Deep divisions notwithstanding, there are a number of principles that unite the movement. The most important is a devotion to subsidiarity, which holds that power should rest as close to ordinary people as possible.
Read the whole thing. He may be right in his description of leading politicians who claim allegiance to the Tea Party, but I do not think he describes the movement at a grass roots level. I think of it as ordinary Americans who are filled with resentment of Washington. They perceive that Washington takes care of its own, not them.
Or that ordinary Americans realize that democracy has some flaws: the Washington insiders and their welfare legions team up to loot the middle class — as you indicated.
I’m not sure more democracy is the answer. The internet is striving mightily to come up with an alternative, but all roads lead to Rome.
I suspect Mr. Salam was trying to play a bit of diplomacy there, talking up federalism as a major policy goal, hoping it sounds less threatening to the average suburban housewife than major budget cuts, deregulation, and the elimination of a few cabinet level agencies.
“Washington takes care of its own, not them.” That seems accurate, as far as it goes. But do the Tea Partiers want Washington to “take care of” them? I hope the answer is ‘no’–that they are trying not to get their own snouts in the trough, but to make the trough disappear.
I think you are right that “resentment of Washington” is the thing that unites (to the extent that it even is united) the Tea Party.
But there are many and various resentments. To the extent that they are clarified into real principles, the Tea Party will fragment further.