In the Spring of 2009, the Tea Party emerged onto the American political scene. In the wake of Obama’s election, as commentators proclaimed the “death of conservatism,” Tax Day rallies and Tea Party showdowns at congressional town hall meetings marked a new and unexpected chapter in American conservatism. Accessible to students and general readers, Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party brings together leading scholars and experts on the American Right to examine a political movement that electrified American society. Topics addressed by the volume’s contributors include the Tea Party’s roots in earlier mass movements of the Right and in distinctive forms of American populism and conservatism, the significance of class, race and gender to the rise and successes of the Tea Party, the effect of the Tea Party on the Republican Party, the relationship between the Tea Party and the Religious Right, and the contradiction between the grass-roots nature of the Tea Party and the established political financing behind it. Throughout the volume, authors provide detailed and often surprising accounts of the movement’s development at local and national levels. In an Epilogue, the Editors address the relationship between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal is Executive Director and Lead Researcher of the Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements.
Dr. Christine Trost is Program Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements at UC Berkeley. She also serves as Assistant Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI).
“Steep brings together many of the leading scholars on modern, U.S.-right-wing politics. An exceptionally important and timely collection that sheds new light on the Tea Party phenomenon.” - Kathleen Blee, author of Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement
"Steep is deep. Its contribution of genuine interdisciplinary scholarship to the phenomenon of the Tea Party is one the best things to happen to our understanding of contemporary right-wing politics. This is an outstanding place for concerned citizens to understand the movement, whether it ends up rising or falling." - Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
312 pp.6 x 9Illus: 1 b/w photograph, 2 line illustrations, 21 tables
9780520274235$29.95|£25.00Paper
Aug 2012