I mentioned this via email to a friend yesterday, but let me toss it out in public for comments too. Here’s the question: how long will the tea party movement last?
My take on the tea partiers is that they’re basically a 21st century version of the Birchers of the 60s. Except that where the Birchers had to rely on mimeograph machines to get out their message, the tea partiers have Fox News and the internet. At first glance, this is nothing but bad news: the Birchers were bad enough as it was, so just think what kind of damage they could have done with modern communications technology.
But maybe not! Being limited to flyers and PTA meetings might have slowed the rise of the Birchers, but it also made them a fairly long-lived movement. The tea parties, conversely, skyrocketed to fame in just a few months. And we all know what happens to novelty acts that skyrocket to fame: most of them plummet back to earth within a year or two. We just get bored too quickly these days, and the media moves on to new things. So it’s possible that the tea parties peaked too fast and don’t have much longer to live. In fact, my sense is that the media is starting to get bored with them already.
They’ll certainly last through the November election, but I wonder if they’ll be able to keep up a head of steam much after that? My tentative guess is that they won’t, especially if Democrats start fighting back and manage to keep control of Congress. Comments are open if you disagree.
