final essay

INTEREST GROUP

Oki ALLAN J. CIGLER. BURDETI A. LOOMIS . ANTHONY J. NOWNES EDITORS -

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e from Weber and Jones, 1 6 D.C.," Washington Blade,

The Tea Party as an Interest began directing the Pew

2009, and completed the Movement? Group? Brand? Faction? kilen D. Hertzke, Repre- in the American Polity Burdett A. Loomis

Dbbying for the Faithful: ;catch Center's Forum on L, updated May 2012.

vocacy, World Vision, by There is no group without its interest.

—Arthur F. Bentley ittee on National Legisla-

I The Process of Government i Holes in China's Great I

With this deceptively simple, if elusive, statement in his seminal 1908 book The Process of Government, Arthur Bentley set the stage for the "Evangelicals Sway White modern study of interest groups. Although few scholars have vigorously pur- October 26, 2003. sued the study of interests per se, the overall study of organized interests has lie Law 106-386 (October

i nsight grown, albeit unevenly, for more than a century. And Bentley's central nslgnt

rt 2013," http://www.state has remained powerful, in that, as Charles Hardin notes in a fifty-year retro- spective on The Process of Government, "he also insists on a political canvass

ilee 2000, Debt Relief, and wide enough to include all active group interests. Furthermore, he moves out udies Quarterly 51 (2007): from the individual man [sic] and even the single group to insist upon the study

of relationships—the vital phenomena of politics." Overall, however, Bentley IDS Plan in Africa," Chris- has receded from view in the study of interests and their various manifestations.

[nterest Group Influence in Almost a quarter century ago, in his edited work The Politics of Interests,

89-140 Marc Petracca began a sweeping essay titled The Rediscovery of Interest Group

1 Council of Churches and the Politics" with this statement: "American politics is the politics of interests. Through- university Press, 1993). out American history a seamless web of commentary variously accepts, elevates, sr 21, 2011, Pew Research or bemoans the centrality of interests in political life" (emphasis added). He ewforum.org/2011/11/21/ continues, "The politics of interests has shaped American politics, how we view

ourselves as a nation, and how others view us as well. It also shapes the way we ions advocacy, see Hertzke, study political life and therefore what we confidently know about American

Transnational Perspective, politics." In this essay and the other articles that make up The Politics oflnterests,

the idea of interests quickly leaves the stage, to be replaced by the more conven- tional terms interest groups and organized interests. Indeed, political scientists rarely talk in concrete terms about interests; rather, they examine the physical manifestations of interests, such as membership organizations (the National Rifle Association), business firms (Google), political action committees (PACs), or think tanks (Heritage Foundation). Yet we often talk broadly about "business

115

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interests" or "educational interests" or "consumer interests," thus making the implicit assumption that such broad interests actually do exist and contribute to politics and policymaking.

In fact, using "business interests" as an example, even a quick perusal of American businesses demonstrates that rarely if ever do their interests align in any coherent way (for more on this see the concluding chapter in this volume). The Coca-Cola Company desires a free market in sugar to ensure the lowest costs, while American sugar producers want government to impose stiff tariffs or otherwise restrict the sale of cheap imported sugar. Likewise, Comcast is merging with TimeWarner Cable, a pairing directly opposed to the Dish Net- work's interests. And on and on.' Only infrequently does a truly new interest emerge on the political scene, although technology may generate some such thing, as in the creation of the Internet and subsequent attempts to "protect" a certain version through "net neutrality" policies.' But ordinarily there is little new under the sun.

Thus, when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli went off on his legendary rant in February 2009, we got the chance to see an arguably new interest develop before our very eyes. Indeed, Santelli named it, stating: "We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July."' This chapter examines the first five years of the Tea Party's existence within contemporary American politics. The phenomenon has spawned a host of research, although a good bit of this has focused on the first two or three years of its existence. With the 2014 midterms serving as the Tea Party's third chance to affect electoral outcomes, we can make a clearer assessment of how to consider the Tea Party's place in the U.S. political landscape. This also gives us a chance to think through the very idea of a political interest—a broad but ill-defined term that has lurked within our political rhetoric since James Madison assessed the idea of factions in Federalist 10.

After providing a brief history of the Tea Party, the chapter proceeds to examine how it conforms to various notions of a political interest and how we might best understand it.

The Tea Party: 2009-2014

Although the Tea Party Movement (TPM) has no single point of origin, it did burst on the public scene on February 19,2009, when CNBC's Santelli, broad- casting live from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, exploded in an emotional rant about the lack of financial responsibility of those who had taken out large mortgages during the housing boom of the previous decade, only to be foreclosed, with the public at large holding the bag.' Over the next few months and weeks, the nascent Tea Party developed along five distinct but related lines. First, substantial numbers of individuals showed up at various Tea Party events and protests, and local Tea Party organizations began to spring up;

The Tea Party as an Interest 117

second, about one-fourth of all people expressed their support for the TPM; third, organized right-wing groups, funded by political elites, embraced the Tea Party's ideas and helped finance some of the events and protests; and fourth, the Fox television network provided a lot of coverage tothe TPM.7 Fifth and finally, the TPM almost immediately took an active role in electoral politics, and, after the 2010 elections, it became institutionalized in the U.S. Congress, not necessarily as a formal group but as a grouping on the far right side of the GOP. Its electoral clout and the resulting victories of sixty or so Tea Party sym- pathizers elected to the House offered the TPM real leverage in moving con- gressional Republicans further and further to the political right.

