News: Movement Conservatism

Glenn Beck To Announce 'Big Plan' In 2010

Glenn Beck, the controversial libertarian-conservative Fox News television host, will become more active in the U.S. populist conservative movement he spawned. At a rally tomorrow in Central Florida, Mr. Beck will unveil a “big plan” for 2010, which is expected to involve the 9.12 Project, the group he started earlier this year and named for the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when he says the nation was unified. Tomorrow's rally is timed to coincide with the kickoff of a tour promoting his new book, Arguing With Idiots.

After Mr. Beck unveiled his 9.12 Project, dozens, if not hundreds, of local 9/12 groups sprung up across the country and some have merged in purpose and tactics with the tea party movement of conservatives that exploded onto the scene this summer. Though the local 9/12 groups look to Mr. Beck as their de facto leader, they maintain no formal ties to his 9.12 Project. The 9.12 Project is co-sponsoring a march on Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2010, partly to protest the policies of President Barack Obama and Congress.

Tea Partiers Turn On Each Other

Hat tip to reader Nanakwame for this one. After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the U.S. tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum. The grass-roots activists driving the movement have become increasingly divided on questions as whether to focus their efforts on shaping policy debates or elections, work on a local, regional, state or national level or closely align themselves with the Republican Party.

“These groups don’t play as well together as they should,” said Kevin Jackson, a St. Louis-based black conservative author and activist who has spoken at dozens of tea party-type rallies and is traveling across the South with a convoy sponsored by the national Tea Party Patriots group. “They’re fractured at the organization level, I think mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who all of a sudden are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.”

The movement is composed of hundreds of independent local groups, many of which are incorporated as nonprofits and have localized names referencing the tea parties, 9/12 or We the People. While some tout a planned National Tea Party Convention in February (at which former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is listed as the keynote speaker) as a potentially unifying moment and others point to online coordination efforts, there is deep disagreement about what any national organization would look like and who would lead it. FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Grassfire, Americans for Limited Government and a host of other groups have helped organize various efforts capitalizing on the energy behind the tea parties, including providing training, online war rooms that help generate phone calls and ready-to-distribute canvassing literature. But the groups have also jockeyed — mostly behind the scenes — to take credit for leadership of the movement, which — depending on who’s doing the telling — took its name either as an homage to the 1773 Boston tax revolt that played a major role in sparking the American Revolution or from an acronym standing for “taxed enough already.”