What made the Tea Party Movement Effective?

Devon Bowers
Professor Richard Branscomb
English 2010-017
12/13/2016

When taxes are high or there is a large national incident, people will raise awareness
about it by protesting, by demonstrations, or organizing a movement. Hundreds of these events
happen every year, and there are many reasons for making a protest and there are various ways to
raise awareness. Participation can range from a handful of people to tens of thousands, and at
times more than a million spread across many cities. There are some protests that are violent and
some are non-violent. Some protests can come together out of nowhere (also called grassroots
protests) while others are very well organized. Its the goal of every protest to be effective, but
not all of them will be successful. Every protest and demonstration have a purpose, but not all
have clear goals, I think the best way to evaluate the success of a protest is to observe if they
were influential in producing the change they want. We will concentrate on a single protest, the
Tea Party Movement, to evaluate its success in achieving its goals.
The Tea Party Movement was formed because of the financial meltdown in 2008. The
movement didnt begin to form until February 19, 2009, when a CNBC broadcaster by the name
of Rick Santelli made a huge rant about the Obama Administrations foreclosure relief plan on
live television (Skocpol & Williamson 2012). The video circulated through media outlets within
the next 24 hours. The mass media is very important to the tea party movement because [the
mass media] are more centralized and reach large amounts of people (Smith, 2008, P. 2023).
As the movement gained more steam there was a lot of debate about how much influence
the Tea Party movement had on the general public. Marc Ambinder (2010), author of the article
Has the Tea Party Done Anything for the GOP published in the Atlantic Magazine, says that
voters were not entirely persuaded to vote Republican by the Tea Party alone but by other

influences such as Marco Rubio. If the Tea Party did anything, they only assisted or did very
little in the driving force of the midterm elections.
However, a few years down the road in 2013, a debate article in the New York Times
gives us a different perspective. In the debate article What Happened to the Tea Party, Lara M.
Brown (2013), an assistant professor at Villanova University for Political Science says the Tea
Party Movement was a success in that it reaffirmed the Republican Partys values of reduced
spending, balanced budgets and small government (Brown 2013). The Republican Partys goals
has always been about less spending, balanced budgets, and minimizing the activities of the
government.
One of the goals of the tea party was to convince the public to vote for a republican
backed by the tea party, Madestam, Shoag, Veuger, and Yanagizawa-Drott 2013, conducted a
survey that determined that larger protests, like that of the tea party, increased turnout for the
2010 mid-term elections. Their estimate shows that every Tea Party protester corresponds to a
14 vote increase in the number of Republican votes (Madestam, Shoag, Veuger, and
Yanagizawa-Drott 2013). It seems clear in this study that large numbers can equal a large turnout
of voters, and it also means that voting really does matter.
The Tea Party Movement constantly pounded the Republican Party to hold up their
standards. By raising this awareness of smaller government and helping everyone realize the
need for less spending, many citizens voted in favor of the Republican Party. So many
republicans were elected into the House of Representatives that it tipped the balance of power
with a gain of sixty three seats at the mid-term elections in 2010 (Skocpol & Williamson 2012). I

would agree that the Tea Party Movement was largely successful in a way that was able to help
many candidates running for office to win their elections.
The election for the U.S. Senate was a little different, in some areas where there was an
expected win to occur actually ended up in a loss for the Tea Party. The people who ran for the
Senate from Colorado, Nevada, and Delaware each supported the ideals of the Tea Party, but
ultimately failed to win the elections in their state. Many conservative senators say that party
purists like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had foolishly pushed nominees too
conservative to win in politically competitive states (Raju & Martin 2010).
Alan Abramowitz (2010), from Emory University in Political Science, conducted a study
about the Tea Party. He does agree with Raju and Martin about the supposed losses in the three
states. He says the Tea Party Movement poses serious risks for the GOP in areas that are not
solidly Republican by supporting candidates whose views are far to the right of the overall
electorate (Abramowitz 2010). It could be true they were too conservative, I have lived in
Colorado for a little bit myself in recent years, not during the 2010 midterm elections but I know
that the population in Colorado is liberal in comparison to other states like Utah. So I would
agree that because of the candidates ideals were too far right that some of the population decided
to vote against Republican.
I will not conclude that the loss of three state senate seats was such a huge failure on the
Tea Party movement. I will say that it was a small mistake made by them and an unintended
consequence for their actions for wanting a far right government. Some people just dont like the
ideas of their movement. Despite their losses in the senate the Tea Party movement was able to

