The Authoritarians

by Bob Altemeyer

  Other groups have no doubt flocked to the Tea Party banner. Like most populist movements, the Tea Party has attracted many people who are pissed off about many different things. And while it is intensely organized on the local level, it is anything but unified nationally. Some local groups insist they are politically independent and equally disgusted with both parties. And of course many people in the movement are not particularly authoritarian. But it does seem that the movement has lots of authoritarians in it, and that is quite troubling.

  Suppose slavery still existed in the United States, but the federal government was trying to end it. However Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and so on told their audiences that slavery was a good thing, recognized by the Founding Fathers, endorsed in the Old Testament, the natural order of things, an issue for individual states to decide, protected by an individual’s inalienable right to do what he wanted with his property, and so on. I doubt Abraham Lincoln would find these arguments compelling. But how much trouble do you think the Patriotic Association of Slave Owners would have getting today’s Tea Partiers out to campaign for slavery in America?

  What will the future bring?

  Is the Tea Party losing steam? Tax Day 2010 apparently did not bring out nearly as many protestors as Tax Day 2009 did. Does that mean the Tea Party is waning, and by November will be but a shadow of itself? I wouldn’t count on it. The grass roots may have tired of taking to the plazas over and over. After all, how many votes on health care reform did the demonstrations change? But the various organizers behind the movement are clearly focused now on November, and the people who show up at the rallies are promising to turf their enemies out through the ballot box. I think it’s foolish to think the Tea Partiers are going to go home and stay there. They are madder now than they’ve ever been. They pump each other up too much to quit. They are by far the most committed political force in the country now. And their numbers are not dropping in the polls. A CBS News/New York Times poll released April 10, 2010 found 18 percent of the sample identified with the Tea Party, compared with 13 percent and 17 percent in polls a little earlier.

  The movement has lost some of its shining image among the American people. Fifty-one percent of a Rasmussen poll released after the first Tax Day rally had a favorable view of the Tea Party. The figure had dropped to 28 percent in the Quinnipiac poll dated March 24, 2010, and 37 percent in the USA Today/Gallup poll of April 5. But Americans still hold Tea Partiers in higher esteem than their national leaders. Rasmussen released a poll on April 1, 2010 that showed most registered voters believe the average member of the Tea Party has a better understanding of the issues facing America than the average member of Congress. President Obama fared little better in a Rasmussen poll released on April 5: 48 percent said the average Tea Bagger is closer to their views than the president is, compared to 44 percent who opted for Obama. Republicans of course overwhelmingly voted for the average Tea Bagger, and Democrats of course overwhelmingly endorsed the president. The difference in the final score was decided by Independents, who felt closer to the Tea Partiers by a 50-38 margin.

  In the long run, the emergence of the Tea Party movement is just the latest step in the radicalization of the Republican Party that began in the 1980s. The same people who formed the religious right over the past twenty-five years continue to drive the party to the far, far right. In the process almost every moderate Republican leader has been purged from the lists, and the party’s intellectual capital is as low now as Lehman Brothers’ net worth when it rolled over and went belly up. When the American Enterprise Institute recently fired David Frum for saying the GOP was contributing to its own Waterloo by listening to the most radical voices in the party, it was just the latest loss of a principled, intelligent conservative that began some time ago.

  As a moderate and an Independent, I would like to see at least two sets of well-thought-out policies to choose from when I vote. But who is left to shape and guide conservatism in America now? Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? Newt Gingrich? Michelle Bachmann? Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? Mitt Romney? Scott Brown? Mike Huckabee? Ann Coulter? The best and brightest Republicans have been shown the door. As was true during McCarthyism, some GOP leaders must be deeply concerned about what is happening, but few dare speak. They’ve seen what happens when someone challenges Rush.

  Will the Tea Party become a third political party? I doubt it. Some local groups are determined to keep the Republican Party at arm’s length, but where else can the Tea Partiers go in their determination to throw out the Democrats? The Tea Party will probably put up candidates itself only in contests where the nominees are too moderate for its tastes. The Conservative Party did this in New York’s 23rd Congressional District in 2009, causing a monumental Republican loss in a district the party had won for eons. The resulting message of “Do what we want, or you’ll lose” has to make local GOP officials very leery of supporting a candidate unsatisfactory to the Tea Party leadership. And the Tea Party wants “pure conservative” candidates like Carl Paladino who take very right-wing stands on everything. It’s not going to be enough to just champion smaller government and lower taxes. So Republican nominees will probably become yet more radical than they are now.

