417: This Party Sucks

Ira Glass

During Bill Jerke's years as a state legislator, the Colorado Union of Taxpayers rated him as one of the biggest enemies of taxes in the state.

Ira Glass

He helped organize the Tea Party chapter in Greeley. And he was proud to let me know--

Ira Glass

The politics this year are so strange that this anti-tax Republican has found himself spending the fall stumping the state, doing something he's never done.

Ira Glass

Jerke is trying to defeat three ballot initiatives that come before Colorado voters next week. Initiatives 60, 61, and 101 together would strangle most of the ways a government brings in money. They'd cut Colorado's personal income taxes by a fourth, limit the ability of state and local governments to issue bonds, and force the state government to take over $2 billion in education funding that's now covered by local governments, but without the means to pay for that new cost.

Ira Glass

He believes the initiatives would throw Colorado into such an ongoing fiscal crisis that business would leave the state.

Ira Glass

This year we have Republicans impatient with the Republican party, and Democrats frustrated with the Democratic party.

Ira Glass

That's Greg Shropshire of Rome, Georgia, a past president of the local chapter of a service organization called The 100 Black Men of America. He feels that the Democratic party as a whole has not stood by Barack Obama.

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, on the eve of this mid-term election, people looking at their own political parties and declaring, "This party sucks." Our show today in two acts. Act one, the conservatives. Act two, the liberals. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act one, "Patriot Games." With Tea Parties springing up around the country, so many new people are involved in politics for the first time this election, and they are getting into situations that sometimes they don't know how to handle, it's all so new. Ben Calhoun has this story of one congressional race and two friends.

Ben Calhoun

The day Congressman Bart Stupak's seat came up for grabs was March 21, 2010, a little after 4:00. Stupak is a Democrat from Michigan. He'd been leading a group of pro-life Democrats who were holding out their votes on the health care bill until there was something in it that prevented federal money from going to abortions. They held out and held out, and then, at 4:06, Stupak announced that President Obama had agreed to issued an executive order, giving in to their demands. And because of that, Stupak's group would provide the rest of the 216 votes needed to pass the health care bill through the House.

Ben Calhoun

That's Dan Benishek, a surgeon, who, just a couple months before all this, had decided to run against Stupak. The day of the health care announcement, the day that Bart Stupak officially became the congressman who gave the nation Obamacare, Benishek was the only Republican challenger on the books. And there was a good reason for that. Because, after 18 years, Stupak was pretty much considered unbeatable. Essentially, you ran against him if you didn't mind losing, or if you were a total political novice like Dan Benishek.

Ben Calhoun

Pretty much overnight, Dan Benishek went from being a political nobody to being a political contender. And Bart Stupak went from being the guy who was unbeatable to being the guy who was under 24 hour police protection. Then, 19 days after he announced the health care deal, Stupak announced that he wouldn't be running again. At that moment, Michigan's first district, a conservative place we're both Democrats and Republicans are often pro-life and pro-gun, suddenly became one of the hottest commodities you can get in congressional politics-- an open seat in a swing district.

On the Democratic side, a state assemblyman named Gary McDowell jumped in to replace Stupak and ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. On the Republican side, Dan Benishek's early good luck had given him a head start, but other people climbed in, and things got nasty and contentious. And on election night, it was close. Dan Benishek stayed up late with his family, watching the votes come in.

Ben Calhoun

The math for this race seems pretty easy. Swing district in a Republican year. You'd figure after the primary, Dan Benishek would have it made. But it hasn't worked out that way, for pretty much one reason-- Tea Party groups. Tea Party groups have been popping up all over northern Michigan for more than a year. And, just like in other parts of the country, they've been making Republican politics more complicated.

Talking to Tea Party activists, you'll find out that most of them went to their first rally in spring of 2009. Though they're so sensitive about people saying this is really about Obama and the fact that he's black, that almost always, without fail, they'll tell you that they were upset well before Obama even took office.

