--- description: A populist movement underestimated by both parties has shown that it's here to stay title: The Tea Party's Triumph image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ca54005058a7789/698a448186f68e44b76f3332/360_wteaparty_0815.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [U.S.](/section/us/) # The Tea Party's Triumph by [Michael Crowley](/author/michael-crowley/) Aug 15, 2011 4:00 AM CUT  Daryl Peveto / LUCEO by [Michael Crowley](/author/michael-crowley/) Aug 15, 2011 4:00 AM CUT American politics may have changed forever this summer when the conservative members of Congress who are aligned with the Tea Party rejected dire warnings that failure to raise the debt limit would rock global markets and cut off Social Security payments to senior citizens. No, it wouldn’t, the Tea Party replied, everything would be just fine. “We cannot go on scaring the American people,” Michele Bachmann complained in July. She urged Barack Obama to “tell the truth” about the consequences of default. When House Speaker John Boehner agreed with Obama about the possible risks, he was called a dupe. “I would encourage the Speaker not to believe the President anymore,” groused Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, a member of the House Tea Party caucus. “Quit believing the President when he uses these scare tactics.” Never mind that the Federal Reserve chairman was also sounding the alarm. [(See the life and times of John Boehner.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2029088,00.html "undefined") “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” the Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan liked to say, “but not to their own facts.” Yet now that the debt crisis has passed, it is clear that Moynihan’s adage is no longer true. The Tea Party movement has proved not only that people can have their own facts but also that they can use them to vast tactical advantage, crashing through the taboos of political convention and changing the game along the way. It has also proved that in a democracy, a minority can rule quite effectively, thank you. In January, Senate majority leader Harry Reid predicted that the Tea Party would soon “disappear.” Now, having pushed Reid’s party into a deal few people would have thought possible a few months ago — trillions in spending cuts, possibly with no new taxes — the Tea Party is more convinced than ever that its facts and its tactics are the right ones. And its influence is hardly waning — something Reid is the first to admit. The Tea Party’s sway in Congress, Reid lamented as the Senate approved the debt deal on Aug. 2, “has been very, very disconcerting … it stopped us from arriving at a conclusion much earlier.” [(See portraits of the Tea Party movement.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1964781,00.html "undefined") Barack Obama has long promised a post-partisan environment in the capital. But he never imagined that a minority of Americans would come to play such an outsize role in the public conversation. Polls may show that Americans overwhelmingly want more compromise in Washington, but the Tea Party’s leaders — and the roughly 25% of Americans who consider themselves Tea Party supporters — are primed for more confrontation. The debt fight, believe it or not, is probably just the beginning. **The Tao of Tea** It is a stark measure of how dramatically the American political landscape has shifted that the people who pushed hardest for spending cuts typically voted against the final deal. Why? It failed the purity test, a key necessity in the Tea Party book of virtues. South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint said that the deal “puts America at risk and does nothing to solve our spending crisis,” warning that the U.S. is “just tapping the brakes” as it hurtles toward a fiscal cliff. Tea Partyers in Congress wanted much bigger and faster cuts, especially to entitlement programs, enforced by a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution — even though passage of such a measure by a Democratic Senate was about as likely as Obama sporting a Bachmann for President pin. (One Tea Party caucus member actually sponsored a bill to lower the debt limit.) [See the 10 greatest speeches of all time.](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841228%5F1841749,00.html "undefined") One reason the rebels wanted more is that they don’t trust Washington to cut anything. It is an article of faith in Tea Party circles that Washington and Wall Street are in bed together, colluding for power and profit at the expense of the little guy. Indeed, for some Tea Party activists, the summer of 2011 has been all too reminiscent of the fall of 2008, when the movement truly took root. After the financial world crashed, Washington insisted that a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banks was necessary to avert a depression. To the Tea Party, however, this was yet another scare tactic to justify transferring taxpayer money to the bankers who helped cause the mess in the first place. “How many times are we going to let them use the armageddon tactic against us?” a Tea Party blogger in Richmond, Va., wrote at the peak of the debt-limit fight. “It’s always about stealing something from us, isn’t it? … They spend the money in order to cement their power over me. Why should I buy into that?” [(See five economists’ take on the debt debate.)](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2086781%5F2086783,00.html "undefined") More and more don’t. That’s what makes the Tea Party the most formidable political force since the antiwar left exploded in the 1960s. The movement’s activist base — whose numbers are difficult to pin down but may number in the tens of thousands — is motivated by the core belief that government has grown much too big and expensive, undermining the Constitution and individual liberty, and invariably does more harm than good. What’s distinctive about the movement is the way its adherents treat longtime political verities as hokum, a series of myths foisted on the public by the ruling class with the aid of the “lamestream” media. In Tea Party doctrine, both major parties are complicit with an elite Washington — New York establishment that lies to the public to cover for policies that enrich the wealthy and strengthen the powerful. Take Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan. Ample research shows that tax cuts and government spending during a downturn can restore growth, making up for lost economic activity of households and businesses, while big spending cuts only compound the problem, leading to even slower growth. This idea is at the core of the economic theory propounded by British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas are taught in most major university economics departments. But many Tea Party leaders call Keynesian theory nonsense, supporting data be damned. Rush Limbaugh, who has emerged as a key Tea Party cheerleader, defined the Keynesian approach in 2010 as a “massive redistribution of wealth, the lie that government spending, deficit spending, can propel economic growth.” Iowa Congressman Steve King, who calls Obama “a Keynesian economist on steroids,” says the U.S. needs a President who “understands the free-market economy.” With that sort of attitude, it’s no wonder that Tea Partyers dismiss fears that sudden spending cuts will further delay an economic recovery. [(See pictures of Tea Party souvenirs.