Part 2 (2/2)

But when governmental specifics come into view, it is a different story. Queried about whether there is ”anything they like” about government, our interviewees were, at first, genuinely startled: ”I did not see that one coming,” quipped one person. Shaken from their typical talking points, Tea Partiers often answered in ideologically ”off message” ways. One woman loves the national parks (seemingly oblivious that GOP Tea Partiers in Congress were about to slash funding for them); another spoke of the importance of public health care for children through Medicaid (another kind of funding on the GOP chopping block); and still another woman remarked that when she went to Was.h.i.+ngton DC to protest ObamaCare, she was impressed by the beauty and grandeur of the government buildings. They made her feel proud as an American!

Small examples aside, Tea Partiers are not opposed to all kinds of regulation or big tax-supported spending. Rank-and-file Tea Party partic.i.p.ants evaluate regulations and spending very differently, depending on who or what is regulated, and depending on the kinds of people who benefit from various kinds of public spending. Contrary to pundits like Noonan who imagine Tea Party pa.s.sions as a fresh departure, we find them to be updated versions of long-standing populist conservative ideas. At the gra.s.s roots, Tea Partiers want government to get out of the way of business. Yet at the same time, virtually all want government to police immigrants. And the numerous social conservatives in Tea Party ranks want authorities to enforce their conception of traditional moral norms. More telling still, almost all Tea Partiers favor generous social benefits for Americans who ”earn” them; yet in an era of rising federal deficits, they are very concerned about being stuck with the tax tab to pay for ”unearned” ent.i.tlements handed out to unworthy categories of people.

The Purposes of Government Regulation.

When fifty members of the Jefferson Area Tea Party in Charlottesville, Virginia, gathered in February 2011 to discuss their priorities for coming months, ambivalence about government regulation was on full display. People mocked business regulations and zoning rules, citing the example of a local fast-food franchise owner who was required to change the colors used in his business signs. Charlottesville Patriots talked about keeping a wary eye out for new state or national regulatory legislation, and discussed possibilities for running candidates for local boards in order to block or roll back regulations on enterprises and homeowners. Our observations around the country reinforce what we saw in Charlottesville: Tea Partiers are p.r.i.c.kly about any use of government regulations to limit the pure autonomy of businesses and owners of private property.

From time to time, journalists suggest that Tea Partiers are just as skeptical of big business or business abuses as they are of government.17 But there is little evidence of this. Tea Partiers speak of corruption in government and in labor unions they see as closely tied to government and the Democratic Party.18 Business, by contrast, is idealized as a free-market, entrepreneurial force. More than one Tea Partier we spoke to told us they thought of themselves as ”proud capitalists,” and of course many are small business people. Like other conservatives, Tea Party members perceive small business owners and potential entrepreneurs as in the same boat with the wealthiest of corporate CEOs. They often project small business irritations about rules and taxes onto business in general. We heard occasional scorn about Wall Street or wasteful business practices but no calls for government regulations to set things right. Tea Party members resist any and all suggestions that the financial sector or other businesses need to be subject to regulation in the public interest. The market, left unhampered, will resolve any unfairnesses, in the Tea Party estimation.

But in the same Charlottesville meeting where typical Tea Party antipathies toward government regulation were aired, members took a very different view of the use of government powers to police disfavored groups with whom they do not identify. Speaking with visible emotion, one man insisted that local police should start checking the immigration status of everyone they encounter, including people pulled over for routine traffic violations. The local police had told him they could not afford to do this, that it would bust their limited budget, but the man said he didn't care, and urged the group to support a new law to force action. When it comes to law enforcement, Tea Party members support strong governmental authority, even at the expense of budgetary constraint.

Concern about illegal immigration is widespread in Tea Party circles, and draconian remedies are in vogue. In a national survey, a whopping 82% of Tea Party supporters said that illegal immigration is a ”very serious” problem (compared to 60% of Americans overall, including the Tea Party supporters combined with all others).19 Sealing America's border with Mexico and dealing with Latin immigrants are prime challenges for the nation to tackle, as Tea Partiers see it. A Tea Party b.u.mper sticker boldfaces ”LAW & BORDER” on top of a U.S. flag background. One Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party member said that after reading the latest immigration news on the conservative blog Red State, she felt like she wanted to ”stand on the border with a gun.” And a Virginia Tea Party member described in considerable detail a joking proposal to curb unauthorized immigration. Americans, he suggested, could be paid by the government a flat fee for every rattlesnake caught, which could then be gathered together and dropped en ma.s.se along the southern border. Jokes aside, it is clear that, when it comes to controlling immigration, Tea Partiers endorse a heavy-handed government response.

