My first consultation after lunch on Friday was Dr. Philomena Poubelle, leader of the Tea Party Institute, a clandestine think-tank headquartered here in Washington. She was turned out in her usual conservative patriot’s ensemble of a red scarf, white blouse and dark blue pantsuit, and shod with a pair of black Mary Janes. “Tom,” she huffed as she primly seated herself on the couch in front of the picture window in my office, “I assume you have seen the latest Gallup Poll?”
“You’re referring,” I assumed in return, “to the one conducted between April 23 and 30, and published on May 7, which shows that public support for the Tea Party has reached an all-time low?”
“What other Gallup Poll,” she fumed, “would I be interested in at the moment? We’re down to twenty-two percent – ten percentage points lower than our peak support in the fourth quarter of 2010!”
“Well,” I pointed out, “public support for the Tea Party has been stuck around twenty-two percent since the middle of last year, so why the sudden consternation?”
“Because,” she barked back, “the fraction of the public who overtly oppose us has risen to thirty percent! That number has been falling since 2011, and now it’s shot back up again! And what’s more disturbing, we keep losing support within the Republican Party. It’s forty-one one percent in this latest poll, down from over sixty percent in 2010. And the fraction of the population who consider us irrelevant has gone from thirty-four percent to forty-eight percent in the same time period. Tom, this means, with a margin of plus or minus three percentage points, it’s entirely possible, at a ninety-five percent level of confidence, that over half the people in the United States no longer contribute an aerial fornication about the Tea Party! Add that to the thirty percent who actually hate and despise us, and we’re outnumbered four to one!”
“Typical third party numbers as far as American politics is concerned,” I noted. “In fact, looked at from that perspective, the Tea Party is doing much better than most third party movements in US history. The Socialists would give their eye teeth, their eldest children and their autographed first editions of Das Kapital for poll numbers like yours.”
“I’ll thank you,” she growled, “not to compare the Tea Party with… with… monsters like them!”
“So, bottom line,” I pressed on, “you’re fighting tooth and nail to escape becoming… dare I say it – irrelevant?”
“Our… situation… could be… expressed in that manner,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Because,” I observed, “it seems that sending a Tea Party politician to the Senate or the House here in Washington tends to turn them into something very closely resembling a mainstream Republican. There’s Mike Lee, for example, who’s taken to sounding like Paul Ryan these days, and your darling, Senator Ted Cruz, now so strangely and inexplicably crooning on and on about the importance of human rights and having a strong foreign policy, to the point where he’s sounding just like John McCain. And then there’s…”
“I know, I know!” Dr. Poubelle interrupted with an irritated tone. “Washington turns Tea Party firebrands into country-club Republican lap dogs practically overnight! That’s just one of many reasons why we need to re-brand!”
“Re-brand?” I dryly responded. “Is that perhaps your reaction to the rush among Republican politicians to distance themselves from the Tea Party label? I notice that lately they have been defining themselves as ‘Reagan’ conservatives, ‘constitutional’ conservatives, ‘rational’ conservatives, ‘fundamental’ conservatives, ‘movement’ conservatives, ‘traditional’ conservatives, ‘full-spectrum’ conservatives… anything, in fact, but ‘Tea Party’ conservatives. Looks like Tea Party identification is becoming about as popular with Congress as mononucleosis at a senior prom.”
“Yeah, that’s about it,” she sighed, “and that’s why I’m here, Tom. What can we do to reverse this awful trend?”
“How about changing your stance on firearms?” I suggested. “It would differentiate you from the mainstream Republicans and might well increase your approval ratings among urban and female demographics. Tea Party candidates could endorse a nationwide ban on concealed handguns while promoting a constitutional amendment legalizing open carry in public, including schools, churches, courthouses and federal buildings. You’d still have that nice, gun-nut edge to your platform, but also a very handy wedge issue for the Republican primaries.”
“Impossible!” she objected. “The Tea Party stands for guns, guns, and more guns – concealed, in the open, on the night table next to the bed, under the Christmas tree, anywhere and everywhere. We love guns, and there’s absolutely no way we’re going to tinker around with the sacred right of all Americans to keep and bear arms as the Founders intended.”
“How about changing your stance on immigration, then?” I proposed. “Nothing sacred in the Constitution about that, now is there? Announce that true, bedrock conservative American values include letting anybody in, just like we used to back when the Founders wrote the Constitution. In essence, that’s the truly Libertarian take on the issue, isn’t it? Renounce xenophobia, and the Tea Party will pick up huge support from the Hispanic and Asian communities.”
“Out of the question!” she shouted. “Have you any idea what that would do to America? We’d end up like… like… Brazil or something!”
“What about the gays, then,” I began, “according to the statistics I’m familiar with, you could pick up five to ten percentage points, easy, just by declaring that, as part of its stand on the protection of privacy and individual freedoms, the Tea Party considers…”
“No queers,” she angrily interjected, “in the Tea Party! Period!”
“Modify your stand on the Federal Reserve System?” I said.
Dr. Poubelle’s hand dipped into her blouse, withdrawing from it a crucifix attached to a silver chain around her neck. “We will never condone the spawn of Satan!” she yelled back at me.
“Denounce black helicopters, UFO conspiracies, climate change denial and Creation Theory?”
