Details, details, details…

I recently posted an article referring Tea Partiers to a blog site that I found interesting because of the author’s passion and cleverness. A reader whom I’ll call Mister Details took offense at the site and proceeded to “rip me a new one” and assert that my referral demonstrates the “unfocused anger” of the Tea Party movement.

As we chatted back and forth, Mister Details exposed more of his skepticism about our coalition. Apparently he thinks we speak in vague generalities about choosing candidates who reflect “our values” while glossing over the old adage that “the devil is in the details.” Then he presented a list of questions obviously intended to trick me into contradicting the conservative values shared by most Tea Party members. I guess his point was that you can’t judge Tea Partiers or politicians by their stated values; you have to nail them down on the details.

Of course, he’s glossing over the fact that it’s extremely difficult to vet political candidates by asking them a myriad of questions on detailed issues. They are politicians, after all, and prefer to leave their options open. About the best you can expect with presidential candidates is to gain some sense of their attitudes on a few high-level issues like national security, foreign relations, the economy, and abortion. That will at least tell you where they fall on the political spectrum and how they are likely to respond to issues that arise during their term.

Candidates at the state, district, city, and other local levels tend to be more forthcoming about specific local issues, but those are usually more practical than ideological questions, such as should we build this road or school or bridge, should we standardize trash collection at the county level, or what should we do about the state Medicaid budget deficit.

Nonetheless, some local questions do have a strong ideological tinge, such as smoking bans, stadium funding, medical marijuana, and voting regulations. In those cases, if you can get cogent comments from the candidates, you can often discern important differences in their political philosophies. Common sense voters – not just Tea Partiers – instinctively focus on those issues when trying to pick the candidate most consistent with their beliefs.

But, again, my critic is dreaming if he thinks a savvy political candidate, especially at the federal level, will answer random open-ended ideological questions, such as “Should we have unemployment insurance?” The politician will respond that he can’t answer that question until there’s a specific bill in front of him. In other words, the “details” raised by my critic are way too general as a means of vetting political candidates. 

Nonetheless, they are interesting to ponder on a personal basis. They are like an examination of conscience before going to confession — a good way to see what happens to your core beliefs when confronted with real issues. So, I thank Mister Details for giving me that opportunity, despite the cynical tone he took.

No politically oriented group is homogeneous in its beliefs, and this certainly characterizes the Tea Party Coalition. However, you join a group because at some level it reflects and supports your beliefs, and by banding with like-minded people, you hope to gain leverage in promoting those beliefs. For the Tea Party, I think the core beliefs include: returning our federal government to its Constitutionally-mandated limits; removing government restrictions on our individual freedom as much as possible in a complex, interdependent society; strengthening our capitalistic economic system; and conducting intelligent foreign policy that protects our interests abroad.

If you had to boil this down to a simple phrase, it would be “we fight coercive socialism.”  Tea Partiers believe that coercive socialism is intrinsically evil and will destroy our country if it is not blocked and rolled back. Although we believe our government at all levels has become too invasive, we are not radical Libertarians, because we do not believe all government is bad. And although we believe the country desperately needs to rebuild its traditional Judeo-Christian moral framework, we are not the radical religious right, because we believe government cannot force this moral rebirth, only enable and encourage it.

In my contact with Tea Party members, I’ve found that most of us are political realists. We understand that it’s unrealistic to hope for a third party to come riding in on a white horse and save us from misguided Democrats and Republicans. That would be emotionally satisfying compared to the approach we now know is required, namely, to reform (Bill Hennessy says “recapture”) the mainstream parties.

So, it’s highly unlikely that the Tea Party movement will morph into a third party, even though some members have suggested exactly that, with “tea” serving as an acronym for “taxed enough already.” At this point we tend to focus on reforming the GOP because its values are closest to ours and it has much more traction than a new third party could ever hope to gain. However, if Republicans continue to meander down the path of “moderation” or if they break sharply to the left, you can be sure that Tea Partiers will follow the path of conservatism even if it means abandoning the GOP.

I hope this helps my blog correspondent understand the values shared by Tea Party members.  Because of length constraints I’ll end here and continue in another article, where I’ll respond to the specific questions posed by Mister Details.