The idea of a Tea Party Caucus originated from Rand Paul (KY) when he was campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 2010.[13] The Caucus was approved as an official congressional member organization by the House Administration Committee on July 19, 2010,[14] and held its first meeting and public event, a press conference on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, on July 21.[15] A similar informal Caucus was formed in the Senate by four Senators on January 27, 2011.[2][note 1] From July 2012 to April 2013 the Tea Party Caucus neither met nor posted news on its webpage, leading observers to describe it as "dead," "inactive," and "defunct."[16][17] In April 2013, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina filed paperwork to create a new Tea Party Caucus, but found that Bachmann intended to continue the caucus, starting with an event on April 25, 2013.[18]
The Caucus was reconstituted in the 114th Congress in January 2015.[19] Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas became the chair in February 2015.[20] Huelskamp lost party primary election in 2016 and since then, the Caucus has remained inactive, with no official announcement of its dissolution. Most of Tea Party Caucus members have joined the far-right[21]Freedom Caucus.[22] Although the Tea Party is not a party in the classic sense of the word, research has shown that members of the Tea Party Caucus voted like a third party in Congress.[23]
The Tea Party Caucus grew out of the Tea Party movement, a conservative populist political movement that emerged in 2009 in the United States, generally opposing excessive taxation and government intervention in the private sector while supporting stronger immigration controls.[30] On February 19, 2009,[31] in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC Business News Network editor Rick Santelli loudly criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages as "promoting bad behavior" by "subsidizing losers' mortgages", and raised the possibility of putting together a "Chicago Tea Party in July".[32][33] A number of the traders and brokers around him cheered on his proposal, to the apparent amusement of the hosts in the studio. It was called "the rant heard round the world".[34] Santelli's remarks "set the fuse to the modern anti-Obama Tea Party movement", according to journalist Lee Fang.[35]
The following day after Santelli's comments from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 50 national conservative leaders, including Michael Johns, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin, participated in a conference call that gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.[36][37] In response to Santelli, websites such as ChicagoTeaParty.com, registered in August 2008 by Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson, were live within twelve hours.[38] About 10 hours after Santelli's remarks, reTeaParty.com was bought to coordinate Tea Parties scheduled for the 4th of July and within two weeks was reported to be receiving 11,000 visitors a day.[38] However, on the contrary, many scholars are reluctant to label Santelli's remarks the "spark" of the Tea Party considering that a "Tea Party" protest had taken place 3 days before in Seattle, Washington[39] In fact, this had led many opponents of the Tea Party to define this movement as "astroturfed," but it seems as if Santelli's comments did not "fall on deaf ears" considering that, "the top 50 counties in foreclosure rates played host to over 910 Tea Party protests, about one-sixth of the total".[39]
An article in Politico stated that many Tea Party activists see the Caucus as an effort by the Republican Party to hijack the movement. Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz refused to join the Caucus, saying "Structure and formality are the exact opposite of what the Tea Party is, and if there is an attempt to put structure and formality around it, or to co-opt it by Washington, D.C., it’s going to take away from the free-flowing nature of the true tea party movement."[40]
In an attempt to quell fears that Washington insiders were attempting to co-opt the Tea Party movement, Michele Bachmann stated "We're not the mouthpiece. We are not taking the Tea Party and controlling it from Washington, D.C. We are also not here to vouch for the Tea Party or to vouch for any Tea Party organizations or to vouch for any individual people or actions, or billboards or signs or anything of the Tea Party. We are the receptacle."[41][42]
Additionally, Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Marco Rubio of Florida, all Tea Party supporters, refused to join the caucus.[43][44] Toomey said he would be "open" to joining, and spoke at the first meeting, but did not ultimately join.[45] Johnson said that he declined to join because he wanted to "work towards a unified Republican Conference, so that's where I will put my energy."[46] Rubio criticized the caucus, saying "My fear has always been that if you start creating these little clubs or organizations in Washington run by politicians, the movement starts to lose its energy."[47]
The Tea Party Caucus is often viewed as taking conservative positions, and advocating for both social and fiscal conservatism.[48] Analysis of voting patterns confirm that Caucus members are more conservative than other House Republicans, especially on fiscal matters.[48][49] Voting trends to the right of the median Republican, and Tea Party Caucus members represent more conservative, southern and affluent districts.[49][50] Supporters of the Tea Party movement itself are largely economic driven.[51][52][53]
Despite the Caucus members differing degrees of economic and social conservatism, they generally work to promote positions within the House of Representatives that are to the right-of those of the House Republican Conference.[54] Caucus members are an important swing vote on spending bills and as a result have gained influence in Congress out of proportion to their numbers.[55][56] They are frequently sought after to broker compromises amongst the Republican leadership, generally lending a more right-wing character to U.S. politics.[57] Since the advent of the Tea Party Caucus in 2010, party-line voting has increased for both Democrats and Republicans.[58]
Funding
According to OpenSecrets, the top contributors to the Tea Party Caucus members are health professionals, retirees, the real estate industry and oil and gas interests. The Center said the contributions to Caucus members from these groups, plus those from Republican and conservative groups, are on average higher than those of House members in general and also those of other Republicans. The average Tea Party Caucus member received more than $25,000 from the oil and gas industry, compared to about $13,000 for the average House member and $21,500 for the average House Republican.[59]
List of current members
This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Is this Caucus still in existence, and if so, who are its members in the 114th Congress?. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2015)
House
The Caucus chair was Michele Bachmann of Minnesota between 2010 and her retirement in 2015. Tim Huelskamp was elected as the Caucus' second chair in January 2015, but was defeated in the 2016 Republican primary by Roger Marshall.[19] Of a possible 435 Representatives, as of January 6, 2013, the committee had 48 members, all Republicans.[60] At its height, the Caucus had 60 members in 2011.
