Just How Much of a Threat to Obama is the TEA Party Movement?

OPINION: by Sam Neagus

Despite the fact that just a matter of months ago, the Tea Party was dismissed as extreme conservatives with little chance of gaining a nationwide profile in the States’, the so called rebels have scored a stunning poll breakthrough which has evoked fear and amazement within the political elite in Washington.

The ‘Tea Party’ movement (that’s Taxed Enough Already, or named, rather aptly after the Bostonians who protested against British taxation by dumping tea in the city’s harbour in 1773) want to purify their party and country, returning America to the Founding Fathers’ aim of small government and minimal intervention. Seeing as it big government is often the result of excessive taxation, these grass-root protestors believe the best way to ‘starve the beast’ (in this case big government) is by reducing taxes. By their own account, the Tea Party rebels, who reject the current tax and spend system in place in the USA are ‘mad as hell’.

Nonetheless the Tea Party phenomenon poses a serious threat. The surge certainly came after the victory of Scott Brown, the Republican Senator who beat off Democrat competition to claim Teddy Kennedy’s once safe Democrat seat, which has caused a problem for President Obama, as his party have lost their filibuster-proof sixty Senator seats, thus any member of the Republican Party can, in theory block his legislation.

In one of the least expected results in the primary season (in preparation for the Congressional mid-terms in November) Christine O’Donnell, a Republican dissident who has been backed by Tea Party activists managed to secure nomination despite a supposedly strong moderate rival. What’s worse is that the seat up for election in Vice President Joe Biden’s once liberal home state of Delaware.
O’Donnell has been backed by former VP candidate Sarah Palin, and has been praised by the conservative heartland of America for her promotion of celibacy before marriage and her fiercely pro-gun and anti-big government beliefs.

Perhaps evidence therefore points to the fact that the Tea Party is emerging as a dominant faction of US politics; and in many ways that would be an accurate assumption, seeing as the movement claims to have 17 million followers, many of whom are ‘white, bright and right’.

Yet as we enter into this crucial built up to the Congressional mid-term elections, which could certainly make or break Obama’s Presidential administration, I’m not so confident this phenomenon can last. As history shows, America maintains a two party system, which the GOP (Republicans) and Democrats often absorbing other fringe parties and their policies (for example the Democrats and the Green Party), therefore there is certainly a chance that the same happens with the Tea Party movement.

My message is clear: Obama, no need to run scared just yet. His party have healthy majorities in both chambers of Congress, and defeating such a majority will certainly take a lot. Quite frankly, I can’t see the Tea Party activists being up for the job.