No single narrative can capture—or even define—the entirety of the Tea Party phenomenon, but there is little doubt that the months following San- telli's rant demonstrated real grassroots enthusiasm for the emerging movement, largely expressed in broadly conservative, antigovernment terms. One study described the initial twelve to eighteen months thusly: "Many Americans liked the idea of the Tea Party without subscribing to the full political or policy implications of its views. This is a case of thin cultural coherence: people with widely different political views can be held together by powerful, shared cultural symbols."'

Despite some claims that the Tea Party has always been elite driven, these first twelve to eighteen months of its existence demonstrated the emergence of a real movement. Many formerly apolitical individuals did come out of the woodwork to protest and organize around the broad themes of taxation, government overreach, and smaller government. Although national elites did encourage the movement and many participants were Republican activists, this does not diminish the grassroots strength of the early days of the movement. Moreover, as will be examined, the TPM has continued to recruit new mem- bers to its various national groups, even after the initial surge of interest and active participation has declined.'

In terms of popularity, the Tea Party, defined broadly, has received consis- tent support from about a quarter of Americans since its inception, with opponents of the movement registering slightly higher levels of support (see Figure 1). The 2010 election season, culminating in November's off-year con- tests, saw a rise in support to about 30 percent; this time period was crucial, in that it moved much of the focus on the movement away from the grass roots and toward elected officials, especially the large number of GOP House mem- bers, and a few senators, first elected in 2010.10

The steady support of 25 percent or so of the population demonstrates a substantial base for the TPM; this backing is especially significant in states where the movement remains strongest, largely across the South and parts of the Midwest/Plains. Even as the Tea Party and Republican conservatives in general have great difficulty in affecting presidential outcomes, they remain powerful through their roles in moving the Congress to the right.

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I Figure 1 Public Support for the Tea Party Movement, 2010-2014 53

42 11 o 41 48

45 44 42 40 38 38

34 31

2224 24

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Support -o- % Opponent % Neither

Source. The Gallup Organization, http://www.gallup.com/p0111147635/teaparty-mOVemeflt.aSPX

The Tea Party as an Interest 119

money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican office- holders and candidates.""

In the end, the TPM expresses itself in multiple ways as an interest. There may be "no group without its interest," as Arthur Bentley observed, but pinning down that interest is no mean feat.

The Tea Party as an Interest: Five Overlapping Perspectives

15 What is the tea party, exactly? That's not so clear. There are a constellation JJ of groups, like Tea Party Patriots, FreedomWorks and Americans for Pros-

perity, who sometimes associate themselves with the movement or are associated with it. But their agendas can range from libertarian to populist and do not always align. As in Missouri, they often do not endorse the same candidate. Nor do they always endorse the candidate who self-identifies as a member of the tea party.

If the TPM has generated a host of local organizations and substantial popular support, it has also received considerable backing from elite, national organizations, some of which long predated the movement's 2009 emergence. In particular, right-wing groups FreedomWorks and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity worked within the TPM to extend their reach into a large new audience and prospective activists." In 2009-2010, various analyses purported that the TPM was actually a creation of elite, ultraconservative interests, but the web of relationships is far more complicated than this.

Skocpol and Williamson, in their 2012 book on the TPM, develop the critical point that the Fox network and its media personalities played a major role in spreading and vastly expanding the movement's message. 12 As with the national right-wing groups, Fox News provided top-down assistance to a movement that was bubbling up from the bottom; this relationship makes it difficult to untangle the strands of the TPM, at least within its first couple of years. In addition, such wide media exposure has allowed the Tea Party "brand" to grow in significance, even if it's not clear exactly what that label may mean."

Of the five trends noted here, the final one may well be the most impor- tant. Over the 2009-2014 period, the TPM increasingly became a force within the Republican Party, in state and federal elections, in state capitals, and on Capitol Hill. Despite some missteps in the Senate elections of 2010 and 2012, legislators who identified with the Tea Party began to influence the GOP's electoral and legislative politics in major ways, to the point that their continuing presence as a significant faction within the Republican Party has come to define their role in American politics.4 As Skocpol noted in early 2014, "Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots and elite organizations amounts to a pincers operation that wields

—Nate Silver (May 22,2014)

Along with many other observers, by mid-2014 analyst and journalist Nate Silver wondered exactly what the role of the TPM had become, to the point that labeling something as "the Tea Party" was misleading.16 Others, like Skocpol and Parker, noted changes in the TPM but concluded that it had real staying power. But staying power as what? Returning briefly to Arthur Bent- ley's simple statement, "There is no group without its interest," if the Tea Party movement is actually a group, then what is its interest, and how can we deter- mine that? Do we look at organization? The expression of public opinion? The emergence ofTPM legislators in Congress and state legislatures? Policy results that bear a TPM stamp? In examining facets of the TPM after five years of existence, there are a host of contradictions, and real questions continue to arise as to how we might best understand this apparently powerful phenomenon, still going (reasonably) strong after five years. Thus, per Bentley, in what ways do the "group" and the "interest" intersect?