Another regulatory crackdown also evoked a wave of approval in Charlottesville-more than any other matter mentioned in the entire two-hour meeting. The a.s.sembled Charlottesville Tea Partiers were visibly elated when one woman brought up a just-enacted Virginia law that requires abortion clinics to operate as if they were full-fledged hospitals. The law may force the closure of up to two-thirds of these clinics, which offer an array of reproductive services to a largely poor and minority clientele, because the facilities are small, underfunded operations that cannot afford to widen hallways and hire additional staff. To the same group that had just decried rules for businesses, death-by-pettifogging regulation for women's health clinics sounded just fine, indeed morally necessary.

Tea Party support for government regulation of marriage and childbearing is certainly not limited to Charlottesville. Although the Tea Party includes a significant portion of libertarians who think differently, Tea Partiers are more likely than Americans in general to oppose legal recognition of gay marriages or civil unions. About two-thirds of all Americans favor one or another of those forms of recognition, but less than half of Tea Party supporters do-and 40% of them advocate ”no legal recognition” of any kind.20 Tea Party att.i.tudes on abortion rights are similarly skewed. Whereas a 58% majority of all Americans approve of the decision of the Supreme Court to establish a ”Const.i.tutional right for women to obtain legal abortions in this country,” only 40% of Tea Partiers approve of that court decision and 53% consider it a ”bad thing.”21 As these national survey results show, many Tea Partiers fervently believe that government regulation and authority should be used to embody and enforce their understandings of traditional ”family values,” even as they grumble about regulatory ”tyranny” toward business people and homeowners.

No wonder Tea Party heroes include politicians such as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who makes a big deal about opposing gay rights and doing all he can to wield rulings and legal interpretations against abortion providers. Relatively secular Virginia Tea Partiers may not cheer on such doings by Cuccinelli, but they probably stay quiet in deference to the heartfelt feelings of the social conservatives who sit beside them in meetings.22 To cover all right-wing bases, the Virginia Attorney General offers just as much red meat to Tea Partiers who place higher (or sole) priority on gutting or blocking government regulation of businesses. Cuccinelli is at the forefront of the Tea Party war against ObamaCare as a supposed threat to the ”Const.i.tutional liberties” of citizens. And he is also on the warpath against university scientists in Virginia who dare to suggest that global climate change is a real threat; the Tea Party-oriented Virginia Attorney General thinks nothing of using government powers to demand their emails.23 Ken Cuccinelli is, overall, the perfect embodiment of the Tea Party att.i.tude toward government regulation: regulations are good to hara.s.s my enemies and enforce my values, policy preferences, and preferred definitions of American social ident.i.ty; but regulations are bad for the kinds of businesses and endeavors me and mine are engaged in. This stance is certainly not new. For generations, conservatives in the United States have supported strong restrictions on social behavior they consider threatening while opposing regulation of business pursuits they perceive as vital to America's prosperity.24

Public Spending-for the Deserving.

Tea Partiers are thought to be even more exercised about ”big government” taxes and spending than about regulatory impositions on business and personal freedom. But here again, their views turn out to be complex, ambiguous, and not so different from longtime conservative stands on public social provision. Most Americans, including conservatives, value public benefits they feel are earned by upstanding citizens, but conservatives are less willing than other Americans to countenance public spending on the ”undeserving.”

