3 reasons why the Tea Party is losing August

Town hall season was supposed to be the anti-immigration fringe's time to shine. What happened?

Rand Paul
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

August 2009 was the month of the Tea Party town hall.

We were just eight months into the Obama presidency, and Democratic congressmen headed home for recess only to get ambushed by mobs chanting their opposition to ObamaCare. As The New York Times reported at the time, "members of Congress have been shouted down, hanged in effigy, and taunted by crowds." The August 2009 town halls certainly created obstacles on the road to health care reform, and in many ways, gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.

Now here we are in August 2013, when some observers thought that Tea Party groups would actually derail the tenuous legislative push for immigration reform. The anti-immigration group NumbersUSA is certainly trying, posting "Town Hall Talking Points" along with lists of congressional events at which to reel them off.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But midway through August, the Tea Party is barely a blip on the national radar. What happened?

1. The anti-immigration Tea Party crowd is being out-crazied

Despite the heroic efforts of Rep. Steve "Cantaloupe Calves" King, the anti-immigration faction of the Tea Party is being crowded out by voices even farther out on the fringe.

The news out of the town halls has featured Oklahoma's "Birther Princess" and a Republican congressman casually musing about impeachment. Outside of the town halls, Republicans are publicly feuding with each other over whether to agitate for a government shutdown and conservative talk radio hosts are expending their energies defending the wisdom of turning a Missouri rodeo into a minstrel show.

The right wing's summer cacophony is muffling the noise of the anti-immigration forces, as well as deepening the Republican image problem among moderates and people of color.

2. The Republican leadership wants no part of Tea Party agitation

For all we know, the Tea Party fizzle may be exactly what the Republican leadership wants. According to Politico, "House Republican leaders have spoken about immigration only when asked during the August recess." That suggests Speaker John Boehner and his allies are looking to lower the temperature, creating a climate that eventually will allow compromise to win the day.

But it's not just the formal Republican leadership that is refusing to join the anti-immigration crusade. Tea Party favorites like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz haven't been leading the anti-immigration parade either, despite their opposition to the bipartisan Senate bill. The Daily Caller's Mickey Kaus lashed out, saying, "If Amnesty Wins, Blame Cruz," as Cruz is siphoning off conservative grassroots energy for his fight against ObamaCare.

The best NumbersUSA could book for its Stop Amnesty tour is Rep. King. A recent rally led by King, held in the congressional district of the second-highest ranking House Republican, attracted a mere 60 people. Meanwhile 1,500 pro-immigration-reform activists held a Wednesday rally in the heavily Latino congressional district of the third-highest ranking House Republican.

3. Republican money is on the other side

The 2009 town hall outbursts were nationally organized in part by conservative groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, which were funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

But the Kochs support immigration reform, as do Karl Rove and 100 other major Republican donors. As of June, pro-immigration groups had outspent opponents more than 3-to-1.

These three factors are connected. Because the anti-immigration squad is so poorly funded and lacking in leadership, it is vulnerable to being marginalized by louder fringe voices and better organized mainstream voices.

The louder the fringe voices become, the stronger the case mainstream Republicans can make to their leaders to accept immigration reform, on

the grounds that the party can't survive if it remains associated with birthers and bigots. At the same time, since the Tea Party can't get the conservative grassroots riled up now, they won't have much of a case to make to incumbent congressmen that they will face fierce primary challenges next year if they agree to a compromise with Democrats.

Score August as a big win for immigration reform.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us

Bill Scher is the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com and the online campaign manager at Campaign for America's Future. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast.