Michael Swickard
“It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” – Abraham Maslow
I have a friend who is daffy about golf. He spends every waking moment playing or talking about golf. He is either heading out to the golf course or just returning. His every conversation involves golf. One day at lunch he had gotten to the third hole in his descriptions (drove to the green with a three iron) when I interjected if I had to go all 18 holes I wanted caddy fees. That went over his head.
With this guy every conversation was quickly steered toward golf. Every illustration became a golf analogy, which was par for the course. He watched golf on television and, I suspect, slept on golf sheets. He was one of the few people who could listen to golf being played on the radio.
But he is no more rabid about golf than some people are about politics.
To many people there is nothing but politics. Every problem, every solution, every news story for them centers on politics. The yardstick they carry only measures political influence and action. Example: When someone speaks of rain or lack of rain these people trot out the global warming political statements either to be proven or not by the evidence of rain.
For these political junkies, their world is a zero-sum world where people either win or lose; there are no ties and there is no real cooperation. By its very definition running for office is either win or lose. In a political contest the person coming in second gets absolutely no seat at the table. Only the winner gets seated. You are either with us or against us.
Something unexpected
And then something totally unexpected happened in our country. A couple of years ago the TEA Party movement came into being. It was the summer of the ObamaCare debates. When elected representatives returned home for the summer recess, they were confronted with lots of citizens who hammered them about their support. In the middle of the reports, some reporters were looking for a way to describe all of these people who were not happy. A reference was made to the Boston Tea Party and some people said TEA stood for Taxed Enough Already.
To be sure, there is not just one movement; rather, there are almost as many TEA parties as there are people involved. This thing that rose out of the ashes of political action and a faltering economy began taking on a life of its own. At first, people wanted to label those people as working for the Republicans, but then some of the Republicans were smacked down by people who identified themselves as TEA partiers.
The problem I see is that the media and politicians (perhaps together or separately) see the TEA Party as an extension of one or the other of the political parties, most often the Republicans. Again, these are the people who only see things in terms of politics so THE TEA PARTY has to be one party and that party has to be Republican.
But many TEA Party people do not like the Republicans. They have assisted throwing some Republicans out of office. Who are they? The “nothing but politics” crowd reasons: They cannot be Democrats, so they have to be Republicans.
While I have not attended their meetings and have spoken to a few members of a couple TEA parties, it seems to me they are a loosely held and lead group of people who are paying attention to the actions of our elected leaders. Period. For the most part these watchers do not seem to want to be elected themselves; rather, they want a vote-by-vote look at how their representatives are functioning. They do not take these leaders as a whole and have no problem with calling out someone who is not doing the right things regardless of party.
Millions who have decided to care
Since the hardcore Rs and Ds only think of things in their world as R and D, they are trying to find a way to get the TEA Party to function as a political organization like themselves, but in many cases this is not possible. I suspect we will always only have two parties, but the people who identify themselves as TEA partiers will act as a third force but not dependably for either party.
It is all bottom up with the people I see. They are not following some exalted Ho-Ha that speaks for all TEA Party members nationwide. No, that is not them. A few Rs and Ds have tried to act like they are the national arm of the TEA Party movement, but most members of the TEA Party are not following.
Furthermore, the more the mainstream media focuses on this new element in the political universe, the less we really know because there are no dues or entry requirements like in a regular political organization. All it takes to belong to the TEA Party is to care about what is happening.
Obviously there are millions of new people who have decided to care – not a few of whom do not want to continue traditional politics. This is incomprehensible to the political junkies and mainstream media. Me, I think it is quite nice. Keep it up all of you different TEA parties; I am enjoying you being involved.
Swickard is co-host of the radio talk show News New Mexico, which airs from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday on KSNM-AM 570 in Las Cruces and throughout the state through streaming. His e-mail address is michael@swickard.com.