feet. Capitol Hill was flooded with calls and e-mails. Never had the Twitterverse sounded so angry.
And support for the bill then crumbled. Leaders from both political parties began to signal their retreat. For the first time ever, the Hollywood lobbyists had been stopped by a grassroots, Internet-based open-source movement. A giant had awakened. It had flexed a digital muscle. Washington responded.
These waves have flowed in a direction. They speak to a potential that if nurtured could become real. For we outsiders—call us “citizens”—still have the authority over the insiders—call them “politicians.” At least if we can find again a way to speak. And then to act.
The aim of this short book is to point. It is to offer one way forward. I don’t speak as a leader of any part of these movements. But movements today are movements without leaders. They are movements of ideas mixed with passion. And so I offer these ideas, mixed with my own passion, not as a politician or as a politician wannabe but as a citizen, and a committed outsider, who wants a citizen politics to have an important and lasting effect on this Republic. Again.
I have enormous respect for (at least some) politicians. I don’t diminish their sacrifice at all.
But it is time that we recognize a politics that doesn’t depend upon them. And time that we do something useful with it.
Chapter 2
Passionate
On a sunny Saturday in February 2011, I walked into the Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, to attend my first Tea Party (Patriots) conference. I’m not a Tea Partier—I don’t support the substantive vision of most within that movement—but I was fascinated by the Tea Party’s success in the previous midterm elections (Republicans gained sixty-three seats in the House and six seats in the Senate, as well as seven hundred seats in state legislatures and six governorships), 2 and I wanted to understand something more about its power.
Though the movement had been brewing long before, the Tea Party got launched on February 19, 2009, when, on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli launched into a rant about President Obama’s mortgage assistance program. He ended the rant with a call: “It’s time,” he said, “for another Tea Party.”
The rant was quickly posted to YouTube, and that link was shared broadly on Twitter. Thousands responded. Grassroots events were organized across the country. Less than two months later, on April 15, 2009 (Tax Day), an astonishing 1.2 million people attended more than 850 Tea Party events across the country. As Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, cofounders of the Tea Party Patriots, put it in their upcoming book, Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution, “The first American Revolution may have begun with a gunshot, but the second American Revolution began with a hashtag.” 3
Whether a revolution or not, the Tea Party is certainly a powerful new force in American politics today. In their new book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson estimate that there are “about 200,000 U.S. adults who are on the rolls of active local Tea Parties.” 4 That large number reflects the party’s strong national support: “From late 2009 on, about 30% of American adults reported having a generally favorable impression of the Tea Party. Reported support bounced around that same level into 2011.” 5 In the 2010 election, the Tea Party accounted for an astonishing 40 percent of the votes cast. 6 And that energy continued through the following spring, when the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Partiers with the strongest grassroots ties, 7 gathered in Arizona.
The Phoenix Convention Center is big. That Saturday morning, its main hall was packed. Close to seventeen hundred souls had crossed the country to be there that weekend. The crowd looked just like the demographics the political scientists had
And support for the bill then crumbled. Leaders from both political parties began to signal their retreat. For the first time ever, the Hollywood lobbyists had been stopped by a grassroots, Internet-based open-source movement. A giant had awakened. It had flexed a digital muscle. Washington responded.
These waves have flowed in a direction. They speak to a potential that if nurtured could become real. For we outsiders—call us “citizens”—still have the authority over the insiders—call them “politicians.” At least if we can find again a way to speak. And then to act.
The aim of this short book is to point. It is to offer one way forward. I don’t speak as a leader of any part of these movements. But movements today are movements without leaders. They are movements of ideas mixed with passion. And so I offer these ideas, mixed with my own passion, not as a politician or as a politician wannabe but as a citizen, and a committed outsider, who wants a citizen politics to have an important and lasting effect on this Republic. Again.
I have enormous respect for (at least some) politicians. I don’t diminish their sacrifice at all.
But it is time that we recognize a politics that doesn’t depend upon them. And time that we do something useful with it.
Chapter 2
Passionate
On a sunny Saturday in February 2011, I walked into the Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, to attend my first Tea Party (Patriots) conference. I’m not a Tea Partier—I don’t support the substantive vision of most within that movement—but I was fascinated by the Tea Party’s success in the previous midterm elections (Republicans gained sixty-three seats in the House and six seats in the Senate, as well as seven hundred seats in state legislatures and six governorships), 2 and I wanted to understand something more about its power.
Though the movement had been brewing long before, the Tea Party got launched on February 19, 2009, when, on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli launched into a rant about President Obama’s mortgage assistance program. He ended the rant with a call: “It’s time,” he said, “for another Tea Party.”
The rant was quickly posted to YouTube, and that link was shared broadly on Twitter. Thousands responded. Grassroots events were organized across the country. Less than two months later, on April 15, 2009 (Tax Day), an astonishing 1.2 million people attended more than 850 Tea Party events across the country. As Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, cofounders of the Tea Party Patriots, put it in their upcoming book, Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution, “The first American Revolution may have begun with a gunshot, but the second American Revolution began with a hashtag.” 3
Whether a revolution or not, the Tea Party is certainly a powerful new force in American politics today. In their new book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson estimate that there are “about 200,000 U.S. adults who are on the rolls of active local Tea Parties.” 4 That large number reflects the party’s strong national support: “From late 2009 on, about 30% of American adults reported having a generally favorable impression of the Tea Party. Reported support bounced around that same level into 2011.” 5 In the 2010 election, the Tea Party accounted for an astonishing 40 percent of the votes cast. 6 And that energy continued through the following spring, when the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Partiers with the strongest grassroots ties, 7 gathered in Arizona.
The Phoenix Convention Center is big. That Saturday morning, its main hall was packed. Close to seventeen hundred souls had crossed the country to be there that weekend. The crowd looked just like the demographics the political scientists had
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