We confess to having felt skeptical from the start that Tea Partiers opposed major U.S. ent.i.tlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the obvious demographic facts of Tea Party life. The contradictions between Tea Party ideology and the personal reliance of Tea Party members on government a.s.sistance were very much on display at the February 2011 meeting of the Charlottesville Tea Party. More than an hour into the supper gathering, after the group had discussed priorities, the speaker for the evening arrived-a flamboyant, pony-tailed, right-wing radio talk-show host named Joe Thomas, who came after the end of his regular local broadcast. Thomas is clearly a very popular figure among Charlottesville area conservatives. Partway through his riveting remarks, he commented on the possibility that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives might shut down the federal government to demand drastic cuts in federal spending in its budgetary war against Obama and the Democrats. ”I almost hope the government shuts down,” Thomas said. The sun would ”rise the next day,” you would ”kiss your wife,” and we would all ”have to get on with it.” Thomas is middle-aged, but he was speaking to a room full of elderly Tea Partiers, of whom many were regularly cas.h.i.+ng Social Security checks, or soon would. Quite a few of his listeners were also enjoying tax-subsidized health care from Medicare or from programs for U.S. military veterans and retirees. Yet Thomas's claim that a federal shutdown would be of no consequence evoked not so much as a peep from anyone in the room.25 The irony was clear to an outside observer, because most of Thomas's listeners would surely feel the effects of a federal shutdown quickly and significantly.

How can Tea Party members simultaneously benefit from the biggest taxpayer supported domestic social programs, and yet be so fiercely determined to slash taxes and federal spending? Some observers have suggested that Tea Partiers don't know that they benefit from government programs, citing a Tea Party sign reading ”keep the government's hands off my Medicare.” But we found no evidence of such naivete. Tea Party people know that Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' programs are government-managed, expensive, and funded with taxes. It is just that they distinguish these programs, which they feel recipients have ”earned,” from other social benefits, which they feel unnecessarily run up expenses, or might run up public costs in the future-placing a burden on hardworking taxpayers to make payments to freeloaders who have not earned public support. Much of the Tea Party brouhaha about the ”federal budget deficit” is a preemptive strike against funding for unworthy programs and recipients, not a call for cutting off spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security that currently benefit people like them. According to the April 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll, about half of Tea Party supporters say someone in their household receives Medicare or Social Security benefits, and 62% of Tea Party supporters believe these programs are ”worth the costs ... for taxpayers.”26 In part, this conviction comes from recognition of their own need and the need of others in their social orbit. As Arizona retiree Stella Fisher told us, ”You don't take Social Security from someone when that's what they live on.” Medicare is ”in everyone's estate planning” explained Virginian John Patterson. But there is also a strong sense among Tea Party people that they have earned these social protections through lifetimes of hard work. As a Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party activist, Nancy Bates, explained in a typical remark, ”I've been working since I was 16 years old, and I do feel like I should someday reap the benefit. I'm not looking for a handout. I'm looking for a pay out of what I paid into.” Social Security and Medicare are seen as acceptable government expenses because benefits go to those who have contributed to the system. As Virginia Tea Partier James Rand explained, ”I use the VA [Veterans' Administration health care], which I am ent.i.tled to. I earned it. I also pay for my Medicare/Medicaid and the [prescription drug] supplement. This is a collective ent.i.ty except I have the right to choose [the doctor] who I go to or don't go to.... As far as SS [Social Security] is concerned I started paying into it in 1954 ... so I have paid a very large sum....”27 Nor do Tea Partiers apply a const.i.tutional test. They are sure that Obama's Affordable Care Act is unconst.i.tutional but elide this standard for their own ent.i.tlements. Virginian Ben Jones, who is ”getting Social Security now,” acknowledges that ”Social Security and Medicare are interesting because ... neither of those are in the Const.i.tution.... How do you add those things up?” He left the question hanging and moved on. Others we spoke with engaged in no such ruminations. Only one Tea Party member out of dozens we engaged in interviews, meetings, and through questionnaires said that when she becomes eligible in a few years, she might not enroll in Social Security and Medicare. This would be in part out of ideological principle, explained Virginian Mandy Hewes-and anyway, she loves her work as office manager in her family business and has no intention of retiring at all. Mandy also pushed aside the thought that tax breaks in the new Affordable Care law could help her business afford health insurance. She knew the details, and explained that she prefers a tax-advantaged Medical Savings Account to cover routine costs while bearing the risk of paying for a major illness herself.

Mandy aside, not a single gra.s.sroots Tea Party supporter we encountered argued for privatization of Social Security or Medicare along the lines being pushed by ultra-free-market politicians like Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) and advocacy groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. Even Timothy Manor, a Virginia man who calls Social Security a ”Ponzi scheme,” noted that the Bush plan for the privatization of Social Security, which he supported at the time, would have been disastrous for seniors in this economy. Arizonan Larry Fisher believes there is almost nothing done by government that the private sector cannot do better. But when pressed on Social Security, he stops short and gropes for a halfway point; he might privatize the administration, he tentatively suggests, but not the funds themselves.