Ben Calhoun

Rich Carlson lives in Petoskey, Michigan. Which, if you imagine Michigan as the back of your left hand, Petoskey would be the tip of your ring finger. Rich is a tower of a human being, a bulky six foot four. Though, because he's so good natured, he manages to be huge without ever seeming threatening. Rich, who's pushing 50, was born and raised in Petoskey, and for years he made his living there selling construction supplies. Though in 2009, with the recession, business had gotten really bad. It was around that time that Rich started talking to his friend, a guy named Tom, about starting a Tea Party.

Ben Calhoun

This is Tom Swenor.

Ben Calhoun

Like Rich, before the Tea Party, Tom had never really been involved in politics. Unlike Rich, Tom's on the short side, with a lean, stocky build and the mannerisms and personality of a vice grip. From the moment you meet him, he seems honest and practical. Tom's a land surveyor, and when construction slowed down during the recession, his business, just like Rich's, was drying up. So Tom and Rich got together with some people from Petoskey and started planning a Tea Party rally.

At some point, someone said, "Look, we need a headliner." They consider Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, but both charge too much money. Eventually someone thought, "What about Joe the Plumber?" And then one day, Tom says, Rich was reading about a Tea Party rally in the state capital on tax day, and Joe the Plumber would be there.

Ben Calhoun

Joe the Plumber spoke on May 1, on a sunny Friday afternoon in Petoskey. For having just started up, the Petoskey Tea Party had hundreds of people at the rally, which is kind of remarkable considering that the city only has 6,000 people in it. Like other Tea Party rallies, the event wasn't about any candidates, or elections. The speakers that day focused on what Tea Party people call "core values" or "core principles," which we should talk about for just a second.

The core values are usually a few very basic things. Generally they are small government, free markets, natural rights-- meaning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-- and this belief that the Constitution should be very narrowly interpreted. Talking to Tea Party people, these come up constantly, because Tea Partiers again and again go back to the idea that these values are more important than anything, more important than party politics. A lot of times, Tea Partiers tell each other that they should only support candidates who really, truly represent conservative values. An expression that gets used all the time is, "principle over party."

So late this summer the race for Michigan's first district was chugging along, and one day Rich Carlson gets a phone call.

Ben Calhoun

The guy on the phone was a guy named Glenn Wilson. Wilson is a self-made millionaire who owns a telephone and internet company. Basically, Wilson was telling Rich he was thinking about getting in the race as an Independent, running on a lot of Tea Party type ideas. He was also saying he'd be willing to throw his own money into the campaign, so he wouldn't be some marginal third party guy.

At this point, Rich had been appointed President of the Petoskey Tea Party. Not only that, he'd co-founded an umbrella group for Tea Party groups all across northern Michigan, which was called the Northern Michigan Liberty Alliance. That day, Wilson was trying to persuade Rich to join his campaign. And Rich was up for it.

Ira Glass

Which was fine. And then Dan Benishek won the Republican primary. Which meant that Benishek would be the leading contender to beat the Democrat in November. And most of Rich's Tea Party friends were excited to support Benishek. They were psyched to have someone who could take back Stupak's seat for the conservatives. At the same time, they were worried that Glenn Wilson was going to enter the race, split the conservative vote, and spoil everything. But Rich says he was convinced. Wilson was just a better embodiment of Tea Party ideals, so he went with the Tea Party philosophy. Principal over party. Forget who's the most electable. He wasn't worried about losing the seat.

Ben Calhoun

Essentially, Rich said, if Wilson split the vote and the Democrats won the race, it might even be a good thing. Because Republicans would have to cater more to Tea Partiers the next time around.

Ben Calhoun

Rich signed on as Wilson's campaign manager, but he didn't tell anyone in the Petoskey Tea Party. He knew none of his friends would like it. They'd all talked about Wilson being a spoiler. But Rich also knew his secret could only last for so long. Tom, Rich's best friend, says it all came out in the open during the group's first meeting after the primary.

