The Tea Party as third party, deliciously doomed

There's an enchanting, internal contradiction developing on the right -- actually, an exacerbation of decades-long contradictions -- and the left is doing little to exploit it, even though it could drive one of those famous Rovian wedges straight into the heart of the latest manifestation of "movement" conservatism.

To wit ...

Item One: Tea Partyers and their leadership.

As the NY Times has reported, recent polling reveals that "a hypothetical Tea Party wins more support than Democrats or Republicans," even while the real fundamentalists in the Tea Partying ranks are arguing that their movement so properly disdains the Washington Establishment they should run as a third party.

I wish those fundamentalists all the best in their inside maneuvering, since, for nearly two centuries now, third party movements in United States politics have been magnificent flops.

Unfortunately, it appears that at least a handful of Tea Partying agitators have read at least one history book; thus, continues the Times, "as the movement looks toward the midterm elections in November," more and more are "argu[ing] that the best way to translate anger into influence is to infiltrate the Republican establishment."

This goal is scarcely insurmountable, since the party's chairman, Michael Steele, declared himself in a recent interview "a Tea Partyer, a town-haller, a grass-rooter," while erstwhile Republican and current Tea Partyer and corporate FreedomWorks shill Dick Armey is reportedly making conference calls to Steele to chat about how they can work together.

The leading "demands of the Tea Party groups"? They're old conservative songs: "less government intrusion" and "protecting states’ rights under the 10th amendment."

Item Two: The Republican Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission.

Again I quote from a Times piece, "24 States' Laws Open to Attack After Campaign Finance Ruling," which just happened to run on the same day as its aforementioned Tea Party piece: "A day after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may not ban political spending by corporations or unions in candidate elections, officials across the country were rushing to cope with the fallout, as laws in 24 states" -- including rugged-individualist Montana's, which are nearly a century old, from the Progressive Era -- "were directly or indirectly called into question by the ruling."

As a Rutgers University law professor put it, rather disgustedly, "One day the Constitution of [insert state here] is the highest law of the state. The next day it’s wastepaper."

Iowa's Senate majority leader was even more blunt, even more disgusted, since he and his fellow state-lawmakers must now find a way -- even though every which way is likely doomed -- to overcome what this Republican Supreme Court hath wrought: "It’s absolutely outrageous," he said of the decision.

There you have it -- not merely one contradiction within movement conservatism, but two. And I'd wager that very few within that movement have paused long enough to even acknowledge the contradictions, let alone admit there's no logical way out.

The contradictions above are so immensely conspicuous they hardly need repetition, but I'll touch on them anyway.

Under the guiding hand of crypto-corporate propagandists like Dick Armey, Tea Partyers are struggling their way into the Republican Establishment -- already effectively co-ruled by Armey & Co. Yet once there they'd find that the entrenched Establishment itself -- as expressed through the one branch of government it controls: the judiciary -- is profoundly anti-states' rights when convenient, as profoundly expressed in the Republican Supreme Court's anti-state ruling in Citizens United.

So much for Tea Partyers cooperating with what they believe could be a revolutionary GOP on one of their leading demands: "protecting states’ rights under the 10th amendment."

What's more, many within the Tea Party movement are authentic paleoconservatives of the Pat Buchanan species; those who resent corporate control of America as much as big-government intrusion. Yet from whence comes their leadership's cash? and what are the leadership's little-noticed goals? Questions asked, and answered.

As the Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt understood, every time conservatives demand less government intrusion, they're also inviting more corporate hegemony -- which is, as noted, as distasteful to many rank-and-file Tea Partyers as that more conventional Big Brother.

These internal contradictions are stubbornly irreconcilable, yet, again, I'd wager that they've never occurred to vast portions of casual Tea Partyers. Liberals would be well advised to stop talking to themselves for a while and attend a few Tea Party rallies instead -- and educate, educate, educate. The movement's soft supporters might in time peel away, leaving the hardcore-fundamentalist types with nothing but the reliably doomed third-party option.