When Tea Partiers expressed concerns to us about Social Security and Medicare, they focused on how to keep the programs solvent, even if additional taxes might be needed. Not surprisingly for regular consumers of Fox News, a number of the people with whom we spoke worry about imminent bankruptcy for beloved programs. Bonnie Sims, the Virginia private duty nurse in her early sixties we introduced at the start of this chapter, not only told us about the dread of her 92-year-old patient that ”ObamaCare” will abolish Medicare; Bonnie also revealed her own sense of ”betrayal” that Social Security will not be available when she retires in a few years. In truth, even with no reform at all, Social Security is fully solvent for decades.28 But Bonnie believes that DC politicians have stolen the money. ”Social Security was supposed to have been there for us. When did they start borrowing against it?” she asks.

If Social Security and Medicare run short of funds, what to do? A few Tea Partiers volunteered that they would be willing to entertain cuts to their own benefits. James Morrow explained that ”as a Social Security recipient,” he would not mind ”taking a ten percent cut. That would help the system tremendously, if it stayed in the Social Security fund.” Virginia physician Ellen Zinn took a surprisingly progressive approach, suggesting that cuts be aimed at the ”upper income brackets.” She offered that she ”would not mind a tax increase to try to get the country right again.” Only occasionally did we hear comments such as those of Arizona Tea Party activist Peggy Lawrence, who thought that older people who had already paid into Social Security should be protected, while ”younger people” should shoulder cuts if necessary.

Indeed, broad surveys show that Tea Party supporters, like the vast majority of all Americans, prefer new revenues to sustain Social Security over the long haul. An especially pointed question on this matter was asked in January 2011 by Public Policy Polling.29 ”Currently,” the poll explained to its nationally representative sample, ”workers pay social security payroll taxes on up to $106,800 of their salary. To ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, would you rather have people pay social security taxes on salaries above $106,800, or would you rather see benefits cut and the retirement age increased to age 69?” The results were overwhelming: 77% of all Americans wanted the payroll tax increase, and only 10% supported cuts and an increase in the retirement age. But the most eye-catching result was for avowed Tea Party supporters. Two-thirds of them support increasing the payroll tax to sustain Social Security, just like most of their fellow citizens. Only a fifth of Tea Partiers support benefit cuts and increasing the retirement age. Similar findings pertain in surveys asking about cuts to Medicare versus tax increases on the rich as tradeoffs for reducing U.S. budget deficits: Americans in general strongly prefer tax increases for the rich and fervently oppose cuts in Medicare; Tea Party supporters hold the same positions by only slightly smaller margins.30 Very similar results appeared in an unusually detailed February 2011 survey of the large proportion of South Dakota registered voters who claim to strongly or somewhat support the Tea Party.31 South Dakota supporters of the Tea Party, like all others, are mostly older white Republicans. Forty-three percent of them reported that members of their households currently benefit from Social Security; and 31% said that family members currently benefit from Medicare (with 11% indicating receipt of veterans' health benefits). But the margins of support for major U.S. social ent.i.tlements outran the numbers who are currently directly benefiting. Fully 83% of South Dakota Tea Party supporters said they would prefer to ”leave alone” or ”increase” Social Security benefits, while 78% opposed cuts to Medicare prescription drug coverage, and 79% opposed cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and hospitals (a big issue in rural areas where such health providers, if underpaid, may not be available to elderly patients). The South Dakota poll did not ask specific questions about new revenues for Social Security and Medicare, but 56% of the Tea Party supporters surveyed did express support for ”raising income taxes by 5% for everyone whose income is over a million dollars a year.”32 So much for the notion that Tea Partiers are all little d.i.c.k Armeys. When it comes to sustaining existing, well-loved social programs like Social Security and Medicare-programs that go to Americans like themselves who are perceived to have ”earned” the benefits-Tea Party people put their money where their affection is. They are just like other Americans in their willingness to contribute the payroll taxes it will take to sustain Social Security, one of the biggest and most effective parts of U.S. social spending. Support for Medicare is also strong among Tea Party supporters, as among all Americans, though the long-term fiscal solutions are not as easy as the fix for Social Security. Clearly, however, slas.h.i.+ng the program itself is not going to go over well with Tea Party people. The ultra-ideological politicians and advocates who push privatization of beloved contributory ent.i.tlements are not registering demands from gra.s.sroots Tea Partiers. Like other Americans, Tea Partiers love the parts of government they recognize as offering legitimate benefits to citizens who have earned them.33 Tea Party support for social benefits and the revenues to pay for them goes beyond Social Security and Medicare. Bonnie Sims does not equivocate when it comes to what military veterans have earned: ”I think they ought to be given the best.” Mandy Hewes, says, ”I don't think our soldiers make enough money. I wouldn't want to espouse anything that would cause our service people to feel it.” Of course, some Tea Party partic.i.p.ants are themselves benefiting from military and veterans' programs, and we met and talked with some of them in all the states we visited. Many of the men are Vietnam-era combat veterans who receive military pensions and government-sponsored health care, either through the government-run Department of Veterans Affairs hospital system, or through the government-funded TRICARE insurance program for military retirees. They feel very comfortable taking these benefits. In South Dakota as well, 57% of Tea Party supporters reported having immediate family members who were either active or veteran members of the military, National Guard, or military reserve-and, not surprisingly, 96% want to sustain or increase veterans' benefits.34 Tea Party events often include some kind of recognition of the troops serving overseas. For example, the 2010 Tea Party Express bus tour featured a Gold Star mother, Debbie Lee,35 whose son, Navy SEAL Marc Lee, had died in combat in Iraq. However, in our in-depth interviews we did not find Tea Party support for America's men and women in uniform to be a function either of unalloyed hawkishness or of uncritical support for any and all defense spending. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provoked diverse and nuanced views both for and against continuing U.S. military engagement. Fiscal concerns were cited by some as a reason for pulling back (from Afghanistan, in particular), yet the rationale was also that the United States should not be trying to remake other countries. We heard only a little about the overall military budget-which, even excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has increased by 80% in the decade since 2000, reaching about $530 billion in 2010.36 Only one Tea Partier, a former military contractor, spoke caustically about wastefulness in defense contracts.

