Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America [Hardcover]

Kate Zernike (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 14, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0805093486 | ISBN-13: 978-0805093483 | Edition: First Edition

A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics

They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done.

Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us to a cast of unlikely activists and the philosophy that animates them. She shows how the Tea Party movement emerged from an unusual alliance of young Internet-savvy conservatives and older people alarmed at a country they no longer recognize. The movement is the latest manifestation of a long history of conservative discontent in America, breeding on a distrust of government that is older than the nation itself. But the Tea Partiers' grievances are rooted in the present, a response to the election of the nation's first black president and to the far-reaching government intervention that followed the economic crisis of 2008-2009. Though they are better educated and better off than most other Americans, they remain deeply pessimistic about the economy and the direction of the country.

Zernike introduces us to the first Tea Partier, a nose-pierced young teacher who lives in Seattle with her fiancé, an Obama supporter. We listen in on what Tea Partiers learn about the Constitution, which they embrace as the backbone of their political philosophy. We see how young conservatives, who model their organization on the Grateful Dead, mobilize a new set of activists several decades their elder. And we watch as suburban mothers, who draw their inspiration from MoveOn and other icons of the Left, plot to upend the Republican Party in a swing district outside Philadelphia.

The Tea Party movement has energized a lot of voters, but it has polarized the electorate, too. Agree or disagree, we must understand this movement to understand American politics in 2010 and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Tea Party movement.”—Gail Collins, The New York Times

 

“Illuminating… a picture of how different some Tea Partiers are from the Republican establishment’s view of the movement.”—The New York Times Book Review

 

“[Zernike’s] concise, elegantly written book is a refreshing reminder of what traditional journalism — so often despised and discounted these days — can contribute to the public conversation. . . . A convincing portrait of the [tea party] movement’s most ardent activists.”—Los Angeles Times

 

“A brisk chronicle of the people who have streamed to the protests [and] flocked to the polls.”—The New Republic

 

“The most informative and readable.”—The Hill

 

“The beauty of Boiling Mad is that it’s room-temperature calm. With fresh and surprising reporting, Kate Zernike cuts through the hype on both sides to show the Tea Party as it really is, not as partisans depict it. It’s a complete, balanced, incisive and important account of a reactionary movement that’s changing the country.”—Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One

About the Author

Kate Zernike is a national correspondent for The New York Times and was a member of the team that shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. She has covered education, Congress, and four national elections for the Times and was previously a reporter for The Boston Globe. She lives with her family outside New York City.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; First Edition edition (September 14, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805093486
• ISBN-13: 978-0805093483
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #622,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 25 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside the Tea Party(s) December 27, 2010

By G.X. Larson

Format:Hardcover

The Tea Party: is it a ragtag group of Birchers and birthers, a band of Joes-the-Plumber, a nation of whiners, the silent majority, or politics as usual? Journalist Kate Zernike's timely book argues that there is no single defining phrase that can inscribe the Tea Party movement, because it is hardly a single unified "movement" at all: rather, it is a diverse conglomeration of movements and various political ideals that has taken hold of many Americans, who are "fed up" over government spending, the bailout(s), taxes, (the) health care (law), among other things.

In a sense, the Tea Party is (or was? I am uncertain whether or not to use the past tense) as federalized as it would like to see the United States. It has its origins in Seattle, Chicago, Boston and wherever else a group of neighbors decided to gather and discuss how they would subvert federal spending, health care, and the Republican Party status quo, etc. The Tea Party focuses primarily on economic issues: supporters fervently oppose illegal immigration, they seek the repealing of the health care law, they are infuriated by what they see as reckless federal spending and an ever increasing and looming budget deficit and national debt. Most are in favor of the free market, which they see as 100% American. Many tea partiers get their inspiration from Bastait, Hayek, von Mises, and Ayn Rand; one tea partier argued that (I quote from memory) "we all know that Keyensian economics has been proved wrong. It wasn't FDR's New Deal policies that saved the economy from the Great Depression, it was WWII." (This shows the extent of many a tea partiers' "reasearch".)

The Tea Party, like the Republican Party in general, holds to the conviction that the Constitution must be interpreted from an "originalist" perspective: they argue that economic and social programs originating with the New Deal are unconstitutional. Indeed, their idolization of the Constitution is almost religious in its fervor and zeal, to the point where some (most?) would like to see Congress police itself in not passing bills that it does not have the power to pass under "enumerated powers." (I kept wanting to whisper to them: this is the Supreme Court's job.)

