually angry because government wasn’t doing enough for him,” Schumer said. “He actually wanted a stronger government, not a weaker one.”
In response to the anti-government rhetoric pushed by the “plutocrats,” the Senator recommended that Democrats go on the offensive and demonstrate ways that the government helps average people — such as raising the minimum wage and helping young people pay for college. Schumer said that the majority of Americans, including Tea Party members, support a minimum wage increase.
“The best way to deal with the Tea Party’s obsessive anti-government mania is to confront it directly, by showing the people the need for government to help them out of their morass,” he said.
But the point that Schumer misses is this: the Tea Party isn’t actually pushing anarchy, but merely stricter limitations on a morbidly obese federal government.
TeaParty.org lists 15 core beliefs of the movement, not one of which is abolishing the government. Instead, the website says that “government must be downsized.” Another website, TeaPartyPatriots, org, pushes “constitutionally limited government.”
Members of the Tea Party strongly advocate for the Constitution, the document on which the United States government was primarily built. They understand the need for some form of government in order to protect the freedoms that they might be unable to protect on their own. But they revolt against excessive spending and overreaching regulations.
Schumer argued that the Democrats must convince Tea Party members that government is “helpful, if not a necessity.” Yet if he’s using that for the basis of his anti-Tea Party crusade, he isn’t going to get very far. They already believe that government is helpful and necessary.
They — ordinary men, Fox News and Limbaugh alike — just don’t believe that government needs to control and regulate everything.
