Are Tea Party Members Libertarians or Social Conservatives? We have touched on this topic here before, but Robert Jones, writing at The Washington Post, nails it. Here is a taste:
Tea party caucus leader Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) flip-flop on this issue illustrates the bind many tea party supported candidates must feel. Just last month, Bachman appeared on a webinar sponsored by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List and declared that she would fight “eyeball to eyeball” to keep the rider to defund Planned Parenthood in the budget bill, saying, “The next time we vote on the continuing resolution we have to insist on defunding ‘Obamacare’ and defunding Planned Parenthood…. My opinion is there is a point where you draw the line in the sand and you have a hill where you die on. I think this is our issue.”
But just last night, Bachmann reversed herself in an interview with John King on CNN, saying, “Well, my opinion is this. I think that we should have clean bill that makes sure that the paycheck gets to the troops on time.”
Bachmann’s waffling on this issue, and the lack of a clarion call from the tea party to have a clean budget bill, may be because tea party elected officials grasp a complicating truth: rank and file tea party members are not libertarians but social conservatives.
Heading into the elections last October, Public Religion Research Institute released data from our American Values Survey that showed that Americans who identify with the tea party do not fit the libertarian mold tea party elites use to describe the movement. We found nearly half (47 percent) of rank and file Americans who consider themselves part of the tea party movement also identifying with the Christian right movement. In fact, this revelation led to the coining of the term “Teavangelicals” by David Brody at Christian Broadcasting Network.
Moreover, we found that on hot-button issues, Americans who identify with the tea party are not libertarians favoring limited government involvement and maximum personal liberty. Instead, they are much more socially conservative than the general public: less than one-in five support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, and nearly two-thirds of those identifying with the tea party movement say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
All along “Tea Party” has simply been a way for most adherents to rebrand their reactionary politics apart from the “Republican” label that got damaged in the 2008 election. Surveys like this have been very consistent in such findings.
My sense is that many true Libertarians have felt miffed that this larger wing of the right has made off with the rhetoric and, to some extent, style of event that the Ron Paul campaign pioneered in 2008, without paying more than lip service to libertarian principles.