What “Take Our Country Back” Really Means

The Tea Party has taken over the Republican Party. Or, more precisely, the Tea Party is trying to take the country back from liberals, freeloaders on welfare, immigrants, minorities, and, of course, President Obama. Although the number of people identifying as Tea Party supporters has declined from 30 percent in 2010 to 17 percent today, three of the major Republican front runners—Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio—embody Tea Party beliefs and are each trying to take our country back in their own ways. Their success, however, is bad for the country as they do not like compromise and will take America in a sharply conservative direction.

The Tea Party began as a grassroots protest movement against the policies of President Obama in 2009. Rick Santelli, a CNBC commentator, burst into a tirade against Obama’s plan to help people struggling to pay their mortgages. He screamed, “The government is rewarding bad behavior,” and he invited capitalists to a Chicago Tea Party to protest policies that “subsidize the losers’ mortgages.” Thus, the Tea Party was born. Protests spread throughout the country as conservatives took to the message of “taking our country back” and fighting the changes ushered in by the Obama administration.

According to Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociologist who studies social movements, the Tea Party was built on local chapters where people gathered to protest, talk, and ensure that Republican elected officials were staying conservative. In the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections, several Tea Party candidates dominated Republican primaries and elected far right candidates to Senate and House seats. Currently, 42 congressmen are members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group dedicated to advancing the Tea Party agenda.

The Tea Party has shown their strength in Republican primaries where low turnout has allowed them to defeat moderate Republican candidates. Marco Rubio, a staunch conservative, managed to push Charlie Crist out of the Republican race for Senate. In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party candidate, beat a popular former governor to win the primary, but lost the general election in a landslide. The Tea Party is a fiercely conservative movement that disdains compromise. Skocpol says Tea Party activists distinguish between hard workers—retirees and veterans—and welfare recipients, who are seen as freeloading off taxpayers. Members of the movement revere the Constitution as a holy, unchanging document. They hate illegal immigrants, claiming that they take jobs from citizens and use government welfare without paying taxes. They think today’s young people are overly entitled and lazy. The main split in the Tea Party lies between libertarians, who believe in a secular government, and the religious right, who believe in bringing religion to the government. Barack Hussein Obama epitomizes anxieties and anger of the Tea Party. Many conspiracy theories have spawned from these anxieties—running the gamut from Obama being a Muslim, to him being a foreigner, a Communist, and a Nazi. The Tea Party believes in governing without compromise. The moderate way to look at governance is to understand that the U.S. is composed of many interests and many ideologies, almost all of which deserve to have some influence on government policies. Governing is the process of bringing cohesion to a disparate nation so that everyone feels they have a fair chance to contribute. Sometimes groups have more power, like when Republicans or Democrats control any of the branches of government, but everyone still has some say. Tea Partiers are absolutist; they think their ideology is the only correct one, and that liberals are not people with a different viewpoint, but enemies of America. They want to “take our country back,” not work to govern it with the input of the many disparate groups that live here.

Maybe the Tea Party is a reaction to the way the Democrats governed in the wake of the Great Recession and Obama’s election. In 2008, Democrats came to Washington through the president, 60/100 seats in the Senate, and 255/435 seats in the House, so they could effectively pass any legislation without any Republican votes. The Democrats passed the stimulus, Obamacare, and Wall Street reforms without Republican votes. These laws were very liberal and angered many Republicans who felt the country was moving in a sharply liberal direction. The Tea Party movement developed as a response to these liberal policies. The actions of both Republicans and Democrats led to the current situation where many Tea Party members feel like they don’t have a say in government, and, thus, they have responded by moving to “take our country back.”

No one has tapped into the fears and the anxieties of the Tea Party like Donald Trump. Before he was a presidential candidate, he was the de facto leader of the “birther” movement of Tea Partiers who believed Obama was a foreigner with a forged birth certificate. He burst onto the presidential scene by announcing that he would build a wall along the Mexican border. His reasoning follows, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” He has taken very few policy positions, but the ones he has taken all speak to the concerns of the Tea Party. He wants to increase benefits for veterans, negotiate better trade deals with other nations, and end political correctness. David Axelrod, a former advisor to President Obama, has called him the “anti-Obama.” Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” might as well be “Take Our Country Back.” Both phrases speak to conservatives’ hatred of Obama and liberals, and their desire to radically change American public policy.

Ted Cruz has tapped into Tea Party members’ desire to take their country back in a different way. Throughout his campaign, he has elevated himself as a “consistent conservative” who never backs down on his principles and is unwilling to compromise. Ted Cruz led the charge to shut down the government in 2013. After winning the nomination in Texas’ Republican race for the Senate, he said, “We are witnessing a great awakening. Millions of Texans, millions of Americans are rising up to reclaim our country, to defend liberty and to restore the Constitution.”

Marco Rubio has tried to mix his Tea Party message with a new conservative ideology that helps the poor succeed and includes minorities. In the New Hampshire debate, he repeated four times, “And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” To clarify this opinion, he said in an interview with ABC, “What he’s trying to do to America, it’s part of a plan. He has said he wanted to change the country; he’s doing it in a way that is robbing us of everything that makes us special.” He also recently stated, “I am convinced if this president could confiscate every gun, he would.” Rubio’s incessant attacks on Obama are misleading and border on conspiracy theory. To disagree with a president is fine, but it is dangerous to accuse a president of purposely trying to bring down America and disregard the Constitution. The country needs to return to a time when we could disagree but still respect the other person—not fan the flames about how the other side is trying to bring down the moral fabric of America.

John Kasich has been one of the few Republican candidates to reject the rhetoric of “taking our country back.” He has run a campaign that emphasizes bringing people together and helping those who “live in the shadows.” He has stated, “We’ve got to unite our country again, because we’re stronger when we are united and we are weaker when we are divided.” His campaign has been respectful and has stayed away from slandering other candidates. Of course, he has not been too successful since he is polling at nine percent nationally. Perhaps his message of hope and unity will gain steam after his second place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

So will the Tea Party “take our country back” this election? They have certainly taken over the Republican Party with their fears that American values of hard work, reverence for the Constitution, and religious values are being trampled by the liberal age ushered in by the Obama presidency. We cannot let the ideas of the Tea Party take over this election. Our country needs a president with a steady hand and a knack for compromise to unite us in order to solve our pressing problems. Instead of taking our country back, let’s live in it together.

2 Comments

Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.

Pervas Switzerreply
3 January 2018 at 5:50 PM

Thanks!.

Willie Jonesreply
16 August 2022 at 6:50 PM

At least I know what it means to “take back our country “. Kind of scary

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