  In the long run, this should be good for the Democrats. Most Americans do not like radicals of any stripe, they want gifted people running the government, and they will turn on liars once they discover the lies. Thus Sarah Palin hurt the GOP ticket in 2008. But in the short run, meaning this year of 2010, I see a great danger. The rock-solid Republican base has been recharged and augmented. It will bust a gut to send as many radical social/economic conservatives to Congress as possible. While the Tea Party movement is opposed by a significant part of the population, the rest of the electorate is up for grabs. And not many people understand who is controlling the Tea Party movement, who is in it, and what they will do if they come to power. Significantly more Republicans than anyone else tell pollsters now that they are certain to vote in November. And although Democrats appreciably outnumber Republicans in the country, more people say they plan to vote for a Republican candidate than a Democrat. Combining the zeal of the Republican grass roots with a slowly recovering economy, a less-than-popular president, and the sentiment that “Whoever’s in/running Congress now should be thrown out on his ass,” I predict the Republicans will score a great victory in November.[9]

  Unless. Unless the least authoritarian part of the American population out-organizes, out-hustles, out-reaches, out-recruits, out-communicates, and out-delivers the votes drummed up by the most authoritarian part. They did exactly that in 2008, and achieved unimagined victories. So it can be done, by patiently and sensibly explaining to moderate, independent, “middle” voters exactly who got us into this mess, and who has done nothing to get us out of it except constantly say “no”—like someone who stands on the hose when you’re trying to put out a fire. And if the Tea Partiers succeed in getting more and more extremists running on the Republican ticket, that should open huge differences between the Democratic candidates and them. That can produce victory after victory—thanks to the Tea Partiers.

  But alternately, the least authoritarian folks can find a dozen reasons to do little or nothing, and then the authoritarians will win. I’m pretty sure the authoritarians will be ready to take to the field next autumn in force, deeply committed and raring to go. So the liberals will decide the outcome of the election in November.[10]

  Endnotes

  1 It will seem strange that persons protesting against the government would be labeled “authoritarian followers.” But the concept of authoritarianism centers on submission to those whom one views as the legitimate, established authorities. And the whole point of the “birther” campaign against Obama is that he is an illegitimate president. As well, many Republican rank-and-file members believe the Democrats were unfairly favored by the media in 2008, and stole the election through massive voter fraud engineered by ACORN.

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  2 On April 13, 2010 word appeared that Tea Party leaders in Oklahoma were trying to organize an armed militia to fight federal intrusion into state’s rights. And on April 18 a Baptist minister told a rally in Greenville, S.C. that he was “ready to suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” I’m sure he’d say he holds the Constitution sacred, but he’s talking about armed insurrection against the United States government. At the same rally former Representative and GOP presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo said it was time to send Obama “back to Kenya.”

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  3 Limbaugh (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030209/content/01125112.guest.html) has given definitions of socialism which sensibly centered on state ownership of industry. But he then “showed” that the Democrats were socialists because, for example, they caused the subprime crisis. (?) (??) (???) Recently Sean Hannity agreed that Obama was a socialist: “Obama is a socialist. If you take over banks, if you take over car companies, if you take over financial institutions, the way that he has—now the health care system. If you’re going to use every crooked deal that you can come up with to get a bill like that passed—most recently the health care bill—that is by definition, if you look up the dictionary definition of socialism, this is it.” http://www.dittos-rush.com/2010/03/hannity-if-you-look-up-dictionary.html

  If you can work your way through Hannity’s fractured syntax (is socialism defined as “using every crooked deal,” or as the health bill, and how is either of those a definition?) he ignores the fact that it was George W. Bush who asked for the TARP funds, and then gave billions in loans to General Motors and Chrysler as well as the banks. Obama continued loaning TARP funds to various banks to keep them solvent, and he advanced billions more to GM and Chrysler. But true blue socialists hardly loan money to industries going down the tubes when no one else will; they nationalize them. Barack Obama hasn’t nationalized anything. (The Treasury does now own 60 percent of GM stock, taken as security for a lot of the loan; but it is looking forward to selling its shares so it can get some of its money back.)

