The Tea Party is Dead, Long Live the Tea Party

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Is the Tea Party dead? Dave Weigel points out that, unlike 2010, Tea Party challenges to Republican incumbents have gone nowhere this year. Once vulnerable Senate candidates like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, and Olympia Snowe now look pretty safe. But that’s only because, for all practical purposes, they’ve abased themselves so utterly to the Tea Party’s demands:

The Tea Party, the Club for Growth—the whole movement has succeeded in driving Republicans further to the right. Nuking a few moderates in primaries was only part of that—a great story for the horse-race media, but not something that would keep up as the GOP was purified….Republicans seem to have figured this out. It’s increasingly likely that no incumbent Republican will lose a primary to a Tea Partier in 2012. The movement can consolidate its gains. Safe districts and the fear of primaries do more to keep Republicans straight than the occasional wins.

I think this was always the endgame for the Tea Party. Just like every other fluorescence of right-wing activism over the past 50 years, its destiny was to flare up, get incorporated into the Republican Party, and then die out. The big difference this time has been just how complete its incorporation has been. Ultra-conservative flare-ups in the past have been increasingly potent — the John Birch Society was more successful than the Liberty League, the Gingrich-inflected Clinton conspiracy theorists were more successful than the Birchers, and the Tea Party in turn has been more successful than the Gringrichites — which has brought us to the point where there’s really no meaningful distance between the ultras and the Republican Party establishment. The Tea Party really is dying away, I think, but only because their victory has been so total. For the time being, anyway, they control the Republican Party from top to bottom.

But for how long? Good question. Look me up in another decade or so and I’ll let you know.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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