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7 - Moving Off Message

The Discursive Demobilization of the Tea Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2023

Patrick Rafail
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
John D. McCarthy
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

At its inception, the Tea Party embraced a platform emphasizing fiscal restraint, lower taxes, exclusive patriotism, and criticism of the Obama administration. This framing occupied a nearly empty discursive space within conservative grassroots activism. It combined the efforts of an anti-tax, anti-spending message that had been cultivated by elite conservative groups with genuine grassroots activism aimed at undermining the Obama presidency. The resonance of such claims was in part responsible for the Tea Party’s early success. This chapter traces the evolution of Tea Party discourse between 2009 and 2018 using a unique sample of 91,874 blog posts written by leaders and activists. Over time, the Tea Party’s tightly coherent messaging began to erode as Obama was reelected and the economy slowly began to recover from the Great Recession. Soon, Tea Party activists began to follow along with the flow of the broader conservative dialogue, thereby blurring the clarity of the original Tea Party message. We refer to this process as discursive demobilization, which helped further hasten the Tea Party’s decline.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Moving Off Message
  • Patrick Rafail, Tulane University, Louisiana, John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: The Rise, Fall, and Influence of the Tea Party Insurgency
  • Online publication: 07 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009423724.008
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Moving Off Message
  • Patrick Rafail, Tulane University, Louisiana, John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: The Rise, Fall, and Influence of the Tea Party Insurgency
  • Online publication: 07 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009423724.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Moving Off Message
  • Patrick Rafail, Tulane University, Louisiana, John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book: The Rise, Fall, and Influence of the Tea Party Insurgency
  • Online publication: 07 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009423724.008
Available formats
×