The Ash Twins Blog

David Barstow at the New York Times recently published a great article on the “Tea Party” movement. One of the interesting things, which might just be a product of Barstow’s reporting choices, is that elderly women are some of the most important activists in the movement:

As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama.

“I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm. . . .

He felt compelled to do something, so he decided to start a chapter of Mr. Beck’s 9/12 Project. He reserved a room at a pizza parlor for a Glenn Beck viewing party and posted the event on Craigslist. “We had 110 people there,” Mr. Stevens said. He recalled looking around the room and thinking, “All these people — they agree with me.”

Leah Southwell’s turning point came when she stumbled on Mr. Paul’s speeches on YouTube. (“He blew me away.”) Until recently, Mrs. Southwell was in the top 1 percent of all Mary Kay sales representatives, with a company car and a frenetic corporate life. “I knew zero about the Constitution,” Mrs. Southwell confessed. Today, when asked about her commitment to the uprising, she recites a line from the Declaration of Independence, a Tea Party favorite: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” . . .

[Tea Party author Richard Mack] said he has found audiences everywhere struggling to make sense of why they were wiped out last year. These audiences, he said, are far more receptive to critiques once dismissed as paranoia. It is no longer considered all that radical, he said, to portray the Federal Reserve as a plaything of the big banks — a point the Birch Society, among others, has argued for decades.

People are more willing, he said, to imagine a government that would lock up political opponents, or ration health care with “death panels,” or fake global warming. And if global warming is a fraud, is it so crazy to wonder about a president’s birth certificate?

“People just do not trust any of this,” Mr. Mack said. “It’s not just the fringe people anymore. These are just ordinary people — teachers, bankers, housewives.” . . .

A popular T-shirt at Tea Party rallies reads, “Proud Right-Wing Extremist.” . . .

[66-year-old Tea Party organizer Pam] Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

A lot of the anger in the Tea Party movement stems from the mass political voicelessness imposed by the two-party political system. The Republicans and Democrats are often in agreement on issues that many people have highly divergent views about. Meanwhile, voting for a third-party candidate often helps the mainstream candidate that is farther away from you ideologically. I have a limited knowledge of the history in this area, but it seems like right-wing third-party movements have been more successful and durable in American politics. This phenomenon is counterintuitive to the extent that  right-wing attitudes are associated with authoritarian attitudes, which would predict support among right-wing individuals for the extant political hierarchy.