^ abIn the Senate, there is only one officially recognized caucus: the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, as established by law in 1985. Unlike House caucuses, Senate groups receive neither official recognition nor funding from the chamber.
^Bryan T. Gervais; Irwin L. Morris (March 2012). "Reading the Tea Leaves: Understanding Tea Party Caucus Membership in the US House of Representatives". PS: Political Science & Politics. 45 (2): 245–250. doi:10.1017/S1049096511002058. S2CID154605233.
^Vanessa Williamson; Theda Skocpol; John Coggin (March 2011). "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism". Perspectives on Politics. 9: 25–43. doi:10.1017/S153759271000407X. S2CID233315323.
^Homan, Patrick; Lantis, Jeffrey S. (2020). The battle for U.S. foreign policy: congress, parties, and factions in the 21st century. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 92. ISBN978-3-030-30171-2.
^Smith, Steven S.; Roberts, Jason M.; Wielen, Ryan J. Vander; Roberts, Jason M.; Wielen, Ryan J. Vander (2015). The American Congress (9 ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 136. ISBN978-1-107-57178-5.
^McKay, David H. (2022). American politics and society (10 ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. p. 190. ISBN978-1-119-57836-9.
^Nelson, Candice J.; Thurber, James A.; Dulio, David A. (2023). Campaigns and Elections American Style: The Changing Landscape of Political Campaigns (1 ed.). Taylor & Francis. ISBN9781000937763. In the House of Representatives, the Tea Party caucus had morphed into the Freedom Caucus as Donald Trump took over the Republican Party.
^Ragusa, Jordan; Gaspar, Anthony (2016). "Where's the Tea Party? An Examination of the Tea Party's Voting Behavior in the House of Representatives". Political Research Quarterly. 69 (2): 361–372. doi:10.1177/1065912916640901. S2CID156591086.
^McNaught, Mark Bennett, ed. (2012). Reflections on conservative politics in the United Kingdom and the United States: still soul mates?. Lanham: Lexington Books. p. 159. ISBN978-0-7391-7303-9.
^Gold, David M. (2015). The Great Tea Party in the Old Northwest: State Constitutional Conventions, 1847-1851. Quid Pro Books. ISBN9781610272957.
^Campbell, John L. (2023). Institutions under siege: Donald Trump's attack on the deep state. Cambridge New York, NY Port Melbourne New Delhi Singapore: Cambridge University Press. p. 79. ISBN978-1-009-17018-5.
^Ford, Lynne (2021). Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics (3 ed.). Infobase Holdings, Inc. p. 51. ISBN9781646938216.
^ abTam Cho, Wendy K., James G. Gimpel, and Daron R. Shaw. "The Tea Party Movement and the Geography of Collective Action." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 7.2 (2012): 105–33.
^ abGervais, Bryan; Morris, Irwin (2012). "Reading the Tea Leaves: Understanding Tea Party Caucus Membership in the U.S. House of Representatives". Political Science & Politics. 45 (2): 6. doi:10.1017/S1049096511002058. S2CID154605233.
^Phillips, Stephen (2014). Tea Time: A Comparative Analysis of the Tea Party Caucus and House Republican Conference in the One Hundred Twelfth Congress (Ph.D.). p. 77.
^Cho, Wendy; Gimpel, James; Shaw, Daron (2012). "The Tea Party Movement and the Geography of Collective Action". Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 7 (2): 29. doi:10.1561/100.00011051.
^Aldrich, John; Bishop, Bradford; Hatch, Rebecca; Hillygus, D. Sunshine; Rohde, David (2014). "Blame, Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections". Political Behavior. 36 (3): 21. doi:10.1007/s11109-013-9242-4. S2CID62824988.
^Parker, Christopher; Barreto, Matt (2014). Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America. Princeton University Press. p. 400. ISBN9780691163611.
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