by Robert Taylor

Created on: May 06, 2010   Last Updated: May 07, 2010

The Tea Party Movement Is Driven by Fear, Stale Ideology and a Dwindling White Population

I first advanced this thesis a few months ago. Now it appears others commentators are beginning to reach the same conclusion (see Frank Rich op-ed piece in the New York Times 5-5-’10). The thesis essentially goes as follows: The conservative Tea Party Movement and much of the right-wing opposition to President Obama are primarily driven by the fears of a white population which is rapidly declining as America’s majority.

The U.S. Census Bureau is already projecting that possibly as soon 2040, but no later than 2050; whites will no longer be the majority population in this country.

As whites decline as a proportion of the nation’s population and as Blacks, Hispanics and Asians increase, being “white” simply becomes less significant in both demographic and political terms. This was dramatically demonstrated in the 2008 elections. Barack Obama was elected president even though he only received somewhere between 43 and 46 percent of the white vote.

It was the 95 percent of the Black votes; the 66 percent of the Hispanic vote and the 63 percent of the Asian American vote along with those of white liberals that made Obama the nation’s first African American president. The population shift towards a more diverse population and the resulting shift in political and ideological power that it brings simply scare most conservative whites.

And they have become fighting mad attacking the symbols of this population shift (President Obama) and a major mechanism of this population shift (illegal immigration). But in actuality there is very little they can do about either. The die is cast. America is becoming less and less white and with that trend white power decreases.

Ideologically, this shift scares the conservatives because some of their most precious beliefs are now being undermined. They know that historically and socially, minority Americans are simply less likely to support core conservative beliefs such as the anti-abortion movement, the pro-war tendency, the hate of big government and the blind faith in big-business capitalism.

For example, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that Blacks are far less likely than whites to view “socialism” as a negative. Thus, when the Tea Party Movement attacks President Obama for having a so-called “socialist agenda,” the attack may resonate among conservatives but most minority

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