The Tea Party as Social Movement

Without question, the Tea Party, especially early on, looked like a social move- ment. Distinguishing such movements from parties or interest groups, political scientist Sidney Tarrow argued that they offered collective challenges to elites, authorities, or the status quo by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions.'7 As time has passed, most analysts have discarded the notion that the Tea Party has remained as a powerful indepen- dent movement. But such a conclusion is not universal; consider, for example, an assessment made in the conservative Commentary magazine, on the fifth anniversary of Santelli's call to arms:

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Those seeking to assess the current strength of the Tea Party idea are wrong to measure it solely in partisan political terms or even the relative influence of any of those who claim to fly the movement's flag. The most important thing to realize about the Tea Party is that it is a broad set of ideas, not a coherent or distinctly organized movement that takes orders from any one leader or leaders.18

Such a description hews nicely to Tarrow's definition of a social movement. The question remains, however, of whether this assessment is correct or whether the TPM has changed substantially from its early days. An extensive data gathering effort from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) through 2013 demonstrates that overall membership in six major national Tea Party organizations rose from under 200,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000 in 2013, although it is not clear how many of the members were active at the grass roots. Indeed, the largest organization, by far, was Free- domWorks, whose membership rose from 13,000 in 2010 to almost 230,000 in 2013.19 Moreover, TPM "members" contributed increasing amounts to favored candidates. But putative national-level membership numbers scarcely tell the whole story for a social movement. Indeed, by definition such numbers may not be significant, if a movement should truly emerge from the grass roots; nor would contributions be a solid measure, given their relevance to regular electoral activity, again, largely in national politics.

What is most striking, however, is the lack of grassroots actions by local TPM groups since the 2009 to early 2010 period. The IREHR report tracks first a modest number of events in the early stages of the TPM, then an explo- sion in 2011, and a steady decline since then, with a huge spike near "tax day" in May 2012.20 But most of these Tea Party events have been sponsored by FreedomWorks, with its elite funding and large membership base. In other words, this looks much more like conventional interest group activity than it

does the actions of a true grassroots movement.

The TPM Within the Public

As Figure 1 illustrates, the TPM's support within the American public has leveled off at a bit less than 25 percent, with opposition somewhat higher as of 2014. The question is, What does this tell us? Do Americans have a coherent view of what the "Tea Party" label means? And even if they do, is "support" for the movement something tangible or simply the response to a survey question? For the most part, Tea Party supporters are concentrated within the Republican Party. So it would be important to see if they differ substantially from their fellow party identifiers. Based on data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), the most comprehensive electoral polling available, the two groups differ only modestly, save for one characteristic, ideology, which finds the Tea Party supporters considerably

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further to the right (see self-placement column in Table 1). Again, there is little overall distinctiveness for the TPM, save for its identifiers' greater con- servatism. Still, this is a broad characterization, and there is evidence that further clarifies the Tea Partiers' responses.

Table 1 Republicans: Tea Party Supporters and Others

Percentage Percentage Percentage Self-placement making with a describing Percentage on 7-point over $50K college current job as who are Average ideological annually degree "management" white age scale

Tea Party 67.2 51.1 17.1 94.2 54.5 5.8 supporter

Non—Tea 66.5 54.0 24.5 85.1 49.3 4.6 Party supporter

Source: Seth Masket, "How Different Are Tea Party Supporters from Other Republicans?" Mischiefs of Faction, May 5, 2014, http://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/2O14/O5/how_differentare_tea..parties.from html (based on American National Election Studies data).

Writing in the wake of the 2012 elections and using a pair of large-scale studies, Robert Rapoport and his colleagues drill down further into the makeup of Tea Party supporters .2'Their first key finding supports the ANES study in terms of ideology, while breaking it down into ideological components. Thus, on a 7-point scale, while all Republicans are right of center on social and eco- nomic policies, the non-TP supporters stand at 4.5 (social) and 5.4 (economic), while the TP backers are at 6.2 (social) and 6.5 (economic).22 The TP support- ers are distinct and concentrated on the extreme right, most notably in their economic positions, which constitute the core of their philosophy and motiva- tion for activism. Moving to specific issues, TP Republicans, far more than their non-TP counterparts, list as a first priority the repeal of 0bamacare23 (20%) and shrinking the size of government (17%), even as the top priority for both groups (35% non-TP, 25% TP) is reducing the deficit. Conversely, a fourth of non-TP Republicans listed "jobs" as their top priority, compared to 15 per- cent of TP supporters. For both groups, social issues trailed.

