The Tea Party is Not Dead … Yet

by Marvin King

Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop, while conceding that the Tea Party can occasionally do good (such as the Spring of 2011 when Tea Party freshman stood up to John Boehner over unnecessary defense spending), generally describes the band of ideologues as economic terrorists.

Columnist Timothy Egan is ready to bury the Tea Party. Egan argues that the early exit of Michele Bachmann from the GOP presidential race is a clear signal that the Tea Party movement has lost its legs.

Whatever you want to call them, calls to bury the Tea Party are premature.

Political pundits that focus exclusively on Congress and Washington D.C. often fail to see the work of social movements at lower levels of government and in the community.

A case in point is the Tea Party assault on public education in New Hampshire.

In the Granite State, the Tea Party dominated legislature, passed legislation over the Democratic governor’s veto that allows parents to object to any part of the school curriculum. You read that correctly.

If a parent disagrees with anything a school teaches their child in school they have the right to require the school district to develop alternative education for that school.

Can you imagine how disruptive this will be for teachers and administrators?

Essentially, the Tea Party wants public schools to function as home schools – designing individual curriculum for parents that do not want their children learning science, evolution or the fact that France, going back to the Revolution, has actually been a good friend to the USA.

In a manner that the Tea Party favors, teachers and local school administrators now face the daunting curriculum of individualizing course content.

The proper response is to petition the state board of education and local school boards to reconsider the curriculum. And, with this legislative success expect to see sympathetic legislatures around the country try to emulate the New Hampshire model.

Froma Harrop and Timothy Egan make valid points about the Tea Party’s vituperative incompetence, but alas, that does not make them irrelevant. Just listening to Newt Gingrich’s pandering to the racialized elements of the Tea Party by “singling out a minority group for lectures while refusing to support policies that help all Americans,” you should realize the Tea Party will not go away quietly.

MARVIN KING received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Texas and is now an Associate Professor of Political Science with a joint appointment in the African American Studies Program at the University of Mississippi. He conducts research into how political institutions affect African American politics. Marvin is available for public speaking engagements and you can follow him on Twitter @kingpolitics

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