Reading the tea leaves : the Tea Party movement, the conservative establishment and the collapse of climate change legislation

[摘要] The Tea Party movement, which derives its name and revolutionary zeal from the 1773 Boston Tea Party anti-tax protest, emerged in response to the Obama Administration;;s economic stimulus package and later coalesced around opposition to universal health care, union collective bargaining rights, and raising the debt ceiling. In a less visible fashion, however, the movement has also set its sights on another target-environmental regulation. In fact, the Tea Party played an important but little-noticed role in preventing the passage of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. Tea Party campaigns against the Senate;;s American Power Act 2010, or Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill, pressured Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to withdraw support for the bill, demonized the cap-and- trade approach to regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and reinvigorated skepticism about climate-change science. A closer examination of these campaigns reveals that the Tea Party is motivated by an antiregulatory ethos, rooted in response to anti-New Deal liberalism and anti- Communism, that is not marginal or extreme, but consistent with that of the Republican Party. The uprising is, therefore, a manifestation of the conservative establishment;;s rightward shift-a move propelled by a network of entrenched free-market advocacy groups, think tanks, charitable foundations, industry interests, and mainstream conservative media. This dynamic conservative network-defined by the unique role of Koch Industries and the climate change ;;denial machine;;-has largely enabled the Tea Party;;s success. The future of the Tea Party is uncertain and several factors suggest that the wave of populist fervor may have crested. However, even if protests subside, the Tea Party;;s antiregulatory ethos is likely to endure as part of the Republican Party;;s increasing conservatism.

[发布机构] Massachusetts Institute of Technology