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2027419,00.html "undefined") To be sure, it didn’t help the Keynesian cause that the stimulus didn’t supercharge the job market. Many economists might say that it wasn’t well-designed or that it was too small or that joblessness would have been much worse without it. But to Limbaugh and his fellow travelers, the whole thing was simply a lie. Much the same goes for the bailouts of the automobile, banking and insurance giants. Those steps may have saved entire industries — not to mention the U.S. economy — and most of the money has now been repaid to the Treasury. But Tea Partyers saw Washington handing over taxpayer money to benefit powerful unions and wealthy bankers who would return the favor in future elections, while Main Street continued to struggle on its own. Or consider climate change: Democrats agree with a strong scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gases are heating the planet with potentially catastrophic consequences. Tea Partyers think that’s a bunch of hot air. A New York Times/CBS News poll last fall showed that 14% of Tea Partyers believe global warming is currently having an effect, while 49% of the general public does. Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, not only disbelieves the scientific basis for global warming but has also suggested the theory amounts to an effort to end capitalism. [See pictures of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1976201,00.html "undefined") That may be a little paranoid. But even paranoiacs occasionally have some facts on their side. For example, even when it looked like a deal might not happen, the stock market didn’t panic as Administration aides warned it might. In fact the market dropped a few hundred points in the days after it became clear that a deal would emerge — proving to the hard-core Tea drinkers just how inadequate the deal was. And there certainly is truth to the idea that Wall Street’s money buys outsize influence in Washington. Tea Party bloggers scoffed in disgust this spring when Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, moved almost directly into a job with the banking giant Citigroup. That affirmed the view of the Tea Party that the only minority hijacking America is a small sliver of the political elite and their corporate-titan allies. [(See 50 defining moments in Obama’s career.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2086549,00.html "undefined") **A New Political Order?** The movement has its ugly side, but there is no gainsaying its clout. As of April, 45% of those who identified with the Tea Party believed Obama was born in a foreign country. That was before he released his birth certificate, but that move only underscored the movement’s growing power. Meanwhile, the Tea Party’s success has already pushed Democrats’ backs to the wall, first in last fall’s elections and then in congressional skirmishing. To listen to Democrats now is to appreciate how bewildered they are by a rival force that some, like Reid, may have been too quick to dismiss. “It just seems that when there are facts that everyone else agrees on, they just say no,” Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer says. But the Tea Party poses a huge threat to Republicans as well. Already, the GOP’s business base, while applauding the rebels’ fierce opposition to new taxes, parts company with the movement’s willingness to play games with the debt limit and defund the government. Much of that despised federal spending, after all, fuels good old-fashioned U.S. businesses in the form of procurement and service contracts. (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported the 2009 Obama stimulus.) These two wings of the party aligned through the debt fight, but when the time comes next fall to take a hard look at tax loopholes and other spending, that unity may not last. [(See pictures of Republican memorabilia.)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1896652,00.html "undefined") Some fault lines are already breaking through the surface. When Tea Party Republicans held out in the final days for their prized balanced-budget amendment, the Wall Street Journal editorial page mocked them as hobbits battling Mordor. “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees,” the Journal wrote. The analysis rang true with some senior Republicans, including the party’s 2008 nominee, John McCain, who gleefully quoted the editorial on the Senate floor. But few in McCain’s party are ready to express their fears openly about what course to take in the Tea Party era. Nearly all the GOP’s major 2012 presidential candidates came out against the final budget deal on the grounds that it was, well, weak tea. (The exception: Jon Huntsman, who has positioned himself as a Tea-free moderate.) That may be good politics in a Republican primary where Tea Party activists in states like Iowa and South Carolina have huge influence. Party elders worry it could make the eventual nominee look like the pawn of radicals and far less appealing to the moderate center. And that could be the saving grace in the Tea Party’s rise for a beleaguered Barack Obama. The President, too, seemed unprepared for the movement’s sway over a debt debate that drove him far from his original negotiating position. For Obama, the policy implications of the Tea Party’s power are brutal. But if the President can appear to be holding the middle ground against a far-right fringe, he may have a formula for re-election despite a bad economy. Not that the Tea Party agrees. Michele Bachmann has already declared Obama “a one-term President.” To some that’s speculation. To her, it’s a simple fact. [See pictures of Gabrielle Giffords’ appearance at the debt-limit vote.](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2086445,00.html "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6640121/the-tea-partys-triumph/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6640121/the-tea-partys-triumph/"},"headline":"The Tea Party's Triumph","datePublished":"2011-08-15T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T15:59:21.596Z","description":"A populist movement underestimated by both parties has shown that it's here to stay","url":"https://time.com/archive/6640121/the-tea-partys-triumph/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ca54005058a7789/698a448186f68e44b76f3332/360_wteaparty_0815.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michael Crowley","url":"https://time.com/author/michael-crowley/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ca54005058a7789/698a448186f68e44b76f3332/360_wteaparty_0815.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_wteaparty_0815.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Daryl Peveto / LUCEO","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6640121/the-tea-partys-triumph/","name":"The Tea Party's Triumph"}}]}] ```