Ben Calhoun

This is Karen LaCross, vice president of the Petoskey Tea Party, who says that night, at first, she didn't even know why Rich was giving Wilson advice.

Ben Calhoun

For days after that meeting, Tom and Karen and others in the Petoskey Tea Party say they tried to get in touch with Rich. Tom called him at his house, on his cell, at the campaign. He texted him. One day, he even called a radio show and publicly went after Rich and Glenn Wilson. Karen LaCross says everyone felt betrayed. But Tom took it especially hard.

Ben Calhoun

Rick and Tom went from talking five times a day, to not speaking at all. Without an explanation from Rich, Tom now thinks the worst-- that Rich didn't take the campaign manager job because he believed in it. At this point, he says, Rich was unemployed, and he took the job for the money. Essentially, his theory is now that his best friend is a sellout.

Ben Calhoun

Petoskey Tea Party Vice President Karen LaCross says, after a week of trying to get a hold of Rich and talk him out of what he was doing, she and the other board members decided enough was enough. So they called a meeting without him.

Ben Calhoun

Tom was there that day.

Ben Calhoun

Even if Tom doesn't remember who it was that seconded the motion to push out Rich, records from the meeting show who it was, and it was Tom himself. For Rich, this meant he'd just been voted out of the Tea Party group he'd helped create.

Ben Calhoun

One of the most confusing things about the Tea Party-- and this gets talked about so much now-- is it's relationship with the GOP. Is the Tea Party just part of the Republican party? Do they want to change the Republican party? Is the Tea Party rebelling against the Republican party?

In all of this, it seems like the thing that you can really say about the relationship between the Republican party and the Tea Party is that it's really, really awkward. And it's awkward because there's a split in the Tea Party about how to see Republicans. There's Rich's view, which is that the Republican party has been paying lip service to conservative values. They've gone soft and should be viewed with suspicion. And Tea Partiers should be willing to walk away. Principle over party.

Ben Calhoun

The other Tea Party view is much more pragmatic, and it's the one that Tom has taken. It's pretty much the William F. Buckley approach-- that if you want to serve conservative ideals, you find the most electable conservative, and you gather everyone behind that candidate. And when it comes to the issues that any congressman is likely to vote on in the next two years, the Republican, Benishek, is pretty much the same as Wilson, the Independent.

For Rich and Tom, the split has been so severe that Tom can't even understand where Rich is coming from. And without an explanation from Rich, his theories have gotten pretty harsh. At this point, his theory is that Glenn Wilson is being bribed with stimulus money to spoil the race, and Rich got duped.

Ben Calhoun

I told Tom what Rich said, that there's 435 seats in Congress, and it might be a wake-up call if the Tea Party costs the Republicans a seat or two. Tom said Michigan's first congressional district race, it's not just any seat. It's a symbol. Because it was Stupak that allowed the health care bill to pass. Tom says he has fantasies about Dan Benishek taking a seat and then someday casting the vote that repeals the health care bill. "Wouldn't that just be so beautiful?" he said. And all Glenn Wilson can do is ruin that.

According to the latest poll, the race between the Republican, Dan Benishek, and the Democrat, Gary McDowell, now a dead heat, each of them holding about 40% of the vote. Rich's candidate, Glenn Wilson, is getting 8% of the vote. Meaning he could actually be a spoiler and throw the race to the Democrat. That fact has become super stressful for a lot of Tea Party type voters, who account for many of the people supporting him.

At the beginning of the month, the Tea Party umbrella group that Rich Carlson co-founded, the Northern Michigan Liberty Alliance, got together to talk about all this. About how people were divided, divided over the question about what exactly they should do. They met on a Saturday afternoon, at a Quality Inn next to a freeway ramp.

Ben Calhoun

About 40 people from Tea Party groups from all around northern Michigan were there that day. Within the first half an hour, one guy stood up and stated the whole dilemma pretty plainly. He said recently he'd read a book about Libertarianism and in the back of the book, there was a quiz. So he took it.

