“A big part of our movement is: ‘Keep government out of our lives,’ ” said Rob Scott, co-founder of the Dayton Tea Party.
In congressional races across Ohio and in the Dayton area, candidates are pushing their Tea Party credentials. U.S. Rep. Mike Turner is facing a primary challenge from businesswoman Rene Oberer who says she supports Tea Party ideas.
In the heated Republican primary in the Ohio Auditor’s race, both state Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights, and Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost are appealing to Tea Party voters.
A recent New York Times-CBS poll found that about 18 percent of Americans call themselves Tea Party supporters, a group that tends to be conservative, white, male and older than 45.
It is also a movement made up of people making a lot of claims about what the U.S. Constitution says, what it means and what the country’s founders intended.
Political and constitutional scholars said much of that rhetoric is off base, and they criticized conservative television commentators such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity for feeding into that by distorting the truth.
“Those folks don’t know any more about the law than people on the streets do,” said Richard Saphire, a University of Dayton law professor. “There are a lot of these so-called ‘opinion molders’ who have this romanticized notion that the Constitution is what the founders said it should be and judges should stick to that.”
On a recent Saturday, former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine spoke to a room full of Tea Party supporters who gave a cool reception to his defense of his own conservative credentials in his run for Ohio attorney general.
DeWine, a Republican, a former Greene County prosecutor and 24-year member of Congress with an 80 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, couldn’t even win much of a reaction when he told the crowd at the Miami County Liberty Fair that he and his wife were getting concealed carry gun permits.
But the group widely applauded Tea Party activist, and erstwhile DeWine challenger, Steve Christopher, when he followed DeWine at the event podium and said there was “no conservative” in the race for Ohio attorney general.
The Tea Party movement with its “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirts and anti-tax and anti-health care reform signs is loud and very visible in the year since groups began forming.
Local Tea Party groups get active
About 8,000 tickets were handed out for a Dayton Tea Party rally at Wright State University’s Nutter Center on April 13, and the Tea Party movement attracts people who have never been involved in politics, said Rob Scott, co-founder of the Dayton Tea Party.
“I think they’re mad,” said Scott. “You have a lot of people who have had their pay checks cut, or they haven’t had a pay raise or they’ve lost their jobs.”
Scott said people are angry that the government continues to spend as everyday people cut back.
“Like other Americans, I was concerned about what was going on it my country. It started with the Bush administration spending so much money,” said Cynthia J. Biegher, founder of the Beavercreek Liberty Group, one of about 30 area sub-chapters of the Dayton Tea Party. “We are spending all this money, but we’re not really succeeding at anything.”
While Tea Party activists sometimes mention spending under the Republicans and the first bank bailout, it was health care reform pushed by Democrats that really energized them.
Tea Party members such as Rene Oberer, a Republican running against U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, said that health care reform is socialism in action and part of a steady decline in freedom for Americans.
Critics note that there was no groundswell of conservatives against such Bush-era legislation as the Patriot Act.
“That’s government intrusion. Why weren’t they upset then,” said Mark Owens, chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party.
Tea Party activists are by no means unified in all their views, said Scott, who likens running a Tea Party group to “herding cats.”
“We have our pillars. It’s advocacy for smaller government, fiscal responsiblity, support for free markets and small business and support for the U.S. Constitution,” Scott said.
Who makes up the Tea Party?
A New York Times-CBS poll earlier this month found that about 18 percent of people call themselves Tea Party supporters.
As a group, Tea Party supporters disapprove of President Barack Obama and Congress in much higher numbers than the general public. They are far more likely to describe themselves as conservative, and tend to be white male Republicans, the poll found.
Some political scientists, constitutional scholars and political leaders say they applaud the energy of the activists and like to see people involved in public affairs.
“I’ve never seen anything like it that was this large and that was this vocal and that is this passionate,” said Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University.
But the Tea Party movement also is criticized for having simplistic views of what is involved in governing, and for what constitutional scholars say are questionable claims about the U.S. Constitution and the country’s founders.
