El futuro del Tea Party

The Tea Party and Insurgency Politics

(...)

The third question centers on how the Tea Party will influence American politics in the coming years. It would seem that the movement is in part a response to the policies of President Obama, who has sought to bring about the greatest consolidation of federal power since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. Hence, it can be predicted that the movement will throw whatever political weight it can muster against Obama when he faces re-election in 2012.

But the real battle now is against the Republican Party, which didn’t exactly embrace Tea Party principles when George W. Bush was president. Indeed, much of the flow of American politics that angers Tea Party adherents — increased federal spending, growing deficits, Washington’s earmark culture, the looming entitlement crises — were in full force during the Bush years. That’s why Tea Party adherents are so bent on busting up the Washington establishment by first busting up the GOP. In that sense, they resemble the Goldwater insurgency that took over the Republican Party in 1964 as a means of later taking over the country. That intraparty strategy differed from the later independent party rebellions of Wallace and Perot, but the political principles surrounding insurgency politics remain the same.

As for today’s Tea Party partisans, they don’t trust Washington, which they see as a place of mutual back-scratching, earmark collaborations, power grabs and what seems like unlimited amounts of money sloshing around for buying votes and for the personal aggrandizement of elected officeholders and their minions. The Tea Party aim is to attack that political establishment by capturing the forces of the Republican Party and then directing those forces against the perceived entrenched power of Washington.

Will it succeed? Not clear. But it is clear that this political phenomenon, which burst upon the scene so unexpectedly and has rumbled along with such force the past year and a half, isn’t going away anytime soon. It will continue to wreak havoc in the precincts of establishment politics until this establishment finds a way to siphon off a big portion of Tea Party anger with a brand of politics that absorbs at least some of its sentiment. History suggests there is no other way to tame this beast.

The Tea Party and Insurgency Politics is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

Un sistema político estable, como el de Estados Unidos, lo es porque es capaz de absorber las demandas de la población e incorporarlas a la agenda partidaria y gubernamental. Fenómenos como el del Tea Party surgen cuando un segmento importante de la población siente que sus demandas e intereses no encuentran un espacio en el sistema político. Salvando las distancias, algo parecido ocurrió en la Venezuela de 1999 cuando surgió Chávez como desafío a un bipartidismo que ya no respondía a las exigencias del momento.

En casos como el del Tea Party, el sistema deberá demostrar que es capaz de incorporar a esta nueva fuerza o arriesgarse a una ruptura impredecible. Siguiendo la conclusión del autor, cabe pensar que el Tea Party prosperará como fenómeno político hasta que el sistema político norteamericano (más probablemente el Partido Republicano) haga suyo alguno de sus principios y reclamos o hasta que se produzca un giro del gobierno de Obama hacia posiciones más "centristas" por así decirlo, como hizo Clinton después de la derrota legislativa de 1994.

En lo personal, veo muy difícil que Obama esté dispuesto a dar un giro en su política al estilo de Clinton; ha demostrado ser bastante dogmático e inflexible para los estándares de la política norteamericana y ya apostó demasiado capital en su agenda política como para dar marcha atrás sin pagar un costo importante. En cuanto a los republicanos, queda por determinar si el partido conserva su orientación actual o si los líderes asociados al Tea Party son capaces de desbancar a la conducción y darle una nueva orientación al partido.

De cualquier forma, no se sabrá hasta que pasen las elecciones de noviembre.