The Revolution is a Tea Party

Election Day is approaching in the U.S. The country’s deficit, debts, trade balance and social security system are poisoned pills for the state’s financial structure and are a real cause for global concern. So, what should we be looking for in the election results?

Foremost is whether the Democratic majority will be transformed into a Republican one. There are many indications that in the Senate, the Democrats’ hold on power will hang by a thread, while the Republicans seem set to prevail in the House of Representatives. News coverage is abuzz with speculation about a close election.

Yet, it feels as if all of this doesn’t matter. When the GOP last governed in Congress, the economy was mismanaged in a style typical of politicians. Since then, the triumvirate of Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid, have taken irresponsibility to new heights: a negligent stimulus package, expensive and misdirected health care reform, unrealistic energy proposals and a failure to address problems in the pension system. These have made a bad situation worse.

Does it matter, then, who wins?

It is here, that the tea party movement enters the picture. The Democrats call members of the movement xenophobic extremists. The GOP describes them as populist crackpots. Streaks of these elements do run through the movement, but given that 20 million Americans are sympathizers; it is hardly surprising that collectively, they do not fit into a neat little ideological box. Of course, nutcases will be found in a grassroots movement without a platform, leadership or centre. Of course, the establishment will assert that these nuts define the movement.

Another picture shows that ordinary Americans want to take responsibility for the country’s economy. They realize that serious measures are demanded and that the main parties are incapable of carrying through on uncomfortable decisions. Accordingly, the people have selected their own candidates, who often trounce those put forward by the elite establishment. Meanwhile, the GOP’s leadership continues to deem these grassroots candidates so detached from reality that they are unelectable.

The GOP message to the little people — let us take care of the things you don’t understand.

The little people’s answer — well, you haven’t done such a great job so far.

It is too early to write a tea party accolade. There is a risk that the movement’s clear focus will slide into cheap simplifications of what is actually a complex reality, and worse, that this approach will spread to other policy areas like immigration and foreign politics.

There really are no reasonable grounds, however, to believe that the political class is, in essence, more judicious, capable or wise than the people. The open-ended question is whether it is only the tea party movement that is capable of effectively channeling the vision and attitudes which underlie the efforts of the people. Should the movement succeed, we will witness the beginning of yet another chapter in U.S. history with a familiar theme: when the nation is in crisis, its people come to the rescue.

The amount of federal aid a senator or congressman could funnel into the pockets of the electorate has long been the measure of success in Washington D.C. Now, in more and more localities in the U.S., nominees are boasting the opposite — that they refuse to take the dough. It’s not a bad start.

It may only be in the 2012 presidential elections that we’ll see where it ends.