By Jeff Judson
People of all political stripes realize a new political movement is sweeping the country. Often called the Tea Party movement, it is made up of people nursing hangovers from the lack of fiscal leadership when Republicans were in charge of Congress and the White House, joined by many more people who find the spending and regulatory excesses of the current Congress and White House to be even worse.
The roots of this movement include an economy that failed to improve as we moved into the closing months of the midterm elections, the broad unpopularity of Obama/Pelosi/Reid policies, and rising public concern over the massive expansion of government debt. People are paying attention to politics, many of them for the first time in their lives. Whenever this happens, incumbents have reason to fear for their seats.
Political Impact
A large freshman class was be swept in by the Tea Party movement and will be inaugurated in January, bringing with them a strong mandate for reform. Incumbents who get reelected will feel the effects of this mandate as well, and they will be more amenable to major reforms than at any previous time in their political careers.
After the 2010 Census comes congressional redistricting. Republicans will likely control the redistricting of far more seats than will Democrats. Current Democrat control of state legislative chambers and governors' offices gives that party control of the redistricting of 110 congressional seats; 90 congressional seats are controlled by Republicans. Under the worst-case scenario for Democrats, which is appearing increasingly likely, their redistricting control could fall to 28 seats, with Republicans controlling 166.
This will lead to a second large freshman class in the 2013 election, and this time the election will not be just anti-incumbent, but about new ideas and policies to set the nation on a course very different from that charted by President Barack Obama and his congressional Democrat allies.
Intellectual Leadership
All this leads to one of the biggest questions of the day: Who are the intellectual leaders of the Tea Party movement? Steven Hayward, in an article in the Washington Post last October titled "Is Conservatism Brain-dead?" pined for "the glory days of the conservative movement" when "there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich." Today, he lamented, "the intellectuals [are] retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas" and "conservatism has been reduced to sound bites."
Last July, Philip K. Howard similarly complained, in an article in The Atlantic titled "Does America Need a New Operating Plan?" that "the Tea Party sees the faults of modern government, and is jumping up and down on the branch trying to make it break. But I can't find a coherent operating philosophy there. Lower taxes is not a solution but an aspiration that is never achievable without overhaul."
Hayward and Howard can't find the Tea Party's intellectual leaders because they are looking in the wrong places. They aren't the pseudo-intellectuals clustered around Washington D.C., who did so much to steer not one but two Bush administrations off the tracks. Those thinkers continue to write books and make the weekend talk-show circuits, but they've lost their credibility and influence – to the extent they ever had either – outside the beltway, and deservedly so.
Free-Market Think Tanks
The new thought leaders can be found outside the beltway in the substantial network of market-oriented think tanks and advocacy groups. There are now more than 100 such organizations, some celebrating more than a quarter-century of operation. Together they marshal the knowledge and experience of thousands of academics and civic and business leaders.
These organizations – which include The Heartland Institute in Chicago, Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, and scores more – can be trusted on policy issues because they are nonprofit organizations the bulk of whose funding comes from individual entrepreneurs who believe America is exceptional and free markets work. Their work comes from independent scholars who are dedicated to truth and immune to shortsighted, inside-the-beltway pragmatism and politically correct influence from the political elite.
Intellectuals bound by the limits of political consensus, always seeking validation by the mandarins of right thinking in the salons of New York and Washington, brought us to where we are today. As Margaret Thatcher once said, "Ah, consensus, . the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?"
Instead, the well-researched and empirically substantiated policy prescriptions of the think tanks, deemed radical and naïve by the pragmatists, are now the core of the Tea Party movement's legislative agenda. With a large enough freshman class over the next two election cycles, we can expect to see more policy change in the next six years – and more of it positive – than has occurred in the past 30 years. And yes, that includes the "glory days" of the Reagan era.
Nonpartisan, Even Pre-Partisan
There are many reasons market-oriented think tanks should be trusted to guide the nation through this upcoming political phase. Market-oriented think tanks are the source of many of the ideas and facts that are driving the Tea Party movement today. They are not Republican, Democrat, or even bipartisan. They are nonpartisan, or rather, pre-partisan. Think tanks originate ideas before the parties have ever heard of them, and they are delighted for either party to promote their ideas.
Think tanks are independent, third-party experts in public policy debates – they don't have a material or financial stake in the outcome, although they believe passionately in good policy. Elected officials consequently can trust them more than they trust representatives for businesses or trade associations.
Think-tank research is applied to a current public policy controversy, often by starting with academic research and adding local or current facts, citing recognized authorities, and getting right to the point. It's research produced for a purpose, to answer a question: What should policymakers do?
Most think tanks have been around for decades and have long track records of productive activities. They are not fronts or Astroturf groups, which appear overnight covered with the fingerprints of an industry or activist lobbying campaign and are easily discredited or ignored. They are not the projection of one person's ego or vision. They are not vehicles for anyone's presidential aspirations.
The Complete Package
Business leaders and their lobbyists often operate at the mercy of regulators or lawmakers, vulnerable to retribution for daring to criticize or speak out. Think tanks are virtually immune to retribution. In fact, when public officials single out think tanks for criticism, the institutions' credibility generally goes up, not down. As a result, think tanks are not afraid to tell the truth.
Not withstanding the belief of the political class that think tanks are not pragmatic enough for the real world, policy analysts at think tanks know more about real-world politics and the nuts and bolts of public policy change than the authors of books, editors of magazines, or even elected officials. This gives them a unique ability to formulate messages that are true and can survive criticism and questioning in the places where public opinion is genuinely formed, in restaurants and bars and around dining room tables.
Think tanks have the complete package of skills needed to influence public opinion and the opinions of lawmakers. They get their opeds and letters to the editor placed in old media, and go around those declining and often-biased channels to reach opinion leaders directly with public speaking, electronic media, talk radio, mail, and email. Think tanks are on the cutting edge of activist influence techniques – blogging, social networks, YouTube, developing popular Web sites, tweeting, and even investigative journalism.
Think tank experts are open and eager to cooperate with just about anyone to win – others in the free-market movement or people from another political or policy perspective. They don't worry about protecting their turf or their intellectual property. They have no clients to gain or lose to another consultant or trade association. They just want to win.
Think tank scholars and policy analysts, in short, are the new intellectual elite. More numerous, better informed, more engaged with the real world, and perhaps more modest than the elites on either the Right or Left who led past political movements. They are already hard-wired into the Tea Party movement because in countless ways they have helped create and sustain the movement. And they will be there to advise its new majorities in Congress, and perhaps its new man or woman in the White House in 2013.
If you want to know what the agenda of the Tea Party movement will be in next year or in 2013, check out the Web site or recent publications of the free-market think tank in your state. You can find a good list of state and national think tanks at www.heartland.org. If you want to help shape the Tea Party agenda, give one of them a call and volunteer to help.
Jeff Judson (jjudson@heartland.org) is a senior fellow and member of the Board of Directors of The Heartland Institute.