Meet the new tea party, same as the old tea party

Meet the new tea party, same as the old tea party

Opinion by 

Greg Sargent

Columnist

July 14, 2021|Updated today at 11:37 a.m. EDT

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, left, and Lauren Boebert. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)

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Has a new version of the tea party unleashed itself on our politics?

In recent weeks, as Republicans and right-wing personalities have ramped up the vaccine derangement, the attacks on critical race theory and the whitewashing of the insurrection, it’s become clear that we’re witnessing a virulent new version of the movement that arose amid the last Democratic presidency.

Both mobilized the grass roots with crackpot conspiracy theories, racial dog whistles and apocalyptic depictions of the impending liberal destruction of the American life.

But still another similarity deserves more attention. Just as before, the new tea partyism is functioning as a kind of front-line energizing force that could help enable a series of GOP donor-class and plutocratic interests to grind the current progressive economic moment to a halt.

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Senate Democrats just announced a deal on a $3.5 trillion spending target for “human infrastructure” in the reconciliation bill. Though details are scarce and there’s a long way to go, passage is now more plausible.

With a $579 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill and $2 trillion in spending from the covid-19 relief package, we could be looking at expenditures in the multiple trillions. The possibilities for progressive economic transformation appear vast.

But behind all the right-wing culture-warring you can see a right-wing economic countermobilization against this progressive momentum that looks a lot like the one arrayed behind the tea party in 2010.

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Case in point: Conservative groups are now organizing against an effort to beef up IRS enforcement to go after tax avoidance, largely by the wealthy and corporations. This is a key progressive provision to help fund the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

This effort to prevent the IRS from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats is being sold in language that echoes the lurid lunacy of the Obama years.

Back then, right-wing media constantly hyped “scandals” involving the IRS. This time, opponents are referencing some of those same “scandals” and painting a similarly dire picture of jackbooted IRS thugs invading the finances of ordinary Americans.

And in almost comically perfect symmetry, here’s Grover Norquist — who famously wanted to drown government in the bathtub — vowing to make this a huge vulnerability in the midterms, while employing the same old tea party golden oldies:

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“If you put your fingerprints on ‘audit more,’ everyone who gets audited, fairly or unfairly, is going to think, ‘You did this to me.’ Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon.”

Once again, “antitax activism” functions as a smokescreen for other interests. To be fair, this time the interests are a bit scrambled: Business groups do want an infrastructure bill, and may tolerate this as a pay-for.

But the core idea behind this new proposal is that the budgetary underfunding of IRS enforcement has enabled corporations and the wealthy to get away with years and years of tax avoidance, because they have the resources to exploit that underenforcement.

That’s why we’ve seen a sharp drop in auditing of corporations and the rich. Blocking this proposal would help preserve this status quo.

On another front, Punchbowl News reports that GOP donors are lining up in the expectation of a House GOP takeover. McCarthy just announced a monster new fundraising total for House GOP candidates.

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To be fair, much of this appears fueled by small donors. But as Punchbowl flatly declares, “GOP donors are giving to McCarthy like he could be speaker in 2023.” The GOP donor class clearly sees the possibility of a restoration here, or at least a check on the progressive agenda.

McCarthy has carefully avoided going too far in alienating hard rightists in his caucus. Members such as Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) face little censure for vaccine derangement, depicting the opposition as existential threats and downplaying the insurrection.

All this — along with attacks on critical race theory — plainly serves to energize the base in service of that restoration sought by GOP donors and other right-wing economic interests to block the progressive advance.

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Meanwhile, the advancing of the reconciliation measure will usher in a huge debate about President Biden’s proposed progressive tax changes for the bill. This may include raising corporate tax rates to at least 25 percent, a minimum tax on corporations that pay almost nothing, and efforts to crack down on multinationals sheltering profits abroad.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) isn’t merely denouncing these ideas as a “red line” that Republicans cannot cross. He’s also insisting the ideas underlying them are “socialist.” And Republicans are telegraphing a 2022 campaign attacking House Democrats for an alleged “socialist agenda.”

For the old tea party, the lurid claims of impending destruction of the American way of life bled effortlessly into charges of socialism about Barack Obama’s economic policies — in that case, a government expansion of health insurance that conservatives once championed. In practice, the energized base meant a House GOP takeover — and a check on progressivism that led to years of grueling austerity.

The same is happening again. The charges of “Marxism” and “socialism” are being hurled at both the right’s new cultural bugaboos and at Democratic economic policies. The same blend of pathological fearmongering could again energize the base in a way that could enable right-wing economic interests to stage a check on economic progress.

Meet the new tea party, same as the old tea party.