Workers versus Freeloaders.

Compared to the huge chunks devoted to Social Security, health programs, and defense programs, only a tiny wedge of the federal budget pie goes for varieties of a.s.sistance for the poor that most people lump together under the label ”welfare.” The best-known welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was replaced during the Clinton presidency with a block grant to the states that left eligibility and spending decisions largely in the hands of governors and state legislatures. The basic block grant, Transitional a.s.sistance for Needy Families, or TANF, costs $16 billion annually, a fraction of a percent of total federal spending.37 Nonetheless, welfare spending is still a subject of much concern for Tea Party members. If Tea Partiers resemble most other Americans in holding Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits in high regard, they take a harsher stance toward public aid for the needy.

Rarely did we hear a Tea Partier speak positively about a program aimed at helping low-income people. In one unusual instance, a Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party member, Michael Pierce, volunteered that he had been ”brought up on welfare.” A retired police officer, Michael did not express any shame in this childhood reliance on public a.s.sistance because, after all, he ”had to work [his] way out.” But Michael's experience with welfare as a stepping-stone stands in sharp contrast to the more typical Tea Party view, articulated by former social worker Sandra Asimov, who explained, ”I differentiate between ent.i.tlements and welfare.”38 She and others like her paid into legitimate ent.i.tlements, Sandra believes, but welfare recipients have not earned what they receive. Ben Jones described welfare recipients as ”generation after generation of people on the public dole.” Reminded of the Clinton welfare reform, which imposed a five-year lifetime limit on federal welfare receipt, Ben was certain that ”loopholes” continued to riddle the program, and that it required more oversight. Because of the support they have received from the government, people on welfare simply do not have the motivation to work, he concluded. ”They just don't know any better.”

Another Virginia interviewee, John Patterson, spoke with emotion about the disgust felt by his son, who works at Walmart, when people on welfare arrive at the beginning of each month to buy things with their benefit cards. John seemed especially upset that people on public a.s.sistance were able to act just like any credit-card holder, rather than being set apart as people who were spending without earning their pay. A well-marked distinction between workers and nonworkers-between productive citizens and the freeloaders-is central to the Tea Party worldview and conception of America. As Tea Partiers see it, only through hard work can one earn access both to a good income and to honorable public benefits.

