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The Tea Party in Congress: Ideology and Compromise Daniel Rosenblum

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The Tea Party in Congress: Ideology and Compromise Daniel Rosenblum The Tea Party in Congress: Ideology and Compromise Daniel Rosenblum Abstract: This paper investigates the common portrayal of Tea Party-affiliated members of Congress as uncompromising ideologues. It brings to bear qualitative and quantitative techniques on six different case studies of Congressional votes in addition to broader statistical analysis. Results show that Tea Party Caucus membership is often strongly associated with uncompromising, counter-establishment Congressional voting behavior. However, endorsement by a national Tea Party organization tends not have this same effect. As a group, the “Tea Party freshmen” mostly blend with the rest of the Republican Party—except for their votes on the debt-ceiling controversy. This evidence suggests a more complex nexus between the Tea Party movement and Congress than originally hypothesized. An honors thesis for the Department of Political Science, Tufts University, 2012 Table of Contents 1 The Tea Party, and Why It Might Matter ........................................................................... 3 1.1 Rise of the movement ............................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Towards studying the Tea Party ................................................................................................................ 5 2 Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Electoral impact of the Tea Party in the 2010 midterms ........................................................................... 6 2.2 Theories of voting behavior ....................................................................................................................... 8 2.3 The district angle ...................................................................................................................................... 9 2.4 Extant literature on the Tea Party in Congress .......................................................................................... 9 III. Measures and Methods .................................................................................................... 10 3.1 Methodology Overview .......................................................................................................................... 10 3.2 Who is a Tea Partier? .............................................................................................................................. 12 3.3 Measuring District Tea Party Activism ................................................................................................... 15 3.4 Measuring Ideology ................................................................................................................................ 16 3.5 Measuring District Conservatism ............................................................................................................ 18 3.6 Relating Ideology and District ................................................................................................................ 18 4 Overall Analytics .............................................................................................................. 22 5 The Debt Ceiling .............................................................................................................. 27 5.1 Background ............................................................................................................................................ 27 5.2 Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 30 5.3 The aftermath ......................................................................................................................................... 34 6 Stopgap and Budget Votes ............................................................................................... 36 6.1 Stopgap Background .............................................................................................................................. 36 6.2 Final 2011 budget background .............................................................................................................. 38 6.3 Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 39 7 Budgeting Scuffles, Round Two ........................................................................................ 43 7.1 The “Disaster” Spending Bill Background .............................................................................................. 43 7.2 The “Disaster” Spending Bill Analysis ..................................................................................................... 44 7.3 An interlude: October Continuing Resolution ........................................................................................ 46 8 Payroll Tax Cut Extension ................................................................................................. 46 8.1 Background ............................................................................................................................................ 46 8.2 Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 49 11 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 52 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 56 Appendix ............................................................................................................................... 64 A. Remaining Regression Tables and Descriptive Statistics ........................................................................... 64 B. Interview Procedure & Questions ............................................................................................................. 66 2 1 The Tea Party, and Why It Might Matter 1.1 Rise of the movement On February 19, 2009, CNBC’s Rick Santelli delivered what has been called the “rant of the year,” or “the rant heard ‘round the world.” “This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand,” he yelled, followed by the supportive boos of the Chicago traders around him. “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.” Whether or not Santelli’s rant actually sparked the Tea Party movement remains unclear. While it almost certainly provides the origin of the movement’s name, it seemed to have given voice to preexisting anti-Obama sentiment—phrased with the confidence and frustration that foreshadowed the Tea Party’s tone. Some members cite the rant as pivotal to their involvement, including some of the Tea Party Patriot coordinators I interviewed. One described the rant as “…pouring gasoline on a fire. It sort of gave everybody the idea that they could and should do something to save the country, so it just exploded from his presentation that day on television.” Other coordinators share the same experience, like one Tea Party Patriots national coordinator: “Santelli had this rant that people should have an old fashioned Boston tea party. So you know I was one of those silly people who said, ‘Oh yeah I can do this in San Diego, no problem.’ …I just knew I was so outraged for the first time in my life that we have to do something.” What happened next was hard to predict: “tea parties” began sprouting up in all 50 states. These groups held meetings and rallies across the country, attempting to send a loud message of small government—often loudly enough to disrupt Town Hall meetings. The Tea Party moniker became a rallying point for fiscal conservatism, but, to the chagrin of some Tea Party purists I interviewed, also morphed into a catchall designation for general anti-Obama sentiment. The “birther” conspiracies—those alleging that Obama was not born in the United States—often found support within Tea Party rank. For example, Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips is a known birther1 and Arizona Tea Party group co-founder Kelly Townsend worked for two years on her state’s House Bill 2177 “requiring presidential candidates to show proof of citizenship to get on the state’s ballot.”2 For many members and organizers, this would be their first foray into politics. One Delaware coordinator I spoke to is a respiratory therapist whose Tea Party involvement represented a kind of political awakening—from voting on the basis of a candidate’s friendliness towards organizing around a candidate’s party and platform. The early Tea Party groups began holding meetings and rallies that exceeded the organizers’ attendance expectations. I interviewed a Michigan coordinator who claimed that over 1000 people attended their first rally—far beyond the 200-300 people he expected. 1 Burghart, D. (2010, Tuesday, 02 November 2010). Tea party nation founder declares himself a birther. Institute for 2 Rau, A. (2011). Tea Party: Give Arizona ‘birther bill’ some credit. AZCentral. 3 National organizations formed around the Tea Party cause. Tea Party Patriots, for example, is a national network that serves as an organizing platform among
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