“Freedom of thought and opinion is intrinsic to Tea Party philosophy!” she proclaimed. “And we are not about to endorse mere science as a substitute for well-founded rumors, eyewitness testimony, skeptical critique protected by the First Amendment, or the unhindered practice of religion, no matter how miraculous or improbable its canon!”
“Announce a policy of engagement with the Obama administration?” I ventured. “You have successfully obstructed him for six years haven’t you? Certainly that’s long enough to make a political point. Now advertise how obvious it is that you have won, and leverage that demonstration of power by promulgating a list of issues upon which you are willing to… you will pardon the expression… compromise. If the Tea Party were to do that, the shock value alone could generate huge amounts of positive publicity, not to mention remove from you, the stigma of being the progenitors of congressional gridlock, for which many of the voters blame the Tea Party specifically. If you did it quickly enough, it could even turn that crucial Kentucky senate race against Mitch McConnell around completely, and put your man, Matt Bevin…”
“The Tea Party will not sacrifice our principles,” she fulminated, her face turning a shade matching her scarf, “on the altar of political expediency!”
“Have you considered giving up the silly costumes, at least?” I asked. “Those three-corner hats with the tea bags hanging from them, that sort of thing? I mean, some sort of dress code couldn’t hurt; that ridiculous get-up has got to alienate a good ten percent of the population, right there.”
“The Tea Party,” she insisted, “stands just as firmly for crazy outfits as it does for crazy gun policies. If a person wants to dress up like Davey Crockett in a coon skin cap, and picket the White House carrying a loaded Kentucky rifle along with his sign denouncing Obama as a foreign dictator, then the Tea Party says more power to him!”
“Well, in that case,” I continued, “the Tea Party is a grass-roots phenomenon, isn’t it? So why not try a turn in the Populist direction? Do the Democrats one better and come out for an eleven dollar and ten cent minimum wage. You know the mainstream Republicans won’t be able to follow suit on that – they’re all controlled by wealthy business interests that rely on cheap labor for their obscene profits. And there are millions of working poor in this country who would board the Tea Party bandwagon on the basis of that issue alone.”
“The Tea Party,” she steadfastly declared, “stands for individual rights, and that includes the right of individual business owners to pay their workers whatever they want to pay them, and the right of those individual workers to either accept those wages, start their own business and pay what they think is fair, go somewhere else to work, or starve to death.”
“Freedom to starve?” I echoed ironically. “With ideological purity like that, it’s a wonder the Tea Party has any supporters at all.”
“Not really,” she sniffed. “True patriots always value freedom above life itself.”
“Okay, then,” I syllogized, “with an attitude like that, it stands to reason the best recommendation I could make would be the application of reverse psychology.”
“In what way?” she demanded.
“Did you know,” I inquired, “that in very, very upscale fashion boutiques, the sales staff are directed to be as condescending and rude as possible to the customers?”
“I… uh… well, yes,” she acknowledged, “I had noticed that they are rather… haughty and… um… self-important. Once, I even had this salesgirl, she couldn’t have been over twenty-five, I don’t believe, tell me that she didn’t think I could afford an twelve hundred dollar Louis Vuitton handbag!”
“Rude, no doubt about it. Overtly and unabashedly rude and condescending,” I confirmed. “And what did you do?”
“Why, I… ah… well,” she confessed, “I showed her! I walked out of there with a two thousand one hundred and seventy-five dollar Gucci handbag instead!”
“And so,” I assured her, “do many, many other ladies such as yourself. Now, consider for a moment, if the Tea Party developed an attitude – a very exclusive, condescending attitude – about who, in fact, is really patriotic, courageous, virtuous and, essentially, good enough to belong to the Tea Party? What if a person couldn’t claim to be a Tea Party supporter without a membership card, for which they paid a hundred dollars? What if the Tea Party wouldn’t let somebody join unless three current members recommended and approved them? What if there were special, reserved seating at all Tea Party events, right in front of the stage or speakers’ podium, that only members could occupy?”
“Sounds rather… elitist,” she mused.
“Elitist?” I countered, “you bet it’s elitist! But isn’t that what the Tea Party really is – an elite corps of American patriots? And once you realize that about yourselves, and start acting on that premise; once you re-brand the Tea Party as that, people will be lined up around the block to join, because if there’s one thing an American can’t stand, it’s knowing there’s a club somewhere that won’t have them as a member. They simply cannot abide the thought, the very idea that the people in that club think that person doesn’t have what it takes to be one of them. And by God, if it’s the last thing that American does, he or she is going to get into that club. He or she is going become a member and by doing so, show everyone just how worthy, in fact, they actually are. Believe me, people will be flashing fake Tea Party cards and lying to their neighbors about being members while they run around in secret, kissing up to people who actually are members, trying to get three of them to recommend and approve them for a real membership. And guess who will be the very first ones to start beating on the door to get in?”
Dr. Poubelle’s eyes lit up with excitement. “Republican members of Congress!”
“In droves,” I assured her. “The Tea Party will become the ultimate country club, and membership in it will become the sine qua non of conservative bona fides.”
“The sine qua non of conservative bona fides,” she repeated, savoring every word. “I like that. It has lots of Latin in it. Okay, thanks, Tom,” she nodded, extending her hand, “use the rest of this consultation to prepare a white paper on Tea Party re-branding and email it to me. We’ll use it to kick off a brainstorming session at the Institute first thing tomorrow morning.”
“My pleasure,” I told her. “After all, where would American politics be without you?”