The analysis by Bradberry and Jacobson in the aftermath of the 2012 elections confirms the Rapoport et at. findings but argues for a significant addi- tion: the Tea Party's considerable antipathy toward President Barack Obama .24 Addressing the varied findings on race and the Tea Party is beyond this essay, but the more limited question of the TPM's relationship with President Obama is worth addressing, if only briefly. Bradberry and Jacobson find, through an analysis of 2012 presidential election voting, that Tea Party identification and opposition to Obama are strongly linked and that when a factor analysis25 is

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performed, the two variables that contribute the most to defining the underlying factor are one's opinion of the Tea Party and one's evaluation of Barack Obama.26 How this will play out after Obama leaves office remains an open question, but there is little question that he has helped crystallize the Tea Party movement. In a more general assessment of Tea Party survey data, Parker and Barretto conclude, "The emergence of the Tea Party movement, at least if sup- port for the Tea Party is any indication, cannot be reduced to perceptions of President Obama alone, even if his presidency helped catalyze the movement. Several other factors are also important in helping to explain Tea Party sympa- thy, including racism and the belief that subordinate groups should remain in their respective places .1117

In sum, the attitudes and issue positions of Tea Party Republicans do dif- fer from their non—Tea Party fellow partisans. Overall support for the Tea Party stands at about 50 percent of Republican identifiers, which is significant in that the movement's base resides mostly within the active right wing of the GOP.28

The Organizational Tea Party

There is no single national "TEA PARTY" organization, so do not let any- one tell you otherwise. This is a truly grassroots movement embracing many issues and many names: TEA, Patriot, Liberty Conservative. There are sev- eral thousand, completely independent groups across the Nation fighting in their own way to restore our America before it is too late.29

-TheTeaPartynet website, 2014

To the extent that it began as an energetic social movement, the Tea Party produced a substantial array of organizations—both local and national—in its first few months. These groups held lots of events, rallies, and protests, as they received substantial media coverage for their efforts. But the initial organizing successes of a movement often do not predict any great staying power or sur- vival of these organizations. Indeed, there was a definite strain of argument, early on, that the organizational side of the Tea Party was funded and encour- aged by elites.30 For example, investigative historian Eric Zuesse provides ample evidence that organizations using the Tea Party label, and funded by elites, had carved out an identity in the decade leading up to the 2009 explo- sion." Led by such figures as Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), who would later resign his seat to take over leadership of the Heritage Foundation, the Tea Party was certainly present within the right-wing universe. To be sure, such figures as the Koch brothers did fund organizations that promoted Tea Party rhetoric. But such tilling of the soil does not mean that the initial burst of activity was somehow centrally directed. For example, the TeaParty.net state- ment cited earlier reflects an idealized version of a continuing set of disparate

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local organizations, held together by common goals. What has become clear, however, is that the organizational side of the TPM has become increasingly represented by large organizations with ties to moneyed elites, who have dis- tinct policy goals that have come to define the movement.

Assessing the strength of Tea Party organizations has proved consis- tently difficult, and different indicators produce distinct perspectives, including figures on members and activities. Thus, the 2013 Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights report observes that membership in six major groups rose from 186,000 in June 2010 to 448,000 in June 2012 to 514,000 in December 2013.32 Those numbers appear robust, but serious questions remain as to the activity levels of the members. Moreover, one organization, FreedomWorks, accounts for 229,000 of the 2013 members, and—while it identifies itself as a grassroots movement—has historically been an elite-directed group that evolved from David Koch's Citizens for a Strong Economy. When it comes to TPM activities, FreedomWorks almost completely dominates in the post-2011 period, with well over 90 percent of reported actions being generated by this organization. By late 2013, it accounted for almost all such TPM activities. Moreover, and of particular import, most of FreedomWorks's funding comes from elite sources; four of every five dollars contributed to FreedomWorks's various entities—including its political action committees—came from "major gifts," largely from a handful of donors .33

As of 2014, although the national Tea Party organizations continue to profess their grassroots strength, most activities and funding are national in scope, and the TPM increasingly revolves around electoral politics, almost completely within the Republican Party. Not only that, the TPM largely addresses national electoral politics, not state or local politics that would gen- erate attention if it functioned as a locally oriented grassroots movement. As FreedomWorks' Adam Brandon stated in 2014, "We have limited resources, and we already know the rules for federal elections...

