[Ouch! I drafted this piece in April 2011 — then forgot to publish it. I don’t publish often (as you can tell from the paucity of postings), but this item might still have some value to someone out there.]
Mark Sumner's post ("Some causes should remain lost") highlights a characteristic of the Tea Party that reflects a deeper point about that amorphous group, a point implicit in these paragraphs in Sumner's piece:
A few weeks ago, I attended an organizing meeting for a group working to commemorate Civil War era events in the town where I now live. The discussion was held within spitting distance of the building where Grant had organized his forces before moving south, but you wouldn't have known it from the conversation. Almost to a person those in attendance agreed that the Southern cause had not been slavery, but some vaguely defined rebellion against growing federal power. The people at this meeting were not alone. A survey in 2010 found nearly half of Americans reluctant to pin the cause of the Civil War on slavery. A CNN poll released earlier this month repeated those results, with 42% of Americans stating that slavery was not the principal cause of the Civil War. Not only that, but a quarter of all Americans – 40% of those in the South – stated that their sympathies lay with the Confederates.
The highest level of support for the Confederate cause was among those who were white, lower income, older, and with no college. If that combination sounds familiar, you won't be surprised to hear that those who named themselves as Tea Party supporters were nearly twice as likely to be pro-Confederate as those who said they opposed the Tea Party. A majority of Tea Party supporters deny that slavery was the main reason for the war.
It should come as no surprise then that the rise of the Tea Party as the driving force within the Republican Party comes alongside increasing talk about state's rights and even calls for secession. When Rick Perry made claims that Texas still holds some right to secede from the United States, historians and legal scholars were quick to point out that there was no foundation for such a position. Perry's statements were a laughing matter for many, but he did not back away from these statements and they made him a hero in Tea Party ranks.
. . . .
In denying the truth about the motivations behind the war, the conservative core of the Republican Party has revived the romance of the lost cause. Perry's position may seem laughably extreme, but don't expect to keep laughing. It only takes a glance at the budget proposal passed out of the House this week on a party line vote to see that the most ludicrous visions of the Tea Party faithful can move from wish list to legislation with a speed that mimics the motto (inaccurately) attributed to Nathan Bedford Forrest: get thar fustest with the mostest. What seems unthinkable today, can be policy tomorrow. Don't be surprised if the Republican position on state's rights is extended to the right to secede, if not in this election cycle, then certainly by the next.
The point is this: despite their claims that they're upset about the purported unconstitutionality of Obama's and Democrats' policies and that talk about State's rights, etc., is nothing more than recurring to the true meaning of the Constitution, Tea Partiers and their fellow travelers aren't promoting constitutional fundamentalism. For most of us who hang around this part of the blogosphere, that's axiomatic. But that still leaves the question of what they are promoting. If you line up their rhetoric and stated policy preferences with the ideas and policies found in the Anti-Federalist Papers (and, as Mark Sumner did, with the ideas and policies underlying Southern secessionism), the overlap makes clear that the Tea Partiers and their acolytes are promoting constitutional rejectionism masquerading as constitutional fidelity. Essentially, they want out of the social contract known as (in the words of the preamble) the "Constitution for the United States of America."
For people who actually like and respect the Constitution, the problem remains: how to expose the Tea Party in a way that reveals its radical anti-constitutionalism, its unstated desire to return to the supposed halcyon days of the Articles of Confederation. In my view, the answer lies in finding ways to call the bluffs, openly and repeatedly. Just this past week, the House Democrats showed one way to do it, forcing House Republicans into a scramble to cover their tracks after voting for a budget proposal even more radically destructive than Paul Ryan's. We need more efforts of that sort: Democrats withholding votes and leaving Republicans as the sole supporters of their unpopular initiatives; Democratic members of Congress introducing legislation reflecting Republican radicalism ("The Paul Ryan Commemorative Medicare Elimination Act of 2011") and demanding "up or down" votes; letting radical Republican legislation sail through Congress unchanged (and without Democratic votes, of course) so Obama can veto it (while taking full advantage of the constitutionally permitted veto period, to allow the legislation to garner plenty of media coverage and commentary); and the like. In in a world increasingly indifferent, even hostile, to basing policy on, you know, facts, creative stagecraft has become — as the House Democrats showed — an important tool for getting reality-based views into the public debate and exposing the fantasy-based policy prescriptions of the Tea Party-owned Republican Party.