Ben Calhoun

Again and again, the room felt like a bunch of independent-minded idealists coming up against the hard political reality that the Republican party, the one so many of them resent, is there only real viable way to be relevant.

Through all this, Rich Carlson sat at the front of the room, so quiet you wouldn't have known he was there. Then, at one point, Karen LaCross, the Vice President of the Petoskey Tea Party, Rich's old group, spoke up. Karen said it was possible for the Tea Party to take sides with the Republicans without being co-opted. She singled out Chad Stevens, this really thoughtful Libertarian guy who had co-founded the Northern Michigan Liberty Alliance with Rich.

Ben Calhoun

After about five hours if this, someone from the Glenn Wilson campaign-- that's Rich's guy-- they whispered to me that Glenn was outside and he wanted to talk to me. I walked out and around the corner to the parking lot, where Glenn's campaign bus was idling. It's this big silver deal, with a huge photo of Glenn's face, and a big bald eagle on the side.

A couple days before all this, I'd spent a day on the bus. And just to give you a little sense of him, Glenn is in his 40s, but he looks 30. And he drinks Mountain Dew relentlessly. I saw him drink seven or eight cans in an afternoon.

In 10 years of covering politics, I've never had any politician do something quite as bizarre as what Glenn Wilson did next. He told me he wanted to fire Rich. Then he asked me what I thought of it. I told him that I didn't have an opinion, and even if I did, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to share it. And then I told him that if this is why he called me out there, I would need him to say it on tape.

Ben Calhoun

After the meeting, Wilson grabbed Rich, and he led him down a hallway past the hotel bar, into a small conference room. I waited in the hall.

Back on the bus, Glenn had shown me the campaign calendar and said he was going to fire Rich because he hadn't set up enough events. What I didn't say to him then was that I had spent time with the other campaigns, and their schedules weren't very different, though maybe Glenn was just too inexperienced to know that. After about 10 minutes, Glenn walked out. As he passed me, he winked and said, "Thanks, have a good one." So I went to talk to Rich.

Ben Calhoun

Glenn had taken away Rich's briefcase, computer, and his phone, which all belonged to the campaign, and Rich stood there, packing his things into a plastic shopping bag.

Ben Calhoun

Rich had lost the Tea Party group he'd started the year before. He lost his best friend. And now, he'd just lost the job he'd given it all up for.

Ben Calhoun

A couple days after he got fired, I met with Rich one more time before leaving Michigan, just to talk about how he was feeling and what was happening now. Then, while we were sitting there, Rich got a phone call.

Ben Calhoun

The call was from a guy named Tony Cutler, a campaign staffer for the Republican candidate, Dan Benishek.

Ben Calhoun

Tony gave me permission to broadcast this conversation, though he asked that I say that he was not calling Rich on behalf of the Benishek campaign. Which seemed like a strange request, because in the call, it was pretty clear that he was. He was telling Rich that Rich should put out a press release, and he should lie. He should say that he hadn't been fired. Instead, he'd quit out of principal because Wilson was going to be a spoiler.

Ben Calhoun

Slowly, over the course of the next 15 minutes, Rich caved. He said he didn't want to be part of anything that criticized Glenn Wilson, but he would go along with Tony's plan, to put out something saying Wilson was a spoiler for conservatives, and he should drop out.

Ben Calhoun

After he hung up, I asked Rich about what he'd said to me before, all the things about principal over party. We went back and forth again and again, because he was saying these totally contradictory things. One minute he'd say the thing he'd been telling me all along. Tea Party people need to be independent, even if that means spoiling races for Republicans. Then, the next minute, he'd say the thing he'd agree to with Tony, that Wilson would be a spoiler and he should get out.

Ben Calhoun

Not 10 hours later, I got an email from the Dan Benishek campaign. It was a forwarded press release with Rich's name on it. It read, quote, "Congressional candidate Glenn Wilson is running without the support of his top aide today. Campaign manager Rich Carlson made the decision to step down from the top post, as a result of a difference in opinions with the candidate."