. I'm not saying we wouldn't dream to get involved [in gubernatorial races], but you have to walk before you can run. 1114

The Tea Party as a Brand

Skocpol and Williamson make a persuasive case that a major element in the TPM's rapid rise came through its extensive exposure on national television, most notably on Fox and CNN .3' The free media attention received by various Tea Party groups and their events catapulted the movement into the conscious- ness of the American public. Leading the way was Fox News, first with direct promotion through personalities such as Glenn Beck and then by more broadly framing political conflict in terms of a Tea Party narrative .3' The immense overlap between Fox viewers and Tea Party activists provided a "community of

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meaning" that allowed individuals to identify closely with a national movement—at least in its portrayal on Fox and later, in 2010, CNN.37

Even as levels of coverage have lessened markedly since 2010, the TPM benefits greatly from how it was initially framed as a spontaneous, locally inspired grassroots movement. In political marketing terms, it has become a brand. Branding can help groups define themselves, make sales (appeals) to prospective customers (voters), and maintain ties to supporters.'8 Branding thus helps interests with defining themselves ideologically, sometimes within a political party, and with making sales to voters. Such marketing means that the overall brand communicates specific, but sometimes differ- ent, meanings to self-identified members of the movement and to those it seeks to influence .39

There is no question that the Tea Party brand has survived over its initial five-plus years. In the 2014 election season, dozens of articles addressed the impact of the TPM, even though the overall meaning of the brand remains murky, beyond some very basic general principles (smaller govern- ment, lower taxes, perhaps immigration). At the same time, self-proclaimed TPM supporters continue to embrace the brand, giving it a certain continu- ing identity, even if its meaning is not completely agreed on. But in terms of its status as an "interest," being a recognizable brand does little to solidify our sense of what the TPM has become. Rather, as Miller notes, branding may serve the purpose of simplifying choice and reducing the need for detailed information about the "Product. 1141 Such simplification has real con- sequences within the political process. In 2014, Tea Party candidate Milton Wolf took on three-term conservative Republican senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) in a hotly contested GOP primary election. Wolf trumpeted his Tea Party orientation and backing, but essentially portrayed Roberts as an old (seventy- eight) and out-of-touch incumbent. Overall, Roberts's voting record placed him among the furthest-right senators in the chamber, and national Tea Party spokespersons did not claim that their opposition was driven by poli- cies; the aging Roberts simply did not fit with the insurgent element of the movement's brand .41

In sum, the TPM does represent a well-communicated brand in national and state politics. Nevertheless, the content of this brand is unclear at best, varying with individual Republican legislators, such as Utah senator Mike Lee, Texas senator Ted Cruz, or Iowa representative Steven King. And while certain general goals are agreed on, including lower taxes and smaller government, these remain ill defined within the political process. As Miller concludes, "The brand will be judged by success in implementing change. Electing Tea Party candidates is meaningless if they do not fight for Tea Party issues." In the end, he continues, "it will be up to elected offi- cials to bring about the change that the Tea Party movement wants to

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see."42 And as we search for the "interest" that constitutes the Tea Party, that gets us to the political- institutions of the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress.

The Tea Party as Republican Party Faction

Over the course of more than five years and three national elections (2010, 2012, and 2014), the TPM has consistently played a major role—or better put, a range of roles—within the right wing of the Republican Party. From its inception, as sociologist Eric Hanley and his colleagues note, Tea Party activ- ists have come disproportionately from the ranks of veteran Republican par- tisans .43 To be sure, the TPM did energize many individuals who had not been active in politics, but there was always a large core of GOP activists. Given the small-government/low-tax Tea Party goals, why would this not be the case?

Still, as the TPM has evolved, it has increasingly come to be defined in terms of factional partisan politics. Indeed, this has been so since the 2010 elec- tion, when Tea Party—backed primary nominees unexpectedly won several GOP Senate nominations and, more importantly, a host of the eighty-seven (sixty- three net gain) House seats won by Republicans. In addressing the Tea Party as a faction, we return to the terminology used by James Madison in The Federal- isz'.44 Factions did represent interests, in his view, which were "adverse" to the interests of others. But the TPM has not developed into a broad societal faction; rather, it has become a party faction. As such it has come to resemble a grouping within a parliamentary political party, as in Europe or Japan or Australia. That is, in Zariski's definition, a faction is "any intraparty combination, clique, or group- ing whose members share a sense of common identity and common purpose, and who are organized to act as a distinct bloc within a party for the purpose of real- izing their objectives. 1141 Of course, American legislative parties are not exactly Eke most parliamentary parties, but this definition does resonate for the Ameri- can Tea Party, both in its legislative representation and in its electoral efforts.

In assessing the impact of the TPM since 2010, the most common mea- sures have gauged its success in electing its own identifiers to legislative office or moving the ideological orientation of the GOP toward its most important goals, which include lower taxes, smaller government, and often, hard-nosed immigration reform. These yardsticks of electoral success and ideological movement do not always produce uniform judgments. Thus, during the 2014 primary election season, the Tea Party failed to defeat any incumbent GOP senators whom they sought to topple—most notably Mississippi's Thad Cochran and Kansas's Pat Roberts. Many analysts regarded these results as a failure, while others noted that Cochran, Roberts, and many other GOP sen- ators had moved substantially to the right in their legislative voting records, thus producing an overall shift that increasingly supported Tea Party goals.

