Teaism

I have been reading about the Tea Party Movement, and trying to understand the principles of the extreme right.  The problem is, I find it difficult to identify any unifying principles underlying extreme right-wing positions.  They say they oppose big government spending, yet they have supported the largest buildup in military spending in our history, a buildup that is responsible more than any bank bailouts for record national debt.  They want the government not to interfere with their lives, yet they support anti-libertarian legislation like the Arizona immigration law.  They want the federal courts to enforce their right to bear arms, but they want the same courts to deny a woman's right not to bear children.  They say they are pro-life, but support the death penalty.  They complain that our judiciary is anti-majoritarian, yet seek to impose a minority agenda on national policy.

I am not criticizing all of these positions, and indeed I respect several of them.  But I suspect that the contradictions in the so-called conservative philosophies of today's right-wing movements reveal that these movements are not conservative at all.  That is, they do not rely on any coherent theory of the role of government, but are based instead on a laundry list of objectives they want government to serve.  When the objectives are best served by a strong central government, they promote it, and when they are best served by weak government, they promote that.

One of the problems with this unprincipled approach is that more mainstream conservatives who recognize it find it difficult to support.  The more vocal these extremist movements become, the more difficult the choice presented to Republican politicians.  They either must go along with the vocal minority, thereby risking alienation of more centrist swing voters, or choose not to go along, thereby losing much of their "conservative" base.  Witness John McCain, who proclaimed himself a maverick when he thought it would help him win a national election, and now says he never was a maverick when his Senate seat is challenged by persons further to his right.

The Tea Party Movement and other right-wing initiatives are succeeding in moving the Republican Party further to the right.  While doing so may bring about some short-term gains, it likely will diminish the party's effectiveness long-term and relegate it to a fringe that will not be able to attract critical independent voters in national elections.  And while all the shouting is going on, no one on the right seems to recognize that our supposedly liberal President is working very hard at governing from the middle, an approach that, in the long run, can only strengthen the Democratic Party.  Maybe what we are witnessing is an overall rightward shift in both parties, one that favors the party that, by shifting right, will wind up closer to the middle.  And the best long-run strategy for Republican leaders may be to swim against the rising tide before it is too late.