gain six other state senate seats, six new governorships and about 700 more seats in state
legislatures (Skocpol, Williamson, & Coggin 2012). Had they gained the three seats in the three
state senates it would have been an exact balance of power at fifty percent.
To conclude, based on the accomplishments of the Tea Party, some of their goals were
accomplished in electing candidates with their same ideals and some unintended consequences of
their movement not being able to elect three state senators. I will not say the movement was a
failure based on the loss of three state senate elections, but I would agree that it was a success in
part because they were able to gain, overall, sixty-three seats in the House of Representatives, six
seats in the Senate, and plus hundreds more in other areas of government on county, state, and
national levels. Were it not for the Tea Party Movement, its probable that some elections might
have lost in multiple states then what was lost in Colorado, Nevada, and Delaware. Movements,
protests, and demonstrations are important because when government people and agencies act
beyond their limits of authority, then attention needs to be focused on those problems.

Project Reflection

I became interested in how to make protests effective when Colin Kaepernick protested
during his football games. Im sure Kaepernick thought it was worth a shot to try to raise
awareness about the issues and show his stance on the issues, but I wondered if that was the best
way to show his support. I widened my view to other protests, demonstrations, and movements.
There were some problems initially trying to find sources, at first I was too broad but later on I
was a little too narrow on the issues. Thankfully I was able to find some sources on the issue. I
noticed a lot of news articles talking about the Tea Party Movement and the Occupy Wall Street
Protests. I wanted to make an argument between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, but that
would require more time and work. So I chose to do the Tea Party Movement because I know
they were able to make a difference in the elections and they were not able to achieve all what
they wanted. I wanted to lead the argument in other ways but I did not have enough time to do
so.

References

Abramowitz, A. I. (October 22, 2010). Emory University. Partisan Polarization and the Rise of
the Tea Party Movement. Retrieved from https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=74709509500800201308607301209401109605400700808108802002512200102300
812109507012000603806302201404904000500601000101206610303102301506901800
302409501201100508910300100709502600511911809500001700407603106509806700
1118020105126107072025007116119112066&EXT=pdf
Ambinder, M. (May 28, 2010). Has the Tea Party Done Anything for the GOP? The Atlantic.
Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/has-the-tea-partydone-anything-for-the-gop/57401/
Brown, L. M. (July 12, 2013). The Tea Partys Mission Is Accomplished. The New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/06/20/what-happened-tothe-tea-party/the-tea-partys-mission-is-accomplished
Raju, M. & Martin, J. (11/03/2010). GOP Senators fight over failure. Politico. Retrieved from
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/11/gop-senators-fight-over-failure-044676?o=1
Skocpol, T., Williamson, V., & Coggin, J., (2012). The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop.pdf
Skocpol, T. & Williamson, V. (2012). The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican
Conservatism. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=7NRoAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=tea+party+movement+results
&ots=lJ7O7vezKi&sig=L6DI7y_DIsQLwtmc1DUAtWpW1fY#v=onepage&q&f=falsen

Smith, J. (2008). Social movements for global democracy. JHU Press, 2008. Retrieved from
https://books.google.com/books?id=zuoqfciI3noC&pg=RA1-PA2023&lpg=RA1PA2023&dq=mass+media+are+the+gatekeepers+to+social+movements&source=bl&ots
=NtjCU71XKL&sig=RKNskHYUx_2HonTj08iZsRWNp8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYzfHO4PLQAhUT8mMKHRwkD6MQ6AEILz
AE#v=snippet&q=Because%20they%20are%20more%20centralized%20and
%20reach&f=false