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The Senate, 2010-2014

In both 2010 and 2012, candidates with Tea Party backing did knock off a handful of incumbents or Republican establishment candidates in primaries, including in 2010 Delaware representative Mike Castle (defeated by Christine O'Donnell) and Utah senator Robert Bennett (defeated by Mike Lee). And although a host of Tea Party—backed Republican House members won election in 2010, the movement's record in Senate elections was mixed. Newly elected senators included Marco Rubio (FL), Rand Paul (KY), and, in a special elec- tion, Scott Brown (MA); all were elected with substantial TPM support. But these three might well have won their seats with no such backing. On the other hand, O'Donnell and such other Tea Party favorites as Sharon Angle (NV), Ken Buck (CO), and Joe Miller (AK) captured the GOP nomination only to lose in general election contests that other, more widely supported, Republican candidates might well have won '41 perhaps allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate.

This pattern repeated itself in 2012, to an extent, when Tea Party—backed nominees in Indiana and Missouri, who prevailed against establishment GOP candidates (including six-term incumbent senator Richard Lugar of Indiana), lost in the general election. Still, the Tea Party helped Nebraska's Deb Fischer win a primary upset, followed by an easy general election win, while Ted Cruz, a Tea Party heartthrob, won the Texas GOP nomination against the establish- ment candidate. He easily prevailed in the general election and immediately became a major movement force in the Senate. Still, Democrats gained two seats, and the handful of Tea Party senators had little policy impact.

In 2014, the TPM failed to help any insurgents win a primary victory against establishment Republican candidates, although, as noted, senators Cochran (MS) and Roberts (KS) faced serious challenges. Cochran easily won a general election victory, while Roberts overcame a major effort by an Inde- pendent candidate. Both the number and results of these challenges suggest that Tea Party influence has waned within the Senate, but that may not be true. Indeed, the average Republican senator has continued to move further and further to the right since 2010, reaching historic highs .47 Moreover, some GOP senators in the "Class of 2014," such as North Carolina's Thom Tillis, are iden- tified with the TPM. To be sure, the trend toward greater Republican conservatism (and liberalism, though a bit less, for Democrats) has existed since 1980, but the post-2010 Senate has shattered all records.

Thus, the overall impact of Tea Party challenges may well be to move incumbent GOP senators even further to the right in the voting patterns and render them less likely to engage in the traditional deliberation that could lead to compromise. As one analyst put it, "The tea party is winning by losing in the sense that you don't see any Republicans saying, 'Let's pass immigration reform that gives a path to citizenship. Let's make it easier for the President to raise the debt ceiling.'Almost all Republicans have shifted right. '141 This has meant,

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overall, that the Senate acted on very few bills over the 2011-2014 period. In winning control of the Senate for the 114th Congress (2015-2016), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised substantial cooperation with President Obama, but Tea Party legislators such as Cruz may well seek to move Senate Republicans into an increasingly confrontational position, which will do little to decrease the chamber's dysfunctional performance .41

The House After 2010

For all the publicity the TPM has received for its electoral challenges and occasional successes in the Senate, it is in the House of Representatives that the movement has had the most impact. While the 2010 elections left Democrats in control of Senate, Republicans gained a clear majority in the House, which they maintained in 2012 and improved to historic highs in 2014, with almost 250 members. Given the fact that the House functions as a majority-driven institution, such numbers might well have meant that it would pass a substantial body of legislation to send to the Senate. But, in contrast to Speakers Dennis Hastert (Republican, 1999-2006) and Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, 2007-2010), Republican SpeakerJohn Boehner (2011—) has encountered far more difficulty in putting together GOP majorities, in large part because of the unwillingness of many Tea Party—backed repre- sentatives to go along with his initiatives.50

In the modern, highly partisan era of congressional politics, scholars have assumed that party majorities could work their will within the House; the majority would agree on legislation and then pass it with its partisan votes. Despite a handful of exceptions, this model accurately accounted for almost all legislation since the 1994 Republican takeover of the House under Newt Gin- grich. But the election of 2010 altered the workings of the newly installed GOP leadership. To be sure, the Republicans could pass whatever they agreed on and did broadly control the legislative agenda, but it soon became clear that the Tea Party faction within the Republican caucus would not give the Speaker blanket approval for his legislative preferences. As Robert Draper put it, in terms of how the Republican whips,5' representatives Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), approached their jobs after the 1994 and 2010 elections, respectively,

Tom DeLay's 73 freshmen were thoroughly beholden to Newt Gingrich— their Speaker, but also their guru. Kevin McCarthy's 87 freshmen had no particular allegiance to John Boehner, or even the Republican Party. He had no leverage over them.12

Indeed, on various key votes to keep the government operating, Speaker Boehner had to rely on Democratic votes, after the Tea Party loyalists of his caucus refused to support more modest spending cuts than those they had

