Just as Obamania energized the Democratic base for a decisive electoral victory in 2008, Tea Party Fever appears ready to be do the same for the Republican base in this year's mid-term elections in the United States. The Tea Party is more a loosely-affiliated faction of the conservative wing than a well-organized political group, but the activities of its fervent supporters have certainly made an impact. In the last few months, candidates supported by the Tea Party have won Senate primary elections in Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Florida, and Alaska, in many cases uprooting long-established Republican incumbents. In many of these races, these Tea Party Republicans appear poised to defeat their Democratic opponents in the upcoming general election.
For Global Citizens, this is a worrying trend. While the domestic policy aims of the Tea Party are difficult to articulate, generally manifesting as incoherent rants against President Obama, their distaste and distrust of the United Nations and other international organizations rings loud and clear. Sometimes this manifests itself in irrational conspiracy theories, such as that of the Republican Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes, who believes that a bicycle-sharing program in Denver is part of a U.N. plot to take over America. Whenever a speaker attacks the U.N. at a Tea Party rally, the crowd goes wild.
As far as foreign policy goes, the Tea Party is a mix of those who favor the unilateral interventionist approach of the Neoconservatives and those who favor the isolationism preached by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). Neither perspective makes any sense to Global Citizens, who want a world in which the nations work together through global institutions to ensure peace and security and tackle global problems. The empire-builders among the Neoconservatives and the America Firsters among the isolationists are both equally wrong. and equally dangerous.
The Republicans are almost certain to make significant gains in the Senate in the upcoming elections, and some pundits believe that they have a chance of actually recapturing control of the chamber. Whatever happens, the Republicans are likely to be in a much better position to obstruct the foreign policy objectives of President Obama, and the presence of these Tea Party-backed Senators will be very bad news for the priorities of Global Citizens.
If the New START agreement on nuclear reductions with Russia is not ratified before the end of the current congressional session, we can expect these Tea Partiers to loudly denounce the treaty in the opening days of the next session and do everything they can to defeat its ratification. If they succeed, the struggle against nuclear proliferation will suffer a body blow.
We can expect the Tea Partiers to oppose paying the share of United States funding to the U.N., even though this is part of our treaty obligations as a signatory to the U.N. Charter and thus refusing to pay them would be a unconstitutional violation of Article Six of the United States Constitution (which the Tea Party claims to cherish). President Obama and the Democratic Congress helped restore American credibility in the U.N. by fully paying the American share of U.N. funds, and it would a shame for America to return to the days when it refused to meet its obligations.
We can expect the Tea Partiers to object to increasing American involvement in the International Criminal Court, and to fight to the death to prevent actual American ratification of the Rome Statute that would make the country a full ICC member. We can also expect them to oppose American ratification of international treaties banning antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions, putting their ideological rigidity ahead of making the world a safer and more humane place for children and other innocent civilians.
We can also expect the Tea Partiers to fight against efforts to bring the United States into any international agreement on the critical issue of climate change. Last year's summit in Copenhagen failed to produce a workable treaty, and the world cannot afford another such failure. Strong Tea Party influence in the Senate will make such a treaty much more problematic, especially since the Tea Party seems pretty divorced from reality on the subject.
Global Citizens in the United States must work to defeat these Tea Party candidates. Most obviously, they need to support those candidates who will be facing them in the November elections, through financial support and volunteering directly for their campaigns. Furthermore, Global Citizens in the United States should also give their support to internationalist Republicans who are opposed to the foreign policy perspectives of the Tea Party, such as Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, Congressman Mike Castle of Deleware (who is now running for the Senate) , and Congressman Joseph Cao of Louisiana (who is in a tough battle for reelection).
Time to get to work.
I don't think the Tea Party is nearly as sophisticated as your article pictures it. As you said "The Tea Party is more a loosely-affiliated faction of the conservative wing than a well-organized political group" My take is that most of them are political novices who are sincerely frightened because the governemnt of our country simply doesn't work any more. They are afraid our country will implode under the debt our leaders have accumulated. If that happens, any global aspirations we have (from space exploration to achieving world peace) will be irrevocably lost.
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