The Tea Party and the Crisis of Neoliberalism: Mainstreaming New Right Populism in the Corporate News Media

Within months of Barack Obama's election, a putatively grass-roots conservative uprising emerged to challenge the Democratic Party's agenda. In this article, we analyze the role of cable news in the rise of the Tea Party during the current “crisis of neoliberalism”—a moment of political-economic volatility brought about by the Great Recession. We argue that the Tea Party's political purpose is to hold together the New Right coalition of business elites and white working- and middle-class Americans that undergirds the neoliberal political project. In the context of a deregulated corporate mass media, we show that both “right-wing” and “moderate” cable networks mainstreamed the Tea Party by framing it as a legitimate social movement, enabling the widespread projection of right-wing populist discourse in support of neoliberalism. In light of our study, we suggest that democratizing the mass media is crucial for a sustained progressive political response in the United States.