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proposed.53 Further TPM politicking occurred over a series of debt-ceiling votes and immigration reform legislation, the latter having passed the Senate. In the end, Boehner simply could not pass Republican debt-ceiling bills, because he could not get enough far-right Republicans to endorse his compro- mise solutions. Thus, in 2013, after a partial governmental shutdown, and in 2014, in anticipation of more negative political fallout for Republicans, Boehner ignored Tea Party complaints and moved ahead on "must-pass" debt-ceiling increases. In 2014, remarkably, the House voted 229-201 to increase the debt ceiling without condition. 14 Just twenty-eight Republicans voted with the Speaker; in this instance the Tea Party influence had come to dominate the GOP conference. 55

In the wake of the 2014 House elections, which resulted in a historic GOP majority of almost 250 representatives, Tea Party members continued to play a major role within the conference. Given the Republican takeover of the Senate in 2014, the question arises as to how the TPM influence is asserted, whether through continued conflict with the Speaker or with the Speaker and his far-right members coming to an accommodation that would reflect the Tea Party's continuing import as a major faction within the conference.

The Party Faction as Interest

In its five-plus years of existence, the Tea Party has taken various, overlapping forms. Initially there was a kind of spontaneity and grassroots energy that propelled the movement into the public's consciousness. It grew quickly and impressively as a brand, powerfully promoted by Fox News and CNN; the Tea Party brand remains a strong one after five years, even as it lacks clarity as to its actual meaning. To an extent, pollsters may make the brand seem more real than it is by asking survey questions as to whether members of the public sup- port the Tea Party or not. Simply asking the question implies that the term has ongoing meaning and relevance.

Still, the polling data do demonstrate a continuing identification with the Tea Party by 20 to 25 percent of the public, as well as the opposition of a greater number (see Figure 1). So the shorthand, symbolic relevance of the term remains significant to a substantial proportion of the electorate. And it is

among voters and their elected officials where the TPM continues to have real, identifiable effects. While it may appear from public opinion findings and the public relations statements of national TPM groups that the Tea Party repre- sents some clear "faction" within the set of American political interests, its stronger identification stands as a faction within the Republican Party. That is

where it has had the most staying power since its inception and especially from its impact on Republican primary elections and legislative activity since 2010.

As a party faction, the TPM not only affects internal Republican politics but also how the party reacts to major policy challenges. Thus, the presidential

The Tea Party as an Interest 129

wing of the GOP, per Karl Rove and others, fervently desires that the party seriously address immigration issues, so that its national candidates can attract more Latino votes. But most Tea Party legislators, especially in the House, find that taking a hard-line stance on immigration plays well with their district's constituents. As a faction in the broad mix of national politics, the TPM might not seem poised to exert much influence on immigration, given the views of various Democratic constituencies and much of the business community. But as a party faction, it can and does exert disproportionate influence.

If, as Arthur Bentley claims, "there is no interest without its group," we should most profitably view the TPM as a party faction within the GOP; that is where "group" and "interest" come together. In examining its role and influ- ence in that context, we may be able to best come to terms with this powerful, if amorphous, interest.

Notes

1. Charles H. Hardin, review of Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government, Western Political Science Quarterly 4, no.2 (June 1951): 344.

2. Marc Petracca, "The Rediscovery of Interest Group Politics," in The Politics oflnterests, ed. Marc Petracca (Boulder, CO: Westview), 3; for a somewhat different view of the centrality of organized interests, see Allan Cigler and Burdett Loomis, "Always Involved, Rarely Central: Organized Interests in American Politics," in Interest Group Politics, 6th ed., ed. Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis (Washington, DC: CQ Press), 381-92.

3. There is an extensive literature; see Mark Smith, "The Mobilization of Influence of Business Interests," in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups, ed. L. Sandy Maisel and Jeffery Berry (New York: Oxford, 2010), 451-67.

4. Net neutrality or "the open Internet" requires "free, publicly available standards that anyone can access and build to, and it treats all traffic that flows across the network in roughly the same way," http://www.fcc.gov/openinternet.

5. Quoted in http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2oo9/o2/rick_5antelli_tea_partl Although there were previous references to the "tea party," Santelli's rant does stand out as the moment the term truly entered the public's consciousness, at least in its contemporary meaning.

6. Ibid. 7. The material in this section is drawn from various sources, which produce overlapping

and sometimes contradictory accounts of the first eighteen months of the TPM. Of particular significant are Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson's The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford, 2012); Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto, Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party andReaction- ary Politics in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Andrew J. Perrin et al., "Political and Cultural Dimensions of Tea Party Support, 2009-2012," Sociological Quarterly 55, no. 4 (2014): 625-52. On public support, see Gallup poll results, http://www.gallup-com/poll/147635/tea-party-movement.aspx.

8. Perrin et al., "Political and Cultural Dimensions," 629.

130 Loomis

9. Devin Burghart, Special Report: Status of the Tea Party, Part Two (Kansas City, MO: Institute for Research on Education and Human Rights), http://www.irehr.org/issue- areas/tea_ party_ nationalism/tea_party_new5and_ana1Y5is/1temIS27_status_of-tea-

party-by-the- numbers. 10. Robert Draper, When the Tea Party Came to Town (NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

11. Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,

104-6. 12. Ibid., chap. 4. 13. William J. Miller, "Branding the Tea Party," in The Tea Party in Government: Does the

Party Roll On? ed. William J. Miller and Jeremy D. Walling (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, forthcoming).