Many older tea partiers, however -- somewhat inconsistently -- are strongly in favor of social programs like Medicare and social security, and at certain times in the book it seemed like some tea partiers were oblivious to the fact that they were attempting to have their cake and eat it too. Other tea partiers would like to see the movement take on social issues like gay rights and abortion (and the legality of the Obama presidency), but those who would not like to see the movement become encumbered by such divisive issues overwhelmingly oppose them.

Zernike writes that the Tea Party filled the void left by the crippled Republican Party in the wake of the 2008 electoral defeats. Many voters who had never been very politically active saw that the Republican Party had become weak and ineffective; they saw the Republican Party as co-conspirators vis-à-vis the Democrats in so far as they supported the massive bailouts in wake of the financial crises. The Tea Party took off into this void, writes Zernike, with the help of new social media and networking: Facebook, YouTube, email, something I've never heard of called Ning, and Twitter, a social networking forum that lets users post substantive messages up to 140 characters long. I would have liked Zernike to focus more on how the Tea Party(s) were funded and perhaps how the media acted as the "gatekeepers" (as sociologists would say) of the movement; we never are given a substantive response to the claim that the Tea Party is an "astroturf" movement.

Nevertheless we are given a very fair portrait of the Tea Party, written with wonderful journalistic syntheses that incorporate the first-person perspectives of those who are actually a part of the movement. I often found myself -- dare I say it -- understanding the anger that many tea partiers feel...

18 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great inside look! September 22, 2010

By karma1023

Format:Hardcover

A comprehensive look inside Tea Party America. This book takes you person by person, story by story into the Tea Party. A great read for anyone interested in today's political climate. Zernike writes in a way that is easy to understand. It's obvious that this journalist has a passion for getting "the people's story" to the public.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A frightening look at the first mass political movement of the 21st century August 7, 2011

By William Courson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America" is Kate Zernike's fascinating look inside the American social phenomenon known as the Tea Party, introducing us to a cast of extraordinarily colorful characters and the ideas that motivate them.

What is America's Tea Party: a "constitutionalist" libertarian surgence? The reactionary rump of the GOP, struggling to remake itself after it's dreadful performance in the 2008 general election? A mass movement of angry white traditionalists resentful of every socially progressive notion from racial and gender equality to religious tolerance? A gaggle of decerebrate "Birthers" irremediably dedicated to the notion that our forty-fourth President is a Sumatran orang-utan, and worse, a Muslim to boot? Is it some of these, or all of these?

Whatever else it may be, the Tea Party is 'sui generis,' wholly in a class by itself: it is the first large-scale political movement of the twenty-first century and, along with the struggle for democratization in the Mideast, it along with the epochal the movement for an "Arab Spring" may set the tone for national and international political life for years to come.

The Tea Party burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession and on the eve of the election of the first Black man to the highest office in the land: angry, white voters gathering by the hundreds of thousands to protest bank bailouts and big government. Evoking the Partisans of the Revolutionary War and the framers of the Constitution, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within months of Barack Obama's inauguration, they and the movement they initiated had changed the terms of engagement in Washington, hobbling the new administration's ability to get needed things done, confounding every effort at decency and bipartisanism and emboldening Republican intransigence.

As we learn from Ms. Zernike, the Tea Party movement has no central leadership, but is composed of a loose network of local groups that determine their own positions It's most noted national figures include politicians on the fringe of the Republican far right, such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Dick Armey, with Congressman Ron Paul often described as the spiritual inspiration and "godfather" of the movement (surprisingly, as Dr. Paul is far less doctrinaire a right-wing ideologue than many - perhaps most - Tea Party followers.

Ms. Zernike has given her readers a very fair but deeply alarming portrait of the Tea Party, written with care and compassion, and incorporating extensive first-person perspectives of those who are inside the movement. I often found myself understanding the seething frustration that many of the Tea Party's activists feel, while at the same time chilled by the prospects of what that frustration, when married to racial and religious intolerance and aggressive nationalism, can accomplish. I strongly recommend 'Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America" to every student of contemporary political and social movements and the issues and personalities that drive them, as well as to every citizen concerned with the shape political life in the USA is likely to assume in the decades to come.