Above all, Tea Party activists see themselves as productive members of society. Given that many in the Tea Party are retirees, productive work need not entail current employment. It can mean a lifetime of productive employment before retirement (or, in the case of the smattering of students who partic.i.p.ate in Tea Party groups, it might mean preparation for a lifetime of employment). When we asked our interviewees to tell us about themselves and what brought them to the Tea Party, people often launched into a narrative of their lives as workers. ”My husband and I worked for everything that we got,” says Bonnie. Sharon Little's self-description is similar: ”I'm almost 66 years old and I'm still working.” Linda Gordon calls herself and her husband ”blue-collar working-cla.s.s people” who have ”had to work very hard.” Stanley Ames tells us that, ”to some extent, you make your own luck. We worked hard.” Others offer more specifics about how they have contributed to the country. For instance, men like Vietnam veterans Ben Jones and James Morrow, and Navy retiree Timothy Manor, immediately identify themselves with reference to their military service. Others mention civic contributions as well as employment as they recount their life stories. The specific melodies vary, but the basic tune remains: Tea Party members establish themselves as worthy Americans in terms of the contributions they have made-and contrast themselves to other categories of people who have not worked to make their way in society and thus do not deserve taxpayer funded support.

This moral social geography, rather than any abstract commitment to free-market principles, underlies Tea Party fervor to slash or eliminate categories of public benefits seen as going to unworthy people who are ”free-loading” on the public sector. For Tea Party people, it is illegitimate to use taxes and public spending to redistribute wealth from productive taxpayers like themselves to people who have not earned their way. ”You are not ENt.i.tLED To What I have EARNED,” declares one Tea Party b.u.mper sticker. Another maintains that ”YOUR 'FAIR SHARE' is NOT IN MY WALLET!” ”I am not rich,” explains James Rand, ”but I am working hard to get there, and when I do, I would prefer that the moocher cla.s.s not live off my hard work.”39 ”Mooching” is indeed the key notion at work here. Even though most Tea Party supporters are more comfortably situated than the bulk of other Americans, they feel put upon by the governmental process-and see themselves as losing out to others profiting unfairly from government spending. ”People no longer have to work for what they earn,” Michael Pierce tells us, while fellow Bay State resident Steven Clark stresses that, ”we shouldn't be paying for other people that don't work.” In Tea Party ideology, redistribution transfers money from the industrious to the lazy, a process that is fundamentally unethical and un-American. As Stanley Ames explains, ”redistribution of wealth is not the answer. What you do is earn your place.” Instead of punis.h.i.+ng the successful, according to a catchphrase that appeared on Tea Party signs at rallies across the country, the government should ”Redistribute My Work Ethic.” Because they lack the work ethic of more successful Americans, purported freeloaders are understood to have corrupted government programs-which, in turn, place an unfair burden on productive taxpayers. ”Keep Working,” says a caustic Tea Party b.u.mper sticker. ”Millions on Welfare Depend on You!”

Not only do Tea Party partic.i.p.ants think that public a.s.sistance for lower-income Americans is more expensive and open-ended than it is, they are also angry about huge new handouts like ObamaCare and other expanded benefits for younger, less privileged Americans championed by President Obama and legislated by Democrats in 2010. In part, Tea Party fears are overwrought and misplaced because most of them fall into income categories that have enjoyed tax cuts under President Obama, not tax increases. But it is also true that even the slightest federal efforts to give additional social support to non-elderly Americans are likely to exacerbate generational and cla.s.s fears about who gets what, and who pays. By the end of the twentieth century U.S. social programs were profoundly generationally imbalanced: generous for retired elderly Americans, but very spotty for working-age families, whose retirement and health benefits have also been shrinking in the private economy. When Obama and the Democrats arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton DC in 2009 determined to lighten the tax burden on most middle- and lower-income Americans, while providing additional federal support for students to attend college and for families to obtain health insurance, there were bound to be generational tensions. Older Americans already ”had theirs,” so to speak, and might not be so happy to see others helped, especially if there had to be trims to Medicare or slightly higher taxes on higher income people. Tea Party outbursts, as well as GOP campaign slogans, readily fanned the fires of generational resentment.40 In this vein, the Tea Partiers' a.s.sessments of the redistributive effects of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 are not entirely off the mark. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has dubbed the law one of the most redistributive and equality-promoting major pieces of legislation in decades, precisely because it promises generous new public subsidies to help make health insurance affordable for lower- and lower-middle-income Americans, mainly adults and children in younger working families, while the revenues to pay for the new subsidies are slated to come primarily from new fees on health care businesses and from slightly increased taxes on wealthy Medicare recipients and high-income earners.41 As older, relatively economically comfortable white Americans, a fair proportion of Tea Partiers are in the ranks of those who may pay slightly more-and others imagine they could be. And for what? To s.h.i.+ft social support to a younger generation of Americans, about whom Tea Partiers are often deeply suspicious.