14. There is a large literature here, including Robert Draper's works and Theda Skocpol, "Why the Tea Party's Hold Persists," Democracy 31 (Winter 2014), among many others.

15. Skocpol, "Why the Tea Party's Hold Persists."

16. Nate Silver, "Tea Party Has Outlived Its Usefulness," FiveThirtyEight, http://fivethir

tyeight.com/datalab/tea-party_hasoutlived-itS_u5efU1ne55.

17. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Collective Action, Social Movements and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

18. Jonathan Tobin, "The State of the Tea Party 2014," Commentary, February 28, 2014, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/02/28/the_state_oftthtea_P51ty_2Ol4

19. Burghart, Special Re 20. Ibid, 21. Ronald B. Rapoport, Meredith Dost, Ani-Rae Lovell, and Walter Stone, "Republican

Activists and Tea Party Factionalism," paper presented at the 2012 Midwest Political Science Association meetings, April 11-14, 2013. Figures cited within the next two paragraphs come from this study.

22. Rapoport et al., "Republican Activists and Tea Party Factionalism," 9.

23. This refers back to question wording. 24. Leigh Bradberry and GaryJacobson, "Does the Tea Party Still Matter? Tea Party Influ-

ence in the 2012 Elections," paper prepared for delivery at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29-September 1, 2013, Chicago.

25. A statistical technique that identifies the core components of an underlying dimension.

26. Bradberry and Jacobson, "Does the Tea Party Still Matter?" 30.

27. Parker and Barreto, Change They Can't Believe In. 28. Composite NBC polling, 2010-2013, cited in Rapoport et al., "Republican Activists

and Tea Party Factionalism," 3. 29. TheTeaParty.net, http://www.theteaparty.net/about_the_tea_Party.

30. See, among others, Eric Zuesse, "Final Proof the Tea Party Was Founded as a Bogus AstroTurf Movement," Huffsngton Post, October 22, 2013, http://www.huffington post.com/ericzuesse/final proofthe tea_partyb4136722.htmhi Ronald P. Formis-

ano, The Tea Party: A Brief History (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2012); Anthony

DiMaggio, The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in theAge of Obama (NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 2011); George Monbiot, "The Tea Party Movement: Deluded and Inspired by Billionaires,"The Guardian website, October 25,

2010. 31. Zuesse, "Final Proof." 32. Burghart, Special Report.

The Tea Party as an Interest 131

33. Andy Kroll, "Powerful Tea Party Groups Internal Documents Leak," Mother Jones, January 4, 2013, http://.motherjones.com/poljtics/2ol2/12/freedomworks rich donors-armey-kibbe-super-pac#update.

34. Quoted in Louis Jacobson, "In 2014 Governors' Races, Where's the Tea Party?" National Journal, November 2014, http://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov_ tea-party-missing_governors_races.html.

35. Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party and the Remaking ofRepublican Conservatism, chap. 4. 36. Ibid., 135. 37. Ibid., 134-5. 38. See Jennifer Lees-Marshment, The Political Marketing Revolution (Manchester, UK:

Manchester University Press, 2004). 39. Miller, "Branding the Tea Party," 115. 40. Ibid., 117. 41. Panel discussion, Chuck Morse Show, October 24, 2014, comments made by Taylor

Budowich, Tea Party Express, and Kevin Broughton, Tea Party Citizens' Fund. 42. Miller, "Branding the Tea Party," 126-7. 43. Eric Hanley, Stephanie Decker, and Pooya Naderi, "Anatomy of a Party Movement:

The Tea Party Movement From Its Inception to the Midterm Elections of 2010" (unpublished manuscript, University of Kansas).

44. For an extensive discussion, see the introductory chapter of this book. 45. Raphael Zariski, "The Italian Socialist Party: A Case Study in Factional Conflict,"

American Political Science Review 56 (June 1962): 372-90. 46. Moderate Alaskan Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski did beat Miller as a write-in. 47. http://voteview.com/political_polarization.asp. 48. John King, http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/politics/midtermelectjons halftime 49. For an initial accounting of these tensions, see Jeremey Peters, "Fear of Being Sidelined, the

Tea Party Sees the Republican Rise as a Threat ,"New York Times, Al, November 8,2014. 50. The best treatment of this for the 112th Congress comes in Draper, When the Tea Party

Came to Town. 51. Drapes When the Tea Party Came to Town, 81. 52. Ibid., 135, provides one example. 53. Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker, "House Approves Higher Debt Limit without

Condition New York Times Al February 11 2014 54. The third-ranking Republican House leader, who is responsible for assembling the

party's members into a voting majority 55. The Republican conference simply refers to the body of all House GOP members.