It is impossible to understand politics in the United States over the last 12 months without some in-depth discussion of the impact of the Tea Party movement.  Over the course of the last several days, I had the good fortune to engage in a dialogue with Stephen Gordon about a wide range of Tea Party-related topics, including what the Tea Party movements are about, where they’re going, what their influence has been and will be, and whether there is the possibility of a right-left alliance under the Tea Party umbrella.  There are, frankly, few people as qualified as Gordon to discuss these topics, as he’s been partying with tea since long before it was cool, having helped organize a successful state-level Tea Party in Alabama as early as 2003.  Gordon has also been heavily involved in libertarian politics for a number of years, including acting as Communications Director for Michael Badnarik’s 2004 campaign, and e-Campaign manager for Bob Barr’s 2008 campaign.  Recently, he’s appeared several times on the Rachel Maddow Show, and contributes to several well-regarded blogs, including the Liberty Papers, the Next Right, and Examiner.com.  He is now the Director of Media Relations for the political consulting firm Forward Focus Media.

MT: It’s quite clear that the Tea Party movement is primarily a grassroots-based movement without any clear leaders.  Moreover, although the Tea Party movement seems to be primarily focused on government spending, there have been numerous documented Tea Party-affiliated protests focusing on anything from the Democratic health care reform bills to illegal immigration.  Is there any kind of coordination of message that takes place within the movement, and if not, what would you say is the common theme that runs through all of the Tea Party organizations?

SG: This is a point I tried to make the other night on Rachel Maddow’s show.  If there had been enough time to elaborate, I would have stated because these are grassroots operations led in many places by people with no political experience, they are ripe for takeovers by established political organizations.  Obviously, organizations taking over elements of the movement have their own agendas. What I see most often is an attempt to guide the Tea Party movement to do what they initially opposed: re-electing politics-as-normal big-government Republicans.

 To me, healthcare is a very relevant topic for Tea Parties.  Immigration, abortion, foreign policy or even reform of marijuana laws, not so much.  I’ve been vocal about this in the past.  

Because of the nature of the movement, top-down coordination of the message can’t be planned by Karl Rove.  This also means that each Tea Party event or organization will have a slightly different flavor.  If I was in charge of the movement, my message would be one of fiscal responsibility. This encompasses deficit spending, corporate bailouts, stimulus packages, the current health care legislation, etc.  To a great degree, this is also the message of my Tea Party groups I’ve encountered. This, in my opinion, is a good thing.

MT: How do the Tea Parties overcome this problem of co-option, which seems to infect grassroots movements of all political stripes?  Is some sort of organized – and independent – top-down leadership eventually going to be necessary, or can the Tea Parties maintain their momentum without maintaining a narrow focus on fiscal issues?

SG: I’d offer any Tea Party organization the same general advice. First of all, stick to a single or narrow range of issues.  Every time a new, and especially an unrelated, issue is introduced the movement will lose supporters. Second, develop organic lists. Make sure you obtain e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc. at every event and from as many website visits as possible. Third, don’t let them take you over but make them come to you. Alabama Tea Party activists just held a gubernatorial debate and straw poll and their favorite candidate was made apparent. Had that particular movement been co-opted, I’m sure the result would have been different. 

While the laws  vary by location, if any local movement becomes large or influential enough, state and federal laws are eventually going to force some legal organizational entity to be formed. This will require a bit more top-down approach in some regard, but hopefully the Tea Party groups will be very mindful of the grassroots activists who made their organizations possible in the first place.

MT:Changing gears slightly, many commentators certainly have questioned where the Tea Partiers’ anger was during the Bush Administration’s spending orgies, not to mention the bank bailouts.  This isn’t to say that all of the Tea Partiers can be accused of suddenly discovering their passions when the Democrats took over in Washington – obviously, libertarians like you and your old boss Bob Barr, not to mention Ron Paul’s legions, have been banging this drum for a long while.  But why has the rise of the Tea Parties seemingly coincided with the Democrats – and President Obama - obtaining overwhelming power in Washington? [Read more →]

Fantasy is a genre dominated by sword-and-sorcery epics, mysterious dragons, and tyrannical sorcerers.  Few fantasy novels have joined the ranks of ‘great’ literature, and fewer still have crossed over into the contemporary literature aisle.  The Lord of the Rings has of course become iconic, and the Harry Potter books were inexplicably popular among non-fantasy readers. But when trying to find a book to compare to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, I came up pretty much empty-handed.

This is the trouble one has categorizing the sort of book that receives high praise from such disparate authors as Junot Diaz and George R. R. Martin.  It is a book you might read in a class on contemporary literature, but its plot is rooted squarely in the realm of the fantastical, drawing upon Narnia and other fantasy works a great deal, but tackling themes rarely found on a fantasy bookshelf.  The novel’s protagonist, Quentin, struggles not only with magic, but with loss and heartache, and the clumsy pains of young adulthood.

I had a chance to talk with Lev Grossman about The Magicians, his thoughts on magic, and whether the world he explored and created in this novel might see a second run.  Lev attended Harvard and Yale before ditching academia and remaking himself as a journalist. He’s written for a number of publications including the Village Voice and The New York Times, and was hired by Time magazine in 2002 as its book critic.  The Magicians is his third novel.

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John Cole began blogging at Balloon Juice way back in 2002, when he was still a die-hard Republican.  According to the FAQ on his blog, you can “check the archive to see how crazy” he was back then.  Since then his political views have shifted and the blog has grown.  The blog has also evolved from one lone blogger to four, the new co-contributors rising from the ranks of the site’s busy comment threads.

I had a chance to talk with John Cole last week about blogging and politics, and you can read the whole thing right after the leap…. [Read more →]