Profoundly, this series of successes has resulted in what is at this point an identifiable third wing of the Republican party, one not fully beholden to either the religious wing or the corporatist wing. This new "Tea Party" branch took the basic message their corporate-lobbyist sponsors originally gave them—don't tax rich people, don't regulate corporate activity—and combined it with an assortment of old John Bircheresque fears and conspiracy theories, and ran with it. Glenn Beck and his chalkboard of always-imminent doom helped immensely with this, as he lectured his base on all the new things they desperately needed to be afraid of, an unending stream of secret plots and secret liberal organizations all tied together under ominous names like "ACORN" or "Agenda 21". These sorts of things have great appeal for a certain segment of the population, a population perhaps especially riled at the thought of a non-white person being in the Oval Office, but who in general see things to be feared everywhere, and suspect larger plots around every corner.

While they call themselves the "Tea Party", therefore, I think it makes much more sense to think of them as the conspiracy branch of the party. They are not strictly religion-obsessed, as with the Pat Robertson wing of the party. And they certainly don't identify with the corporatist wing of the party, even though their original agenda was mostly a corporate wish-list pushed onto them from prominent GOP lobbying firms.

Instead, their major belief system now revolves most around various conspiracies involving the government (and the United Nations, and a wide range of other ominous forces) keeping them down: they see their prime task, therefore, as destruction of those forces. Whether government serves the needs of the "private sector" is no longer the main focus of their brand of conservatism: they want government crippled, period, and whether it helps or hurts the private marketplace is entirely beside the point.

Cut environmental regulations, not because corporations want that but because it helps defeat a plot by the United Nations to force us all into "sustainability". Cut government services to the sick, the poor, the elderly, and everyone else because all those things are plots by nebulous other people to take our hard-earned money, and that's a path to dangerous fasci-commi-socialism. Cut tax revenues, and the government has to do less of everything, which, if you are a conspiracy theorist convinced that the government is just that far from taking all your guns and ammunition and putting you in secret detention facilities in Colorado, is about the best you can possibly hope for.



As is always the case, the seeds of this new conspiracy movement come from numerous places. Grover Norquist and his Randian wing of the party readily provided the destroy all government foundation. The election of Obama provided a profound motivation for racist and militia elements, which tend to be avid conspiracy-mongers almost by definition: immediately after the election, a conspiracy theory involving the government coming to take your guns or make it impossible to by ammunition took off, with no apparent basis other than muttering by the NRA. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh worked feverishly to mainstream crackpot theories of all stripes, though Beck's seem more identifiably Bircher in nature. Dick Armey provided the seed money, and even the buses, and Fox News provided advertisement: the former, in hopes of goosing corporatist themes, and the latter because anything Republican simply needs goosing. In terms of raw ideology, however, Glenn Beck deserves special notice as the person who, more than any other, helped build the Tea Party through his devoted coverage and attention, and who helped mold their common ideological beliefs via his televised parade of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists.

Note that the religious wing was initially (and rather conspicuously) left out: this was a movement promoted to redeem and rebrand corporate conservatism, not religious conservatism. The very brand, "Tea Party", was intended to refer to the premise of overtaxation and supposed government oppression. Insofar as individual religious conservatives might belong to any one of those other subcultures of conservatism, they were welcome, but the movement at no point in its early history was explicitly about religion.

Instead, consider the litany of conspiracy theories that have animated defined the conservative right since Barack Obama's election as president:

Birtherism: the premise that against all evidence, the president is not in fact an American citizen.

Gun confiscation: a belief directly responsible for the deaths of multiple law enforcement officers, at this point, after shootouts with individuals obsessed with the notion that the government was going to severely restrict guns or ammunition—despite absolutely no government movement towards doing anything of the sort.

ACORN: the ongoing belief that an affordable-housing advocacy organization remains even now, after being dismantled by previous conservative attacks, the force behind various suspicious plots against conservatism.

Death panels: the crackpot notion that the new heath care legislation contained secret panels to decide who lives and who dies. No: seriously.

U.N. control schemes: the old conspiracy saw of imminent U.N. control, now refocused around any and all environmental themes. From bike paths to manatee conservation efforts, a suspicious sounding Agenda 21 is purported to, under the banner of sustainability, be a plot to quite literally enslave the human race.

Sharia law: the belief that Islamic law will take over America if not immediately stopped, despite absolutely nothing of the sort happening, or even hinted at. On the contrary: many individuals within the movement believe "Sharia" is already in place, in some municipalities, and no amount of evidence can apparently dislodge this notion.

Government radicalism: the belief that "this administration is the most socialist / radical / dangerous in history", despite a total lack of evidence of anything of the sort: indeed, what is more surprising about the last two years has been how many previously bipartisan, uncontroversial issues (see: light bulbs) have not become paving stones on the path to apparent communism.

Note not just that all these various conspiracy theories exist, in the new Tea Party movement, but that most of them have adherents even at high political levels, among Tea Party backed candidates for the House, for example, and even among Tea Party backed presidential candidates. Michele Bachmann, followed closely by others such as Cain, Santorum, and Paul, are absolutely awash in conspiracy rhetoric of every sort. The otherwise buffoonish Donald Trump quickly made a solid Tea Party name for himself, in his short-lived, ego-based campaign, almost entirely by factlessly questioning the citizenship of the current president.

These are rather profound things, I think. We are in a time when adherence to conservative philosophy is not actually enough to maintain good standing as a conservative: you must add to it a healthy dose of actual conspiracy theory, and then tie the whole thing together with the overarching premise that we are in such grave danger as a nation that even one small slip from conservative principles could or will end in catastrophe. This played out most recently in the debt ceiling fiasco, a previously unappetizing but mundane event that happened roughly yearly, in the last administration, but had morphed into a symbol of all government evil, in this one. And the Tea Partiers are still not happy with the outcome, because even if a politician like John Boehner got "98%" of what he wanted, the Tea Party caucus did not, for they wanted absolute fealty, to the point of economic deconstruction. They are furious, and may yet exact revenge on Republicans who dared vote for that supposed compromise.



A full accounting of Tea Party conspiracies and their resulting impact on individual politicians and races, on media coverage, and on movement conservatism is obviously more than a single blog post can accomplish. At best we can only present the hypothesis.

There once was a time when "Tea Party" stood for a small movement of individuals who sometimes favored colonial garb, with actual teabags hanging from their hats, and all insisting ("(T)axed (E)nough (A)lready") that their historically low tax burden was far too much, and that the same taxes they paid under Bush were, within the span of less than a year, suddenly oppressive. Now, as Bachmann and other proven-successful Tea Party favorites amply demonstrate, it has very little to do with just taxes, and much more to do with using taxes (and anything else handy) as tool for radicalism based on fictitious evidence, imaginary plots, and invisible enemies all around them.

We may very well be witnessing the birth of an identifiable and powerful branch of a political party that finds its popular support explicitly from modern conspiracy theories. Probably not the first time, and probably not the last time, but still: that is a hell of a thing.