A couple weeks after all this happened, Rich told me he still feels like he did the right thing. He said if anything's changed, it's that he's not sure how much he wants to be involved in politics. I asked both Rich and Tom the other day if they'd started talking again, and they both said no. When I asked each of them if they were planning to call, they also gave me the same answer. Each said they weren't going to, because they weren't the person who did something wrong.

Ira Glass

Ben Calhoun in one of the producers of our show. Coming up, to paraphrase Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, why can't a Democrat be more like a Republican? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, "This Party Sucks." Stories for this mid-term election of political people who have problems with their own political parties. We've arrived at Act two of our show. Act Two, "Mister Hitt Goes to Washington."

It goes without saying at this point that lots of people around the country are unhappy with the legislation that the President has pushed, the substance of what the President has done. But when you talk to so many Democrats, whatever qualms they may have with the actual programs the President has, those are overshadowed by their feelings about the President's own inability to sell his programs.

A small businessman from Pennsylvania named Walt Rowen, who likes the President's programs, complained about this directly to the President's face at one of his recent town meetings.

Ira Glass

On issue after issue, Republicans have catchy, understandable sound bites, and the Democrats seem to have nothing. The stimulus is another one where Democrats are fighting a well articulated, oft-repeated, Republican narrative about deficits and a failure to deliver results with, really, pretty much nothing. On health care, the lack of any persuasive message has left Democrats running from the issue. It's barely mentioned in TV ads in congressional races around the country. On finance reform, there's been no understandable explanation for what the hell led us into the recession and what is needed to fix it.

Back in 1930s, FDR used high-profile hearings, Pecora hearings, to create a national consensus about what had gone wrong in the economy and a mandate for what to do next. Nothing has played that role for the Democrats today.

Jack Hitt, who voted for Obama back in 2008, normally prefers to watch politics on the sidelines. But after witnessing this two-year display of lame-assery, he decided he had to go to Washington to try to understand.

Jack Hitt

What happened? These new Democrats who came to power in 2008 were supposed to be such savvy communicators. Two years ago, all over the country, Democrats adored Obama's verbal jujitsu, his team's rapid response to attacks and daily messages. When Sarah Palin tried the "palling around with terrorists" shtick, linking Obama to '60s radical Bill Ayers, the rapid response team laughed it off, saying, "Sure, Obama denounced these terrible bombings that happened. When he was eight years old." They knew how to do it.

The campaign slogan, "Yes we can," seemed as much about saying that Democrats could create a message machine just as effective as Fox News, the right wing thing tanks, and the weekend echo chamber of deployed pundits. Where did that aggressiveness go? When Republicans called the President a Muslim, Barack Obama himself said, "I will always put my money--"

Jack Hitt

Really? I mean, by now even my mother knows that if you don't respond to an attack, then the attack becomes the new reality. If your enemies insist that you are a Bolshevik and no one responds with a coherent counter message, then people who think you are a Bolshevik will get elected to Congress in disturbing numbers. Which is about to happen.

Is no one who could call them up calling them up and telling them the obvious? Or maybe there's some theory behind the inaction that we're just not seeing. Maybe this is one of Obama's long game tactics, one of his legendary triple bank shots. For nearly two years I've wondered, what's going on over there? What are the Democratic strategists thinking?

To find out, I turn to one of the top insiders. Someone who's close to Rahm Emanuel, and talks to David Axelrod. Who meets with the top Democrats in the House and Senate. Who writes an occasional candidate speech and also works the media side as a commentator on CNN. The former Clinton aide, Paul Begala.

The first thing I learned when we sat down in a conference room in DC was not reassuring. He's easily as frustrated with the Democrats as I am. Take the recent statement from the President in The New York Times that, quote, "bipartisan cooperation will flower right after the election."

