In order to be successful, populist grassroots movements must have a narrow focus. The antiwar movement of the 1960s, for example, was pretty clear about its mission: End the Vietnam War. Later, other issues would become associated with the movement. Some were related. Others were not.
As long as stopping the war remained the movement’s primary focus, many Americans agreed or at least sympathized with the antiwar efforts. But when the movement began to latch onto other issues — feminism, socialism, class warfare — it muddied the waters and lost the support of Middle America.
The Tea Party began as a movement dedicated to a single purpose: to stop government spending. This populist grassroots movement began as a protest of President George W. Bush’s TARP bailout and gained momentum as President Barack Obama continued to escalate his predecessor’s big-government spending at a breakneck speed.
While the Tea Party had two different wings — one libertarian, the other socially conservative — the Tea Partiers found common cause in reducing the national debt. Some focused on reducing taxes, others the size of government itself. And there were also those who believed that the government should audit the Federal Reserve. But all of these issues were economic. There was a common theme. And as such, the Tea Party was widely popular.
According to 2009 Rasmussen poll, 51 percent of Americans viewed the massive Tax Day protests that happened that year favorably. And then as late as January 2011, the Los Angeles Times offered this factoid: “71 percent of Americans, even many who do not think highly of the ‘Tea Party,’ say it’s important that Republicans should take its positions into account.”
These concerns have only increased over the last two years, not-so-coincidentally in correlation with Washington’s ongoing out-of-control spending. Or as Gallup noted this January: “Americans’ concerns about the federal budget deficit and government dysfunction rose high enough in January to knock unemployment out of the top two slots on Gallup’s ‘most important problem’ list for the first time since 2009.”
Yet the Tea Party brand itself has suffered. A Rasmussen poll this month revealed that “only 30 percent of likely U.S. voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party,” a drastic drop from Gallup’s 70 percent favorable rating just two years ago. Still, the concern over the “federal budget deficit and government dysfunction” — the Tea Party’s original focus — is higher than it has ever been.