The tea party and the politics of paranoia
Posted under: News Releases , Politics and Government , Research , Social Science. Members of tea party claim the movement springs from and promotes basic American conservative principles such as limited government and fiscal responsibility. But new research by University of Washington political scientist Christopher Parker argues that the tea party ideology owes more to the paranoid politics associated with the John Birch Society - and even the infamous Ku Klux Klan - than to traditional American conservatism. Parker is the author, with fellow UW political scientist Matt Barreto, of a new book titled " Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America ,” published this spring by Princeton University Press. At the heart of their book is a nationwide telephone survey overseen by Parker in early 2011 of 1,500 adults - equal numbers of men and women - across 13 geographically diverse states. The results starkly illustrate where tea partyers and true conservatives part ideological ways. Responses place tea party members far to the right of the mainstream Republican conservatism of Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and even George W. Bush - viewing President Obama as a faux citizen, a Muslim and socialist agitator, bent on America's demise.
