Edgar Litt argued that “The political ideology of the yeomen in Massachusetts includes an emphasis on moral corruption in Boston and other cities, and sporadic electoral participation in elections, which is characterized by outbursts of nativism, xenophobia, and rightist political movements.” Litt mentioned the predominance of the John Birch Society in several state senatorial districts. Interestingly the billionaire Koch brothers have been identified as major funders of the Tea Party movement, and their father was a founding member of the John Birch Society. One might go back to the success of the Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s for another parallel. The Know-Nothings dominated state government briefly with a mixture of economic populism and nativism.
Williamson, Skocpol and Coggins in “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism” found antipathy toward undocumented immigrants as central to the Tea Partiers’ world view. Immigrants are among the primary culprits Tea Partiers see as undeserving of government assistance. Immigration is second to “Deficit and Spending” in importance among Massachusetts Tea Partiers – a striking point when one considers the low-level of undocumented immigration in the state. The emotional fervor of the Tea Party towards immigration suggests racial resentment, argue Williamson et al.
Again this is nothing new. As John R. Mulkern writes in The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People’s Movement, in the 1850s Governor Henry Gardner and other Know-Nothing leaders argued that we must “guard against citizenship becoming cheap” and “Americanize America.” Know-Nothing populists applauded the deportation of “these leeches upon our taxpayers.” Those remarks were aimed at Irish immigrants. In 2009 radio talk show host and Tea Party sympathizer Jay Severin was suspended for describing Mexican immigrants as “millions of leeches from a primitive country [who] come here to leech off you.” (Severin was suspended again in 2011 and eventually fired for remarks directed at women). Simply substitute Latinos for the Irish in the rhetoric and see how far we have come.
Immigration bashing is one area where the Tea Party can prevail in Bay State policy circles. For example, the senate recently included a provision in their version of the casinos legislation that requires the gambling halls to check the immigration status of all prospective employees. There are about 190,000 undocumented immigrants in Massachusetts, a shade under 3% of our population. They make up between 3% and 4% of our workforce and mostly live quietly, attend school, and pay taxes. Many of them are children. So the chances of a massive infiltration of our to-be highly regulated gambling industry seems far-fetched. Democrats supported the anti-immigrant amendment, as did Republicans. It might seem that freedom loving Republicans would look upon the immigrant check imposed on the casinos as a job-killing regulatory burden upon free-market capitalism, but no.
The yeomen and the Tea Party will be continued in another post, with discussion of economics and other issues.