  My point here is that Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s confused and misleading pronouncements are accepted so uncritically by Tea Partiers. A competent senior in high school would find their flaws after 30 minutes of research.

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  4 A CBS News/New York Times poll released on the eve of the 2010 Tax Day protests reported that most Tea Party supporters said the income tax they paid this year was fair. This may be a stunning example of compartmentalization, since the “Tea” in Tea Party is often said to stand for “Taxed enough already.” But there was considerable ambiguity in the question used: “Is the income tax you will pay this year fair?” “Fair” in what sense? Does the government take a fair part of my income, versus too much? Or did some people interpret the question to mean, “Are your taxes fair relative to what everyone else pays?” You will also note that the question was not worded in “both directions,” such as “Is the income tax you will pay this year unfair or fair?” Authoritarian followers tend to acquiesce (say yes) more than most people do when asked ambiguous questions. So it may be that 100 percent of Tea Party supporters think their taxes are too high, despite the poll’s findings.

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  5 In this context one must stand on a chair and applaud Senator Tom Corburn (R-OK) who told an Oklahoma City town hall on April 5, 2010 not to believe everything they saw on Fox News. Instead, he said, they should watch other channels as well, and get a balanced view of what’s going on. He also chided his audience when it booed the name Nancy Pelosi. He said she was a nice person. “Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re not a good person” he added. (Bill O’Reilly of Fox News was not amused at Corburn’s comment.)

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  6 The list of parallels between the research on authoritarian followers and the behavior of Tea Partiers probably extends well beyond twelve. For example, such followers in general have very poor self-insight; they realize almost nothing about how unfavorably they stack up compared to most people. As well, authoritarian followers run away from bad news about themselves; they are highly defensive. Authoritarian followers also have a strong tendency to be zealots, and Tea Partiers seem quite zealous. And authoritarian followers know surprisingly little about the things they say they believe in. It would be interesting to see how much the Tea Partiers actually know about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and American history. For example Tea Partiers commonly refer to the sanctity of “the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” Do they not know about all the amendments since 1791, or just don’t consider them part of the Constitution?

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  7 The Authoritarians was written in 2006 and appeared on this website in early 2007. One can quietly modify an e-book over and over again, changing what one said to fit new facts. But except for (numerous) spelling corrections, and changing “I Titus” to I, Claudius” on pp. 157-8, the book appears now as it did originally. The Authoritarians has been read by some tens of thousands of people—proving the price is right. Only a few people have challenged the results. The most determined protest came from a conservative blogger who thought my findings on authoritarianism were misleading because my way of measuring authoritarianism involved issues that conservatives had definite opinions about, whether they were authoritarian or not. The findings would disappear, he said, if a good measure of conservatism were used instead, such as political party affiliation. The discussion ended when I did the analyses he wanted, and found Republicans were way more prejudiced than Democrats, etcetera.

  As I mention at the end of the book, some other researchers think I am really, unknowingly studying intense in-group identification, or some other thing. (It may be a sign of dogmatism, but I haven’t been convinced yet.) But there have been no noteworthy “failures to replicate,” as far as I know, by other scientists—going back to 1981 when these results began appearing. Indeed, the record for replication and extension by other researchers in other places has been quite reinforcing.

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  8 The task of identifying Tea Partiers’ sentiments might grow more difficult now because a group called “Crash the Tea Party” announced on April 13, 2010 that it will infiltrate their rallies. Their goal is to “top” whatever a real member of the movement says, to make them sound like a gathering of crazy people. I think this both unfair and unwise. How would liberals like it if some group posed as Communists in their ranks and shouted Marxist slogans to the press? And just by announcing the plan to place agents provocateurs at Tea Party demonstrations, they have given the movement a ready alibi when one of its real members does something stupid. (In fact, the “Spy vs. Spy” part of my personality suspects this announcement is bogus—I mean, why would you tell people you were going to do this?—and the real purpose is to sow internal distrust by making the real Tea Partiers suspect one another.)

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  9 A Pew Research poll released on April 18, 2010 found that only 22% of its nationwide sample said they trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time.

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  10 Americans are rightly disgusted with Congress. Democratic lawmakers might sensibly respond to this disgust by offering the voters a list of promises regarding pork barreling, lobbyist influence, Senator “holds,” limiting the filibuster, campaign financing, and so on that they will enact if they win enough seats—with some iron-clad promises of what will happen if they don’t.

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