Why are Democrats so hostile to the TEA Party movement?

One of the most impressive achievements of the Democratic Party over the last four years has been its ability to cast the Republican Party as an out-of-the-mainstream ideological movement while attracting centrist voters – and even some populists and libertarians who had voted Republican since the early 1990s.  The fruits of this strategy are obvious – overwhelming majorities in congress and overall political dominance nationwide.

Why, then, the overt antipathy toward the TEA Party movement?

Democrats at all levels have gone out of their way to antagonize and discredit TEA Partiers.  Here in Wisconsin, Joe Wineke, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, openly uses sexual innuendo when referring to the myriad “tea bag parties” that have sprung up all over the state.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about in terms of innuendo, consult your local Urban Dictionary.

Wineke is not alone.  Liberals all over are not just arguing against TEA Partiers – they’re attacking them with the type of bile and vitriol typically reserved for Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Jesus Christ.  If you need a citation, do a Google search for yourself.

Why?  At the root, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of who these people are and what is motivating them.

Clearly, if you take their rhetoric at face value, Democrats believe that the dozens and dozens of TEA Party and “patriotic resistance” groups that have sprung up all over Wisconsin are just those good ol’ Bush Republicans finding a new outlet for their fury at being out of power.

Obviously, they’ve not taken the time to attend a TEA Party or a local patriot meeting.  To be sure, there are a handful of disaffected Republicans in the movement, but a shocking amount of these people do not necessarily affiliate their ideology with the Republican Party.  They are stone cold libertarian constitutionalists, many of whom have no love for Republicans – or outright hate the GOP – or view it as equal to the Democratic Party.  Oh, and they loathed the Bush presidency.

Furthermore, many of these people have never, ever been involved in a political campaign.  I recently attended a local tea party meeting in my area and, although I’ve been involved in local politics for over a decade, I recognized only one person at the meeting as having been active politically at any time in the last ten years.  The rest were brand new to political activism.

Smart political operators would see this as a huge constituency waiting to be tapped.  These people are 2010 voters.  They’re angry.  They’re passionate.  They’re motivated.

But Democrats have not even tried to make inroads.  They simply attacked and smeared them from day one.  As bad as the GOP has been with outreach and coalition-building in recent years, you have to give them credit for working to pull TEA Partiers in the general direction of the Republican Party.  As a result of this, along with the rank hate being spewed by Democrats toward them, these angry, passionate and motivated individuals will be voting Republican in droves later this year.

Maybe I’m all wrong and this is just a demonstration of overt Democrat hostility toward a group of people with a differing ideology.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  But that would not square with what the Democratic Party is at its very core – a party whose main ambition is to win elections to buy new constituencies to win more elections.

But then, I don’t see the world the same way they do, so this all makes absolutely no sense to me.