Tea Party Revanchism

After meeting last night with Speaker of the House John Boehner, along with Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Obama's stated position is that "grand bargain" talks on the federal budget can begin once the government reopens with a clean funding resolution and the debt ceiling is raised.

Republicans promptly rejected this. They have no intention of giving up their leverage, which is what agreeing to Obama's conditions would entail. The GOP has no wish to enter into negotiations. Republicans have been sidestepping budget talks for the entire year. They have no intention of giving something up to get something in return. They think that Obama can be made to cave in.

Already sights are set on October 17, the deadline when the federal government reaches the debt ceiling. The Tea Party now sees that once you go over the brink, as it has with the government shutdown, it no longer provides any strategic advantage; in fact, it becomes a liability.

And that's where we are at now. Can the Tea Party caucus wagging the dog in the House remain intact for the next two weeks until the next brink, the debt ceiling deadline?

There was a sharp drop off from late morning on yesterday in interest in the government shutdown. I measure this by the number of stories that appear on the Google News page and the chatter among my office coworkers. So there is the possibility that the country could muddle along for the next two weeks with a government shutdown as the new normal. But bit by bit the GOP will suffer, and overall there is no question that they are losing the propaganda war. I am doubtful that House Republicans can hold out until October 17. Obama is putting Wall Street to work on lobbying the GOP leadership. This might not bear fruit this week -- I originally thought the Tea Party would be deflated by Friday -- but I bet by next week Boehner will be ready to release a "clean CR" for a vote.

The Tea Party, which is the populist base of the current Republican Party, is based on nostalgia for a time that we haven't seen in this country since the full employment and social and racial homogeneity of the 1960s. The Tea Party's revanchism is founded on a desire to return to the past -- before Vietnam was recognized as the quagmire it was, before the Black Panthers, before Haight-Ashbury spread to every large city in the nation -- when factory jobs were still plentiful and rents inexpensive and the suburbs were new and futuristic.

I've been reading an excellent history of The Chocolate Watchband, a 1960s Garage Punk Psychedelic band from the San Jose suburbs, written by lead singer David Aguilar. Aguilar captures the essence of the middle-60s -- the raw power -- that I believe to be at the heart of Tea Party revanchism:

It was the spring of 1966. It was a very different world than what it is today. 

Using the words of Tom Shachtman, "America was a monster. Our booming economy was one leg of the colossus and the other was our Military might. In the world, only the Soviets and we counted. We believed our environment and natural resources were virtually limitless. We were certain American ingenuity, technological virtuosity, and money could solve the world's problems. We believed Americans could fix anything and that nuclear missiles, the ultimate weapons of destruction, could actually keep us from having a global war. On the ladder of life, youth was expected to start at the bottom and creep upward as described by the system. In other words, the ladder of success was a long and arduous climb everybody had to make to succeed in this world. We lived in a dream of constant upward mobility. It was powered by never-ending consumption. We knew how much people above us were earning because it was reflected in the things they owned." 

The Watchband lived in nuclear families in identical little patio homes in the suburbs of San Jose. The nuclear family consisted of a man and woman, married for the first and only time to each other, living together with their natural 2.4 children with a cat and dog thrown in for good measure. Single-parent families were rare and the thought of one was difficult to comprehend to our society. Mark's dad had passed away when he was 2 and his mother had never remarried. He was the exception in the group. We all went to the same schools, studied the same things, and had the same teachers our brothers and sisters had. At school we dressed up in costumes for Halloween, planted trees on Arbor Day, sent tiny little punch-out paper hearts around for Valentine's Day and had both Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays off. We obeyed most of the rules, feared discipline from our parents if we screwed up, and any young woman getting pregnant paid the penalty of either being banished to a relatives' house until delivery and adoption took place or was she ushered immediately into the wedding chapel. If it was before the sixth month, she got to wear white. There were no ifs, ands or buts about this one. Single mothers and inter-racial marriages were unheard of. FM radio was called "Underground Radio" because they played songs longer than 3 minutes in length and didn't have a lot of commercials. TV went off the air at 1 AM and came back on at 6 AM. Milky Ways and Snickers cost a nickel and Cokes in green bottles were a dime with 2 cents returned on the empty bottle .... no lie!

The irony of Tea Party revanchism is that the prosperity of the 1960s created the conditions for undoing the rigid social boundaries and simplicity that the lily-white, predominantly rural, present-day Know Nothings hanker after.