The seeds of the Republican Party’s success in Tuesday’s election were planted by Tea Party activists who emerged to rouse an electorate disillusioned by politics as usual in Washington, pessimistic about the direction America is heading and fearful about an economy mired in a slump that threatens to deflate the American dream.
The historic wave that swept Democrats into office in 2006 and 2008, and which President Barack Obama rode into the White House with a message of hope and change, was overturned by voters who gave Republicans 239-184 seat edge the United States House of Representatives and reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate. Republicans gained in races across the county in the biggest shift of power in more than 60 years.
All the talk of long-term realignment that accompanied President Obama’s win now appears misguided. The message from this electoral cycle is that Americans are no longer loyal to any brand in politics and the country is entering a phase where movements, founded by frustrated voters who use social networking tools to organize and spread their message, can take the lead every two years.
Among those who suddenly found themselves politically active for the first time was David Kirkham, owner of Kirkham Motorsports, which builds replicas of vintage cars that sell from $100,000 to up to $1 million.
Mr. Kirkham’s story is one that refutes the early images of Tea Party activists as extremists and even bigots. In fact, exit polls from Tuesday’s races indicated that four in ten Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party, showing that the movement has broader support among the American populace than previously believed. In the days leading up to Tuesday’s elections, Mr. Kirkham, 43, a married father of four, spent as many as 10 hours a day on Tea Party business in Utah. Coincidentally, he operated much like the progressives who helped President Obama into office.
Mr. Kirkham and his ideological opposites both represent a Web-assisted, do-it-yourself brand of activism that is likely to steer American politics along a wild course in the years ahead. Every activist has a journey, and Mr. Kirkham’s begins in Mielec, Poland, a factory town south of Warsaw. Mr. Kirkham was restoring vintage cars in the mid-1990s, when he got a look at an aluminum-bodied,
Web Populists to Keep Buffeting U.S. Politics
Polish-made fighter jet left over from the cold war. Soon, Mr. Kirkham was on his way across the ocean, armed with a Polish-English dictionary and pictures of the car he wanted to manufacture. What he saw in Poland, he will tell you, affected him deeply. Some of the world’s most skilled craftsmen sat idle all day. This is what happens, Mr. Kirkham thought, when the state controls the economy. Politics wasn’t part of his life back then.
But the Republican-led bank bailouts in 2008, followed by President Obama’s first acts in office, changed that. We are heading down the path of Poland, Mr. Kirkham thought. ‘ Feeling sick and powerless, he found the blogs. Mr. Kirkham read about Tea Party rallies .
When it seemed that no one else was going to post a date and time for a Utah rally, Mr. Kirkham did it himself. “I thought no one would be there,” he recalls. “I thought I was going to be laughed at.” In fact, 100 people showed up. Within weeks, Mr. Kirkham found himself instructing other Tea Party members on how the Republican caucuses worked. Ideology, of course, presents an unbridgeable chasm between Tea Partiers like Mr. Kirkham and the progressives.
But both movements were made possible by the Internet revolution. Blogs and social media foster an instant connection, letting like-minded ideologues coordinate from a laptop or an iPhone .
Second, these activists are products of a do-it-yourself culture - the Internet-age notion that expertise in most things, once the province of a select few, is now just a few clicks away. Another common thread is that both movements are as much about community as they are about governance. Perhaps, then, the recent uprisings on both ends of the ideological spectrum shouldn’t be viewed as opposing trends, but rather as points on the same cultural continuum.
And this may mean that we have to rethink our notions of how grass-roots movements affect our politics. What we are seeing now might better be described as a series of mini-movements. They come together quickly, anointing leaders overnight and reaching peak intensity within weeks or months.
But it’s possible that the very speed and ease with which these movements rise up also make them, in the end, more ephemeral and less transformative. Such mini-movements are easily quieted by a cathartic election like the one in 2008 .
Mr. Kirkham and other Tea Party leaders are already moving easily among the Republican elite they once disdained. Now that Republicans control the House, will Mr. Kirkham still spend so many of his waking hours agitating for libertarian policies - Perhaps we should expect the liberal bloggers of 2006 and the Tea Partiers of 2010 to be eclipsed in the years ahead by other grassroots insurrections.
For politicians, the implications of this new world are unsettling, as they look for a way to withstand the battering from one side and then another.
MATT BAI/ESSAY
