The definition of a Kinsley gaffe—when a politician speaks the truth—is one of those contributions to the political discourse so brilliant it’s almost ridiculous. Its progenitor, Michael Kinsley, has earned my envy and marvel on that score at least.
That instance of stellar insight is rare; even for Michael Kinsley if his recent attempt to cut down the Tea Party movement is any indication.
The main thrust of Kinsley’s consideration of the movement (cutely titled “My Country, Tis of Me”) is the comparison (credited by Kinsley to the unbearably elitist and ideologically peripatetic David Brooks) to the progressive upheaval of the 1960s.
[A]lthough the 1960s ultimately spread their tentacles throughout the culture and around the world, politically there was just one big issue: ending the war in Vietnam. No such issue unites the Tea Party Patriots. You might guess from some of their materials on the Web that the repeal of health-care reform is the TPPs’ Vietnam, their towering cause. But even for devoted TPPs, stripping health insurance away from people who’ve just gotten it is unlikely to summon the same passions that the activists of the 1960s brought to stopping a misguided war. Not only do TPPs not have one big issue like Vietnam—they disagree about many of their smaller issues. What unites them is a more abstract resentment, an intensity of feeling rather than any concrete complaint or goal.
To this very day Kinsley remains in awe of the anti-war movement’s definitive and clear organizing principle of ending the war in Vietnam, and raps the Tea Party movement for its dissimilar lack of a singular unifying policy goal. Firstly, Kinsley’s contention is highly suspect and not at all obvious. When the history of this era is written, it may well be said that the Troubled Asset Relief Program acted as the impetus of the fervor of Tea Party activism. It was the TARP program—with its lack of accountability, monstrous price tag, and subsequent departure from the law’s statute in appropriating its funds—that most recently claimed the scalp of Utah’s Bob Bennett and propelled anti-establishment figures like Rand Paul of Kentucky to prominence.
However, there is something to Kinsley’s notion that Tea Party people are mostly animated by “abstract resentment,” but I wouldn’t count that as a defect. To the extent frustrated voters are unable to clearly delineate the exact origin of and solution to the problems that ail them is a problem of the profoundly confusing times we live in. Simply put, you don’t have to a noted pundit to necessarily grasp the enormity, detachment, and misplaced ownership of our government, and be as hell about it.
The truly interesting part of Kinsley’s attempted smackdown is where he, like most establishment liberals that approach this populist object of their condescension, tries to project the movement’s lasting impact. Can you guess where he ends up?
The antiwar movement also worked, sort of. As did the civil-rights movement that preceded it. Antiwar protests ultimately turned the establishment itself against the war, though extracting us from it still took years. By contrast, the Tea Party Patriots, I predict, are just the flavor of the month: the kind of story that the media are incapable of not exaggerating. The antiwar movement and the 1960s changed America in numerous ways forever. The Tea Party Patriots will be an answer on Jeopardy or a crossword-puzzle clue.
With the very real exception of a small corner of boring hacks in the White House, everyone acknowledges—if begrudgingly—that Republicans on the cusp on something big in this year’s midterm elections.
Lest there be any doubt, any success the Republican Party finds in November is to be accrued to the Tea Party movement. The national Republicans, that feckless, miserable band of losers, were down and seemingly out not long ago. After the last presidential election, it had just lost the Commonwealth of Virginia to an inexperienced, polarizing black candidate—just to provide a view of how dire the situation was. It was the Tea Party protests that disrupted the conventional wisdom of the halcyon first days of the Obama realignment, and irrevocably changed the trajectory of American politics as a result.
Kinsley is careful not to wantonly toss around accusations of racism, and he continues to speak, convincingly, to some of the inner contradictions of the movement. To be sure, Tea Partiers are right to oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats but we must be very clear as to why. As a self-described left-wing Tea Party person, I believe we have much to fear from the “Big Government” of Obama but we must also guard against blanket reactionary hostility to the safety net itself. Medicare, that program we often see seasoned Tea Partiers defending, was implemented in spite of anti-government idolaters who bow at the altar of the mystical “free market.”
Conversely, Michael Kinsley and that entire pathetic crowd of liberal sycophants must understand what we’re dealing with in terms of the modern Democratic Party. What we have is mostly a collection of Wall Street liberals, reflexive statists, radical “environmentalists,” and other noxious malcontents that came together recently and eviscerated Medicare (to the tune of $500,000,000,000) in the service of a newly-minted corporatist health-care program.
Would it be too much to ask for Kinsley liberals to have a fuckin’ clue? For once? Ask not.
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