logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Tea Party: Disparate and Powerful

Rick Cohen
October 26, 2010
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

October 24, 2010; Source: Washington Post | Having just completed a three-part series on the Tea Party as a social movement (read Part I, Part II, and Part III), we were struck by the Washington Post‘s article based on interviews with hundreds of local voluntary Tea Party groups that the Tea Party “is not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the electoral process.”

The Post discovered that the Tea Party groups may be much smaller in number than the 2,300 listed by the Tea Party Patriots—more in the order of 1,400—and most are tiny, without money, and not particularly engaged in the political process. We aren’t surprised that the Post wasn’t able to scrounge up hundreds of the Tea Party groups listed by the Patriots. If you check the Patriots website, many of the groups are listed with their membership totals—scads of them in the low end of single digits.

The Tea Party reality is that a handful of people having a coffee or drink and complaining about “socialist” Obama and Pelosi could decide, “Hey, let’s call ourselves a Tea Party organization!” (Or a 912 group or any of the other typical nomenclature that the various Tea Party Patriots groups use.) The money behind the Tea Party isn’t in these coffee (or tea) klatsch gatherings, but in the national organizations such as FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Express, which can capitalize on the Tea Party sentiment even if many of the actual organizations don’t have a lot of juice.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Does the disparate nature of their political and social beliefs and their lack of a leader relegate them to less than a movement? No. In this hyper-connected Internet age, political life is speeded up. The Tea Party, such as it is, only popped up less than two years ago, originating in a televised rant against the government’s attempts to help people brought low by the subprime mortgage crisis. To have reached the stage of the infrastructure that we described in our review of the headless, leaderless Tea Party movement in such a short period of time is not to be sniffed at, even if some of the Tea Party groups don’t have much oomph.

Watch what happens after the elections. As it always happens, as the nation gets closer to Election Day, the polling gaps are narrowing. If the Tea Party candidates in the end fail to upend as many “Obama socialists” as they imagine they could have, let’s see what the next stage of evolution might be for the unorthodox, speeded up political movement.—Rick Cohen

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
About the author
Rick Cohen

Rick joined NPQ in 2006, after almost eight years as the executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Before that he played various roles as a community worker and advisor to others doing community work. He also worked in government. Cohen pursued investigative and analytical articles, advocated for increased philanthropic giving and access for disenfranchised constituencies, and promoted increased philanthropic and nonprofit accountability.

More about: Nonprofit NewsOrganizational culture and its driversPolitics

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

Spring-2023-sidebar-subscribe
You might also like
The Nonprofit Sector and Social Change: A Conversation between Cyndi Suarez and Claire Dunning
Claire Dunning and Cyndi Suarez
Nonprofits as Battlegrounds for Democracy
Cyndi Suarez
What Did California Miss with Its Recent Slashing of a Key Solar Incentive?
Maria Stamas
The Best Elections Money Can Buy
Steve Dubb
Puerto Rico: The Critical Role of Information and the Nonprofit Sector in Disaster Living
Cyndi Suarez
Justice Beyond the Polls: Investing in Black Youth Organizers
Carmel Pryor

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
The book "Nonprofit Neighborhoods" leaning against a wall
The Nonprofit Sector and Social Change: A Conversation...
Claire Dunning and Cyndi Suarez
Nonprofits as Battlegrounds for Democracy
Cyndi Suarez
Asian man in black suit jacket and striped pants, facing towards a wall, leaning his head against the wall.
What Did California Miss with Its Recent Slashing of a Key...
Maria Stamas

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

NPQ-Spring-2023-cover

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.