Weak tea?

Like most liberal and progressive bloggers, I’ve sounded warnings about the teabagger political “movement”, the danger in their ignorance and the extent to which they’re being manipulated by corporate elites, among other things. While they’re not nearly as powerful as they think they are, there's still danger.

The teabaggers declared they’d drive out incumbent members of Congress, though whether that meant all incumbents, only Democrats or only those who weren’t conservative enough for their liking varied from place to place. The score so far? Not exactly in their favour.

This weekend, three-term Republican US Senator Bob Bennett of Utah was tossed aside by his party’s convention. His sin was that he wasn’t conservative enough for teabaggers because he’d voted in favour of Bush’s Wall Street bailout package. But even this “win” is debatable: Both US Representatives from Utah and the state’s Governor won the party’s re-nomination, and they’re incumbents.

In Indiana, the teabaggers assumed their candidate would win the Republican nomination for US Senate. They were wrong. Instead of a teabagger, Hoosiers picked former Senator Dan Coates, now a corporate lobbyist and ultimate insider—the opposite of what the teabaggers like to think they are.

To liberals and progressives, this serves as proof that the supposed power of the teabaggers has been greatly exaggerated, and conservative Republicans might breathe a little bit easier since their candidates may not be turfed out for not being conservative enough. I’d argue that it’s too early to count out the teabaggers or the danger they pose.

First, Republicans are under threat: The teabaggers who are active in elections tend to be extreme rightwing Republicans; apart from the odd quixotic independent run here and there, we can expect them to be active only in the Republican Party. This is why once at least occasionally sensible conservatives like John McCain have recently lurched to the far right. Even when teabaggers don’t win Republican nominations, they can force Republican politicians to the far, far right.

Democrats shouldn’t take them for granted, either. While polls show that the teabagger movement is a minority, fringe movement, mid-term election years, like 2010, often have very low voter turn-out and when that happens fringe movements can have a huge impact and even determine who wins an election (particularly when backed by a cable network running teabagger propaganda 24 hours a day).

All of which means that it’s too early to count the teabaggers out, despite their mostly poor results so far. I hope this reality sinks in among liberals and progressives so they do the hard work necessary to keep teabaggers out of government. The teabaggers won’t sit out the elections, after all.

I took the photo at the top of this post, by the way. I've been experimenting with taking more editorial-style photos.