Washington, July 4 (IANS) Taking a cue from the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773, a new Tea Party movement that mocks at President Barack Obama’s ‘hopey-changey stuff’ is pitching conservatives like Indian American Nikki ‘Randhawa’ Haley, who is poised to become South Carolina governor, at the forefront of American politics.
If American colonists dumped tea into Boston harbour to protest against British-imposed taxes, their present-day imitators mailed tea bags to Congress last year to create a ‘buzz and pop’ against the corporate bailout and the stimulus bill signed by Obama to beat the recession.
Evoking images, slogans and themes from the American Revolution, such as tri-corner hats and yellow Gadsden ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags and ‘Taxed Enough Already’ (T-E-A) acronym, the movement a year later has emerged as a force to reckon with in US politics.
With Haley, 38, and many other candidates backed by the movement prevailing in several Republican primaries, poll watchers have started gauging its potential impact on the November elections with the Democrats facing the midterm blues.
With the backing of tea party activists and Sarah Palin, Nimrata ‘Nikki’ Randhawa, born in a Sikh family, brushed aside allegations of marital infidelity and an ethnic slur to win the Republican nomination to run for governor in South Carolina. And by most accounts she is poised to win.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, herself has emerged as the top horse in PoliticalDerby.com’s 2012 Power Rankings of horses that will vie for the Republican nomination to challenge Obama in 2012.
Haley and other Palin-backed candidates have cleaned up in the spring primary season and her appearances at Tea Party rallies generate more ‘buzz and pop than Justin Beiber on a Red Bull binge,’ as the Derby put it.
The political website cited a Palin remark at the Tea Party Convention earlier this year – ‘How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?’ — alluding to Obama’s ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ slogans in the 2008 presidential poll, to sum up her rise to the top of its Derby rankings among Republicans.
But the movement appears to have limited appeal among Democrats. As a new Gallup poll suggests, there is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans.
Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene. While Tea Party supporters are not universal in their backing of Republican candidates, they skew heavily in that direction.
About 80 percent of Tea Party supporters say they will vote for the Republican candidate in their district, slightly lower than the projected 95 percent Republican vote among conservative Republicans.
This suggests that the potential impact of the Tea Party on Republican chances of winning in congressional and senatorial races in November — even if supporters turn out in record numbers — may be slightly less than would be expected.
‘The Tea Party movement has received considerable news coverage this year, in large part because it appears to represent a new and potentially powerful force on the American political scene,’ wrote Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport in his analysis of the poll.
‘Whether Tea Party supporters are a voting segment that is unique and distinct from the more traditional Republican conservative base, however, appears questionable,’ he said.
Come November, would the Tea Party thus make waves and shake up the White House or just end up as a tepid storm in a teacup? Only the ballot boxes would tell!
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