Jack Hitt

Anyone who's watched the last 15 years knows how smartly Republicans craft their messages. Grover Norquist or some other leading conservative strategist faxes or emails out the topic of the day and a list of phrases to use in discussing it. Hence the term "talking points memo." Conservatives everywhere fan out and repeat the talking points in every form of media. Everybody's talking about it, so their position seems inevitable. If the Democrats are attempting anything like this, it's some very subtle jujitsu.

I put it to Begala, is what looks to me like a lack of strategy, actually a strategy?

Let me just explain what I'm talking about here. Jack Conway is the Democrat running for Senate in Kentucky, and he ran a TV ad about his opponent, Republican Rand Paul, about how when he was a student at a Christian college, Rand Paul was a member of a secret society that mocked Christianity. Conway is being attacked from all sides for questioning his opponent's faith on TV.

Jack Hitt

Then, in early September, Obama and his team seemed to wake up. Obama said that the Republicans were holding, quote, "Middle-class tax cuts hostage to millionaire and billionaire cuts." The next day, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner repeated that line almost word for word. A real talking point. I looked forward to one of those Jon Stewart bits where he quotes a half dozen officials robotically reciting the same sound bite before he rests his face in his open palms. Only this time it would be Democrats, not Republicans.

Jack Hitt

I thought, OK, this election is on. The Democrats would force the issue to the floor and make Republicans vote against a middle-class tax cut weeks before an election. We do have a two party system, and the system is working.

Predictably, the Republicans pushed back with classic rapid response. Senator John Kyl distilled this into two words: class warfare. The Democrats' response? They panicked, and went into their usual crouch. A day later it was decided, the issue would be shelved until after the election. They would not run on tax cuts, the most effective political issue in America.

Jack Hitt

There's always an excuse. I had come to Washington to understand the new media strategy of the revived Democratic party. Instead, I discovered something the dated back almost a century, to when Will Rogers first cracked that joke. "I'm not a member of an organized party. I'm a Democrat." I couldn't believe it. Again, I turned to Begala.

Jack Hitt

Did you get that? Even Begala, who's dream has been to create such a machine, admits that he'd rather hit the delete button and fling is own poo. Which explains why the many voices of the Democrats today sound like argle bargle white noise, muttered into a thousand microphones, against which the clarity of the conservative position rings as the only truth anyone can hear.

Though Begala told me he actually thinks the Democrats have gotten better in the last few weeks, and that there will be some surprises among the massive losses. Constructive surprises.

Jack Hitt

Everyone is comparing this year's coming tsunami to the wave election of 1994. That's when the Republicans took control of the House from the Democrats for the first time since 1947. But that was only half the story. The Republicans in those days were led by a lethargic bore of a man named Bob Michael. He was rotund in a 19th century cartoon sort of way and spoke in tones that would silence a colicky baby. The young punk and back-bencher Newt Gingrich had declared war that year, not only on Democrats, but on Bob Michael. Michael's certainty that Democrats would always control the House and that his job was to speak carefully and collect their crumbs was the real corruption Gingrich identified as the rot in the old Republican party. One that would welcome conservative ideas.

The current Tea Party rebellion is much the same. They've primaried and overthrown some of the most establishment old bull conservatives in Congress. And next year they'll probably destroy Republican moderates, like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Olympia Snow of Maine. Meanwhile, Democrats live one election at a time, one issue at a time, unaware that they've become electoral wallpaper, in front of which daring conservatives delight in performing, and that the Democrats' only hope is to understand that their real enemy is not the Republican party, but their own imaginations.

Ira Glass

Jack Hitt lives in New Haven.

[MUSIC - "WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?" BY G.W. MCLEANNAN]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Ben Calhoun and our senior producer Julie Snyder with Alex Blumberg, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Johnathan Menjivar, Lisa Pollak, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp and Nancy Updike. Seth Lind is our production manager, Emily Condon is our office manager. Production help from Shawn Wen.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by Torey Malatia. He's kind of sore with me because we had plans this weekend. I took a little freelance work instead to make a little money.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI. Public Radio International.