Ask LJ: Why does the Tea Party support Walker?

[asterroc]

Apparently the Tea Party supports Governor Walker's union busting. I don't get this at all. I thought the Tea Party was a conservative libertarian group. Shouldn't they resent the government interfering with and attempting to regulate how workers interact with employers? Or is their fiscal conservatism trumping their libertarianism?

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well if we assume there's no unifying ideology, then no explanation is required and I don't need to ask my question at all. It was my understanding though that the movement self-identifies as conservative libertarian, with a side of fiscal conservatism, so I'm trying to understand things within that self-professed framework.

[oldsilenus.livejournal.com]

The tea partiers tend to self-identify as things that they would, well, like to self-identify as. However, their views are basically the views of the Republican party. (However, they are more likely to believe things like President Obama isn't a native-born American citizen (and they have a very ahistoric idea of what "native-born American citizen" means, for that matter) and that Sarah Palin is a decent candidate for the presidency.)

For that matter--and I've been trying to find the article that makes this point, which I read a few weeks or months ago, but I've unfortunately failed to do so--there's an argument to be made that they're not actually a movement. Because, well, movements stand for something. What do tea partiers stand for? There's no obvious answer, and there's no unifying answer. On the other hand, big American movements of days of yore have both had unifying and stupefyingly obvious answers to this question (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, the Temperance Movement).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Hm. So maybe they're just the more vocal branch of the Republicans? Are they a distinct demographic from the rest of the Rs at all, like younger or from a certain part of the US or anything?

[oldsilenus.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, their median income is slightly higher than the national median. I can't remember how the general Republican median income relates to the national one, but I would kind of assume that it's somewhat lower than it, so... I would assume that tea partiers skew a little more rich (or, perhaps more accurately, a little less poor) than Republicans in general. But I'm not totally sure about that last part....

Also, they're almost entirely white. (But, then again, so is the current Republican Party.)

I can't remember if there are any other differences.

But, basically, they're not libertarian. For that matter, most self-identified libertarians in this country aren't what political scientists would call pure libertarians (although there are some who skew closer to that, largely (although this is somewhat anecdotal, and this assertion of mine may be incorrect) in computer programmer circles). Mostly, libertarians in this country are oligarchs who want no government regulation, but are just fine with the powerful non-governmental figures oppressing others. Or, you know, even governmental figures, as long as it's not people like the libertarians themselves who are being oppressed--a majority of self-identified libertarians and tea partiers &c. are for such things as the PATRIOT Act and illegalizing abortion.

[q10.livejournal.com]

if you're claiming a majority of self-identified libertarians are in favor of the PATRIOT act and banning abortion, you're going to need to show some stats. (my understanding was that the PATRIOT act was a major way you tested the difference between libertarian-identified tea-partiers and conservative-identified tea-partiers.)