Opening Remarks:
Hi, I’m Gina Cooper, the Political Outsider.
This week I want to talk about CPAC and the Tea Party movement, the progressive “un-conference, Roots camp, and compare issues addressed at each of these conferences last weekend.
I will wrap up with what this comparison reveals as the real challenge to the Tea Party movement.
One of the biggest newsmakers this weekend was the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Held at a Washington DC Marriott and boasting nearly 10,000 attendees,
CPAC bills itself as “America’s Oldest and Largest Grassroots Conservative Organization.”
By all accounts CPAC was a smashing success
- attracting luminaries of the conservative movement such as
Newt Gingrich,
Rick Santorum,
Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann
and even Dick Cheney,
who after leaving office 13 months ago with a whopping 13% approval rating
got the loudest applause.
But it wasn’t these legacy personalities that made CPAC newsworthy.
It was their efforts towards bringing the Tea Party activists into their fold that caught the media’s interest.
Meanwhile, at the corner of M and 16th streets in DC, there was another hotbed of grassroots energy. The progressive New Organizing Institute was sponsoring Roots Camp, a forum for political organizers
and grassroots leaders
to come together,
reflect on the past year,
and share strategies about what worked
and what didn’t.
Roots Camp didn’t boast a star-studded agenda that many people would recognize. Roots Camp attendees consider each other rock star enough. And, Roots Camp had no pre-determined agenda, but rather the 700 or so community leaders in attendance
were asked to self-organize
the morning before
the “un-conference” began.
In beginning this analysis
I had a hard time getting past
the over-the-top rhetoric of CPAC’s speakers
--and by example I cite Steve King,
the congressman representing the western 1/3 of Iowa,
whose hate -baiting
commentary equated Progressives like me
with Trotsky ites,
Mao ists,
and Stalinists,
along with Senator Scott Brown and his references to “liberal
neo-
monarchists.”
Human Events editor, Jed Babbin’s joke
about Grover Norquist
crashing a plane into an IRS building
was pretty unsettling as well.
Nonetheless,
a thoughtful comparison of CPAC agenda items with Roots Camp
gives insight
into the politically opposite movements they each represent.
First, surprisingly, there was some common ground.
For example, both sides acknowledge that the status quo needs to be challenged.
At Roots Camp, one organizer hosted a discussion titled,
“Causin' A Ruckus:
Civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action.”
At CPAC attendees were treated to
“When All Else Fails:
Nullification
& State Resistance
to Federal Tyranny."
Also, both sides felt like
large,
powerful and
unaccountable interests
were destroying their way of life. From the left, a panel titled “Stop the Corporate Takeover of America”
found it’s counterpart on the right,
“Saving Freedom from
the Tax Collectors.”
And both sides talked about courting constituencies traditionally associated with the other side
At Roots Camp, the panel “Be All That You Can Be... Veterans & Military Organizing,”
was led by
Alex Cornell du Houx, a Marine Corps Sergeant
and member of Maine’s
House of Representatives.
He was joined by Jonathan Powers, an Army Captain”
Meanwhile, at CPAC
the panel, “Getting Started in
Hollywood”
had “industry veterans”
instructing attendees
on
“the ins and outs of getting a career started in Film, TV and Theater.”
At Roots Camp there was an underlying theme of engaging constituencies. Discussions centered on web-based tool sets, micro targeting and fundraising, for example.
CPAC’s focus was on
the enemies of values that threaten to snuff out liberty.
In fact, the titles of 7 out of 14 panels at CPAC began with the words, “Saving Freedom.”
One of the “Saving Freedom” panels that stood out to me was
“Saving Freedom One Patriot at a Time.”
When looking for a parallel presentation on the left,
I found
“Igniting Initiative:
The essence of boldness in Coalition Building”
and another panel,
“Who is in the Tea Party? Is there some common ground?”
This last comparison illustrates the challenge set forth for the Tea Party movement. Can they overcome their own extreme members - those who hold up signs depicting the president as Hitler, for example,
and leaders
who
with all the gravitas
their bitter spirits can muster
call people like me “Commies” -
can they break away to build the kinds of mainstream coalitions that will attract the independent voters they will need to win elections?
Or will they stand alone, finding nothing but enemies of freedom in their neighbors.
This was a challenge
the populist left faced.
The Progressive Netroots would not have grown in power
had leadership not rejected the left fringe. For example, Daily Kos founder,
Markos Moulitsas,
denounced those
who would compare President Bush to Hitler.
He banned from his website
the 9-11 truthers - people who argued
that President Bush knew of the attack on the World Trade Center in advance .
And even I had my own run in with Code Pink at our annual Netroots Nation conference.
In short, the fringe and the hateful
will always be
with both the left and the right.
But what leadership does about it,
whether it acts to marginalize those influences, or stokes paranoia, matters.
Born out of a wide-spread frustration
that the centers of power
are not representing the interest of regular people,
the maturation of the Tea Party movement into something lasting and important
rests on their willingness to dump their own hateful fringe,
focus on organizing
and building support for their ideas,
rather than just outrage
for the many grievances they hold against their fellow Americans.
I'm Gina Cooper, the Political Outsider. You can check out my work at MiddleCoastLLC.com
and my thoughts as a regular citizen turned political strategist at ginacooper.com.
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