they have incurred might not have been the most eloquent or the most thought out, but it spoke deeply about the implied position of what would become the Tea Party movement. Therefore, from its inception, the Tea Party has been not so much a debtor class but a class of economically stratified people who share a number of economically conservative concerns including not having to assume obligation for other people’s debt. As one popular Tea Party placard proclaims: me liberty, not your debt”! “Give Yet there is a split in the Tea Party consciousness. For years, debt and taxes cut to the core of the practical workarounds many in the middle class have used for sustaining the identity of the personally responsible, self-sufficient self. For years, tax cuts, private debt, and public deficits have been relied on to keep up the appearance of that middle-class identity. Raising taxes to pay for other people’s indebtedness becomes nothing less than scandalous for those suffering from middle-class melancholia. Theirs is a melancholy about how extra public burdens via taxation to bail out others (as well as payments on the public debt) will also threaten to reveal how they themselves have had to resort to various alternative means to keep up appearances as middle class. This political-economic anxiety about avoiding public taxes while accruing private debt is compounded by demographic change in the electorate. At one level, this takes the form of seeing others as interlopers threatening to unmask the charade of keeping up middle-class appearances. The issue of public debt has been framed as borrowing money to pay for expensive social welfare programs for those who are not practicing personal responsibility and are not being self-sufficient. At another level, the anxiety stems from fear of being pushed aside politically. The electorate is increasingly younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and composed of more people from the laboring classes below the Tea Partiers. A growing anxiety
they have incurred might not have been the most eloquent or the most thought out, but it spoke deeply about the implied position of what would become the Tea Party movement. Therefore, from its inception, the Tea Party has been not so much a debtor class but a class of economically stratified people who share a number of economically conservative concerns including not having to assume obligation for other people’s debt. As one popular Tea Party placard proclaims: “Give me liberty, not your debt”! Yet there is a split in the Tea Party consciousness. For years, debt and taxes cut to the core of the practical workarounds many in the middle class have used for sustaining the identity of the personally responsible, self-sufficient self. For years, tax cuts, private debt, and public deficits have been relied on to keep up the appearance of that middle-class identity. Raising taxes to pay for other people’s indebtedness becomes nothing less than scandalous for those suffering from middle-class melancholia. Theirs is a melancholy about how extra public burdens via taxation to bail out others (as well as payments on the public debt) will also threaten to reveal how they themselves have had to resort to various alternative means to keep up appearances as middle class. This political-economic anxiety about avoiding public taxes while accruing private debt is compounded by demographic change in the electorate. At one level, this takes the form of seeing others as interlopers threatening to unmask the charade of keeping up middle-class appearances. The issue of public debt has been framed as borrowing money to pay for expensive social welfare programs for those who are not practicing personal responsibility and are not being self-sufficient. At another level, the anxiety stems from fear of being pushed aside politically. The electorate is increasingly younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and composed of more people from the laboring classes below the Tea Partiers. A growing anxiety