“Individuals are entitled to their view of the Constitution,” said Richard Saphire, a University of Dayton law professor. “But much of what they’ve argued has a pretty serious disconnect with what the Constitution has come to mean over time.”
Scott, a UD law student, concurs that Tea Party members sometimes take a simplistic view of the Constitution.
“The very first article delegates law-making authority to Congress. Congress can make laws,” said Scott. “I think what the Tea Partiers stand for is, ‘Hey, you guys are going too far.’ They want more local control.”
Smith said it is not an unreasonable argument for Tea Party supporters to contend that the founders favored limited government and that Congress has overstepped its constitutional right to issue regulations. But as those powers have been extended, the Supreme Court has not chosen to step in and halt much of it, Smith said.
“It’s amazing how little context, background, history really informs these discussions,” said Herb Asher, professor emeritus of polticial science at Ohio State University.
“It amazes me that there is often the mentality of ‘I know what I know, my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.’”
One example: Tea Party members spotted carrying signs saying “Keep government out of my Medicare” have area political scientists scratching their heads, considering that Medicare is a creation of the government.
Tea Party impact on upcoming election
Nancy Miller, an associate professor of political science at UD, said the Tea Party is likely to have its biggest impact in the Republican primaries around the country and in Ohio on May 4.
“If they are able to get people to turn out, they may be able to knock some more moderate Republicans out of the race, which in November could actually spell trouble for the Republican Party because moderates may not be willing to vote for someone strongly aligned with the Tea Party movement or somebody who is so conservative,” Miller said.
Greg Gantt, chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party, said it remains to be seen if Tea Party criticism of Republicans such as DeWine will do lasting harm to Republicans.
DeWine earned the ire of conservatives when he voted with Democrats on a 2005 compromise on judicial appointments. The next year he lost his U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Sherrod Brown.
“So you can be a conservative and carry the banner for all these years and (with one vote) you’re haunted for life,” Gantt said.
“That’s the mood of the public right now. Politics isn’t always fair,” Gantt said. “I don’t think it’s a fair analysis of (DeWine). I have got to think that at some point he’s probably personally hurt.”
In an interview this week, DeWine said his decision to get a concealed carry permit at age 63 was not a blatant appeal to the Tea Party, which tends to support gun rights. He said he simply wants to understand the concealed carry permitting process since he will administer it if elected attorney general.
“I’m not necessarily saying I’m going to carry a weapon,” he added.
Several other local candidates are taking heat from Tea Party activists, including incumbent Turner in his primary race against Oberer, founder of the Vandalia Liberty Group.
The Republican primary for Ohio auditor features a bitter fight between Delaware County Prosecutor David Yost, the Ohio GOP-endorsed Republican, against Tea Party-endorsed state Rep. Seth Morgan, R-Huber Heights. Scott works for Morgan’s campaign.
Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, is running a TV ad featuring a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and comments about “immoral government debt.”
Husted’s opponent in the race for Ohio secretary of state, former Ashtabula County Auditor Sandra O’Brien, is Tea Party endorsed and strongly critical of Husted on taxes, a point he argues she is wrong about.
Democrats admit they enjoy watching Republicans fight amongst themselves.
“My friends in the mainstream Republican party no longer have a home unless they embrace Tea Party values,” said Chris Redfern, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman.
Redfren said Republican candidates such as Mike DeWine, John Kasich, who is running for governor, and Rob Portman, who is running for U.S. Senate are “pandering” to the Tea Party, and the move to the right by Husted will cost him the election for secretary of state in November.
The four candidates denied the “pandering” charge and said the Tea Party movement is plugged in to the mood of the country.
Democrats need to understand that “not just the Tea Party but America is very concerned that we’re spending ourselves into fiscal oblivion and that they want to see all government, whether it’s Democratic or Republican, start to act in a more fiscally responsible way,” Husted said.
Owens believes the Tea Party is not reflective of most Americans views, but is instead a group of angry people being manipulated by “the right-wing noise machine.”
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