Tim Rutten: This Brew Just Can't Last
[Tim Rutten’s career as a journalist spans more than 30 years at The Times.]
Though the actual voting is still 17 days away, it seems clear that this midterm election cycle will be defined by a surprising presence and a remarkable absence.
The presence, of course, is the "tea party," and what's absent are the social issues that so bitterly divided the electorate in recent campaigns....
The problem, as political analyst and George Mason University professor Bill Schneider has pointed out, is that it's "not just that tea partyers are anti-government.... They are anti-politics. They believe that politics is essentially corrupt — that deal-making and compromise are an abandonment of principle. The tea party is a political fundamentalist movement. Like religious fundamentalists, its members do not tolerate waverers (like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah). They drive out heretics (like Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida). They punish unbelievers (like Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware). And they believe in the total inerrancy of scripture — in this case, the U.S. Constitution as originally written in 1787."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's epoch-changing New Deal coalition survived only so long as its constituent groups agreed not to discuss the one difference between them they could not reconcile — race. When the civil rights movement made that silent, and shabby, accommodation impossible, the coalition shattered.
The tea party's internal contradictions are so numerous, it's difficult to see its coalition of discontent surviving a single Congress.
Read entire article at LA Times
Though the actual voting is still 17 days away, it seems clear that this midterm election cycle will be defined by a surprising presence and a remarkable absence.
The presence, of course, is the "tea party," and what's absent are the social issues that so bitterly divided the electorate in recent campaigns....
The problem, as political analyst and George Mason University professor Bill Schneider has pointed out, is that it's "not just that tea partyers are anti-government.... They are anti-politics. They believe that politics is essentially corrupt — that deal-making and compromise are an abandonment of principle. The tea party is a political fundamentalist movement. Like religious fundamentalists, its members do not tolerate waverers (like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah). They drive out heretics (like Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida). They punish unbelievers (like Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware). And they believe in the total inerrancy of scripture — in this case, the U.S. Constitution as originally written in 1787."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's epoch-changing New Deal coalition survived only so long as its constituent groups agreed not to discuss the one difference between them they could not reconcile — race. When the civil rights movement made that silent, and shabby, accommodation impossible, the coalition shattered.
The tea party's internal contradictions are so numerous, it's difficult to see its coalition of discontent surviving a single Congress.