Democrats try to make 'Tea Party' a smear

Martha T. Moore | USA TODAY

The failure of Tea Party-backed candidates in Tuesday's election shows that Democrats have been successful in making the Tea Party label a negative for Republicans, even if it isn't always clear what being a Tea Party candidate means.

Exit polls in Virginia, where Republican Ken Cucinelli lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, show 42% of voters had a negative opinion of the Tea Party movement. Those voters went overwhelmingly for McAuliffe. A Tea Party-affiliated Republican in Alabama, Dean Young, lost a congressional primary against Bradley Byrne, who was backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests. In New Jersey, voters re-elected Republican Gov. Chris Christie by a landslide while expressing dislike of both the Republican Party (57%) and the Tea Party movement (45%), exit polls show.

Democrats touted those results in a conference call Wednesday. "The Republican brand and the Tea Party brand are one and the same and people do not like either,'' said Mo Elleithee, Democratic National Committee spokesman."There is no distinction in the mind of voters.''

By emphasizing the Tea Party ties of social conservatives such as Cuccinelli, Young, and former Missouri congressman Todd Akin, Democrats are able to blur the distinction between the limited government/less spending origins of the Tea Party and the staunch opposition to gay marriage and abortion of Republican conservatives.

Democrats conflate the Tea Party and the GOP "because they see that it hurts us,'' says Keli Carender, national grass-roots director of the Tea Party Patriots. "Social issues are so hot button that it's easy for Democrats to make them the main point when they're talking about somebody.''

October's government shutdown was pushed by Tea Party leaders Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, but supported by a majority of congressional Republicans — further eroding the distinction between the Tea Party and the GOP.

Tea Party principles had been "perverted'' by Republicans in Washington who "use that theory just to try to enhance themselves politically,'' Christie, a critic of the shutdown, said this week on CNN. Republicans should have been emphasizing instead their success in cutting government spending through the sequester, which imposed automatic spending cuts, he said.

"The core of the Tea Party movement, as I understand it, I think is very consistent with good conservative Republicanism,'' Christie said in the CNN interview. "But some of the stuff that's happened of late down in Washington I think is not even consistent with what a lot of the real folks who started the Tea Party movement would agree with.''

The Tea Party is blurry by definition because it's a movement, not a party, says Adam Brandon of the Tea Party group Freedom Works. "The Tea Party is an easy punching bag ... from the left and it's a punching bag from the right. There's no one out there really defending it,'' he says. "It's too easy to fall into a situation where if you're a challenger you're automatically a Tea Party candidate, (or) if you're not handpicked by the establishment you're a Tea Party candidate.''

What works instead, Brandon says, is for Republicans to avoid labels and talk about cutting spending and taxes, the Tea Party's core issues. "Even if people have a negative view of the Tea Party, they have a positive view of all these issues we're talking about.''

Rob Collins, chief strategist for the Senate GOP's 2014 campaign operation, said Democrats' focus on GOP divisions is overstated. "It's not so much an ideological rift, it's more of a tactical rift. Strategically, we all want the same thing," he told reporters this week.

But Collins acknowledged that the GOP is facing pressure not only from grass-roots activists and outside groups that are attempting to harness them, but also increasingly from its mainstream constituencies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the business lobby .

"There's a whole lot of folks out there that are Tea Party and then there's — call them what you want — the elites, the D.C.-based leaders of folks … and those are different creatures," Collins said. "In order for us to win in the fall and also elect the right candidate, we need the Tea Party, we need the business crowd, we need everybody pulling on the same oar."

That may not happen, Carender says. If voters now see little distinction between Republicans and Tea Partiers, they should wait until 2014 when the conflict between establishment GOP and grass-roots-backed candidates will make the distinctions clear, she says. "There's going to be some serious primary battles going on.''

Contributing: Susan Davis

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