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The authors are grateful to Robert Putnam, Zaid Munson, Peter Dreier, and Peter Hall for their comments on an earlier version of this article. Anonymous reviewers for this article also provided very valuable feedback and advice.
On the evening of March 23, 2010, more than forty Tea Partiers filled to overflowing a room in a small café on Main Street in the gritty town of Brockton, Massachusetts. It was only hours after President Barack Obama had signed into law the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act. This blueprint for comprehensive health insurance reform had been fiercely opposed by Tea Partiers across the nation--and not least in Massachusetts, where grassroots conservative enthusiasm had been one of the key ingredients in the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the January 19 special election to fill the seat of the late Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy.
By all rights, the Massachusetts Tea Party supporters assembled in Brockton that March evening should have been demoralized. But their enthusiasm seemed undampened. Health reform needed to be repealed, agreed these generally older, white middle-class Tea Partiers; yet the assembled group also maintained a determined focus on local endeavors. Amidst talk of an upcoming Tax Day rally planned for the Boston Common, Tea Partiers displayed sophisticated political awareness, sharing tips on how to build a contact list for registered Republicans in each district, and brainstorming about how to convince Tea Party members to run in neglected legislative races. Just as Tea Partiers in the Bay State had mobilized to elect Scott Brown, months later they still felt themselves energized and on the offensive for the rest of 2010.
The Tea Party Emerges
Only fifteen months before that gathering in Brockton, the national ideological tide seemed to be running against conservatism. Not only did the November 2008 elections mark the triumph of an African-American Democratic presidential candidate proposing an ambitious and progressive agenda, voters also sent formidable Democratic majorities to the House and Senate. Outgoing President George W. Bush was extremely unpopular, and the failed McCain campaign left Republicans without a clear leader.1 High-ranking Republicans were far from united behind the new Republican Party chair, Michael Steele.2 Pundits debated whether the Republican Party might be...