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Tea Party Women: Mama Grizzlies, Grassroots Leaders, and the Changing Face of the American Right . By Melissa Deckman . New York : New York University Press , 2016. 385 pp. $95.00 (hardcover), $35.00 (paperback).
Online Themed Book Reviews on Gender and Conservatism
This review is part of a themed issue on gender and conservatism. To read the editor's note on the section, visit doi:10.1017/S1743923X17000605.
My American Politics final-year course is subtitled "Why Do They Do That?" It is the question most asked by my British students, colleagues, neighbors, and general observers of U.S. politics--even more so since the last election. I grew up in the Texas Panhandle and have spent most of my academic career writing about the impact of the politics of the right on lives of those at the margins, but I also try to interpret for those at the margins why large numbers of social conservatives regularly vote against their own interests. What many Republicans understand to be "their interests" are very different from what many American Democrats, or European social democrats, might define as "their interests." The subtitle of the course thus recognizes growing political polarization and the lack of--or unwillingness to find--conduits of communication. Academic research, communicated and taught well, has the potential to bridge that gap. In Tea Party Women, Melissa Deckman provides solid evidence to help us understand the "why," and because of that it should become a staple of American political science and gender courses.
Specifically, Deckman asks "why Tea Party women have emerged as leaders of this newest incarnation of conservative activism in ways that are unprecedented in American history, and what their emergence may mean for American politics" (3). Through participant observation, elite interviews, and analysis of texts produced by the Tea Party, Deckman offers the most comprehensive picture yet of the women inside this populist conservative movement. Her account provides an interesting answer...