SOCIAL FEARS IN A CHANGING SOCIETY.

Leaving aside general hostility to redistribution, can we hone in on which types of people, exactly, Tea Partiers believe are freeloaders? Who are the less productive, less successful ”moochers” to whom wealth should not be redistributed via government programs? We listened carefully for the ways in which Tea Party people talked about the unworthy and, when appropriate, we asked directly who they thought were receiving government benefits unfairly. Most seemed surprised by the question, as if the cla.s.ses of freeloaders in American society should be obvious to any observer. Their responses usually took the form of anecdotes, often invoking immigrants or young people. Among the younger freeloaders, interestingly, were ”black sheep” relatives whose failings in elder eyes provoked broader generational observations.

Racism in White, Black, and Brown.

As we listened to our Tea Party interlocutors talk about undeserving people collecting welfare benefits, racially laden group stereotypes certainly did float in and out of the interviews, even when people never mentioned African-Americans directly. Racial overtones were unmistakable, for instance, when a Virginia Tea Partier told us that a ”plantation mentality” was keeping ”some people” on welfare. These kinds of racially insensitive comments made in person were only a very faint echo of the racial slurs that appear rarely but persistently at Tea Party rallies across the country, including in signs with racial epithets and signs equating the presidency of Barack Obama to ”white slavery.”42 A sense of ”us versus them” along racial and ethnic fault lines clearly marks the worldview of many people active in the Tea Party, although raw expressions of this outlook tend to occur in public political contexts more than in discussions or interviews.

At least one scholarly study suggests that problematic racial a.s.sumptions are widely held by Tea Party supporters.43 In a survey conducted in seven states by scholars at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton, Tea Party supporters tended to rate blacks and Latinos as less hardworking, less intelligent, and less trustworthy than did other respondents. Tea Partiers' views of minorities were even more extreme than other avowed conservatives and Republicans. Statistically, conservative Republicans tend to agree more than do nonconservatives with statements such as ”if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” but Tea Party supporters are even more likely than other conservatives to believe that racial minorities are held back by their own personal failings. It is important to note that, compared to other Americans, Tea Partiers rate whites relatively poorly on these characteristics, too. Tea Partiers have negative views about all of their fellow citizens; it is just that they make extra-jaundiced a.s.sessments of the work ethic of racial and ethnic minorities.44 Gra.s.sroots activists are very aware of the charges of racism leveled at the Tea Party, and they are quick to point out evidence to the contrary. Tea Party members avidly come to hear fiery black preachers and other black conservatives on the lecture circuit. When some Tea Party attendees say or do overtly racist things on occasion, organizers and leaders try hard to eliminate such lapses. At various planning meetings, several Ma.s.sachusetts Tea Party members raised concerns that outsiders might ”infiltrate” their protests with racist or otherwise inappropriate signs in order to make local activists look bad.45 Worries about racist interlopers were not limited to Ma.s.sachusetts; other Tea Party websites have posted guidelines about how to cope with such a situation. Tea Party members we spoke to were very concerned to a.s.sure us that they held no animosity toward black people.

By contrast, fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims were commonly expressed. This kind of prejudice was not invoked to talk about freeloaders or public spending but about terrorism and cultural change-even when the people being discussed were American citizens. Bonnie, for instance, said she had been hearing stories about ”the Islamics wanting to take over the country.” An Arizona Tea Party seminar on Islam was advertised as a way to ”learn about the mindset of Muslims who follow these teachings and how the Islamic movement in our country has been affecting laws, culture, workplace, and teachings in our schools.” The seminar advertis.e.m.e.nt suggested that partic.i.p.ants ”START asking the t

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