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<DIV class=timestamp>October 9, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Is the Tea Party
Over?</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per
title="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/bill_keller/index.html?inline=nyt-per
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href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/bill_keller/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
rel=author>BILL KELLER</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>
<P>Austin, Tex. </P>
<P>This was supposed to be the Tea Party’s time. The incumbent president the
rebels despise so much seemed vulnerable. The Republican establishment was AWOL,
leaderless or intimidated. So the angry, God-fearing, government-loathing
populist insurgents rushed into the vacuum, fired up the town halls, helped put
a halt to any compromising in Congress and basically commandeered the national
debate. </P>
<P>Then, for much of this year, they dominated the auditions for a presidential
challenger. </P>
<P>In a spectacle about as deliberative as speed-dating, candidate after
candidate tried out for the role of Not Mitt Romney — including, at times, Mitt
Romney. We had the Sarah Palin tease, replaced by the short-lived Michele
Bachmann infatuation, after which everyone swooned, briefly, for Rick Perry.
Herman Cain is having a little fling now, though even voters who like his style
don’t think he can win. Rick Santorum, who is in some ways the moralizing social
conscience of the Tea Party, and Ron Paul, who plays its geeky libertarian id,
have settled into single digits and bit parts as debate foils. Newt Gingrich is
the class cutup, blowing raspberries at journalists. </P>
<P>To be fair, some of this unedifying scramble can indeed be blamed on the
press corps. Special props go to the hyperactive political news sites that crave
a fresh narrative every 15 minutes, even if it’s a sitcom like Donald Trump. And
a hat tip to Fox News, which has helped trivialize the campaign by offering a
platform to one not-ready-for-prime-time Republican semi-celebrity after
another. On behalf of journalism, sincerest apologies for wasting so much of
your time. </P>
<P>But the fickleness of the G.O.P. is not entirely a media phenomenon. The
latest <A
href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/28/fox-news-poll-gop-race-top-tier-now-romney-perry-and-cain/">Fox
poll</A> offered Republican voters a menu of 11 candidates and found that not
only were voters scattered across the conservative landscape, but a quarter of
the Tea Party adherents sampled were still “not impressed” with anyone. It’s
hard to impress a movement that only knows what it is against. </P>
<P>“Ronald Reagan couldn’t get past first base in today’s environment,” said one
Texas Republican operative who has turned despondent about the party’s drift.
</P>
<P>Now, barring some wild twist of fate, there are two men standing: Mitt
Romney, the methodical, thrill-free, ideologically elastic technocrat from
Massachusetts, who has made himself the default nominee; and the last hope of
the hard core, the Not Mitt: Rick Perry. </P>
<P>Anyone in Texas politics will tell you it’s too early to put a fork in Perry.
Yes, his polls have withered under attack, and he’s come across in a couple of
debates as a doofus. It’s hard to imagine him ever delivering a foreign policy
speech as slick as the one Romney made Friday. But Rick Perry, as they like to
say down here, is serious as a heart attack. And I don’t think it’s just that
Texans have a hard time imagining Perry losing because he’s never done it. </P>
<P>Visitors to Austin are constantly reminded that Perry has a lot of rich
friends, that regional booster states South Carolina and Florida will vote
early, that Romney inspires no passion in the base, and that the Texan will do
whatever it takes. The assumption here is that the voters drawn to Herman Cain
will revert to Perry once they realize how really far Cain is from being
qualified. </P>
<P>Perry brings to the campaign, besides great posture and polished good looks,
an economic record that looks like a vindication of Tea Party dogma, never mind
that it was made possible by a quarter of America’s known oil reserves, a lot of
low-wage immigrants, a reluctance to waste government money on frills like
education and health care, and a tax and regulatory environment out of the Wild
West. </P>
<P>On paper — and, for all I know, in his heart — Perry is the most ardent of
Tea Party ideologues. His <A title="Article about the book."
href="http://www.texastribune.org/texas-people/rick-perry/we-read-rick-perrys-fed-so-you-dont-have/">book</A>,
“Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington,” is a manifesto of 10th
Amendment hyperfederalism and radical individualism, assailing the
constitutional basis of Social Security, the income tax, the Federal Reserve,
consumer protection, and “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating
guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare
and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, establishing national labor
laws,” and so on. </P>
<P>The editor of Texas Monthly, <A
title="Texas Monthly article about Rick Perry."
href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2011-10-01/btl.php">Jake Silverstein</A>, sums
up Perry as “a child of the mythology of the frontier,” in which “every man is
more or less for himself, a good neighbor is one who needs no help, and efforts
by the government to interfere are not to be trusted.” </P>
<P>To this Perry adds a damn-the-pointy-heads denialism — global warming is a
hoax, evolution is just “a theory that’s out there” — as well as a wink to the
evangelicals, a nod to the executioner, and an ardent defense of personal
liberties for those who are heterosexual and don’t need an abortion. He may not
believe in evolution, but his survival-of-the-fittest view of society is pretty
Darwinian. </P>
<P>Temperamentally, he has a fever of class resentment that appeals to voters
who see themselves trodden by elites. Perry knows the right way to hold a
pitchfork. </P>
<P>There are plenty of Perry-watchers who see him as less of a populist
ideologue and more of an opportunist, which is an unkind way of saying he is a
politician. </P>
<P>“He looked on paper like the Marlboro Tea Party guy,” a member of a rival
Republican camp told me. “It turned out he’s vacuous and practical. So the bloom
is off the rose.” </P>
<P>Maybe. But whatever you think of his deviations from Tea Party purity, they
make some sense in the context of Texas. His decision to let children of illegal
immigrants attend state colleges at the in-state tuition rate, which so
scandalizes the zero-tolerance conservatives, is conventional bipartisan
pragmatism in Texas. The logic is: if the federal government can’t keep illegals
out, it’s not our fault, but we can at least steer them away from the welfare
rolls or jails and into productive lives. (It was also, of course, a gesture to
the state’s large Hispanic electorate.) </P>
<P>His cozy relationships with lobbyists, like the former aide turned
representative of the company that makes the HPV vaccine, might gain him
notoriety in some states; here they are part of a crony culture that Texas
voters seem to take as a given. Likewise, as much as he deplores federal aid, he
takes as much of it as he can get. </P>
<P>Perry has been clumsy at explaining his digressions from Tea Party gospel,
but he doesn’t have nearly as much to explain to that constituency as the
blue-state front-runner. Romney, to his shame, denied citizens of Massachusetts
their sacred right to breathe carbon emissions, swim at polluted beaches and
dump their health crises at the emergency room. “Romneycare” is a burden.
“Perrycare,” by comparison, is just another name for praying you don’t get sick.
</P>
<P>In this race, Rick Perry is the Tea Party’s dream candidate, the one
remaining figure who could translate a noisy backlash into serious power. If
Rick Perry loses, the Tea Party will have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.
If he wins, Perry being Perry, it’s not entirely clear whether he will appease
its members, but my guess is he’ll try. </P>
<P>“Rick Perry is the only candidate who would actually close down a cabinet
department,” one longtime admirer told me, when I asked whether a President
Perry would disappoint the Tea Party. “You would see a very happy base — at
least for the first term.” </P>
<P>The rest of us are left to recall the advice handed down 10 years ago by the
late, wisecracking Cassandra of Texas politics, Molly Ivins: “Next time I tell
you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay
attention.” </P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<DIV class=authorIdentification>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center">•</P>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>________________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
href="mailto:wayne.a.fox@gmail.com">wayne.a.fox@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>