The premise of the paper is that Tea Party candidates have an institutional advantage over establishment candidates in the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. The reason is that the Tea Party constitutes the base of the Republican Party. The significance of the 2016 Presidential elections is that the Tea Party has emerged as a leading electoral force in the national Republican Party. Prior to 2012, the Tea Party focused its attention upon electing candidates to the house of representatives, US Senate, state and local offices [1]. Since that time, the Tea Party has taken over the base of the Republican Party and its candidates are now able to compete for the office of the presidency. According to the 2012 American National Election Study, the Tea Party is the “most politically active segment of the GOP electoral base [2]. They are 57% of all GOP voters and 64% of Republican primary voters and 66% of “opinion leaders [2].” Based upon the survey, Tea Party activists make-up over 60% of Republicans who contributed money to the party and its candidates, attended rallies and worked on campaigns. A Pew survey carried out in July 2013, also found that 62 percent of Tea Party Republicans reported voting regularly in Republican primaries. This compared with 45 percent of other Republicans [3].

Given the importance of the Tea Party, It is not surprising that their candidates are the early leaders for the Republican presidential nomination. Nevertheless, Tea Party candidates must compete for the support of the base of the party. That means that while Tea Party candidates may change their ranking during the six-month state primary/caucus marathon (i.e., from February to July 2016), they have an institutional advantage to win the nomination. Another way of putting it is that Tea Party candidates such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz can win the nomination without the support of the Republican establishment. However an establishment candidate such as Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Chris Christy would have great difficulty winning the nomination without Tea Party support. The old rules governing the Republican nomination process appear to no longer apply. That is to say, having the largest campaign war-chest, avoiding language that may offend “identity groups” such as young single women, blacks or Hispanics, polishing candidates’ image, speech, talking points, and prepping candidates for TV debates or interviews is no longer the coin of the realm. This is the reason that the print, TV, and radio media has been caught totally unprepared for the rise of Tea Party candidates in the 2016 election campaign. They will continue to be befuddled until they recognize the emergence of a powerful Tea Party movement that dominates the base of the Republican Party. It should be obvious to all that simply dismissing Tea Party activists and candidates by calling them extremists or radicals conceals the underlying reality. Even prescient students of election politics such as Larry Sabato, fail to fully grasp the nature of the Tea Party movement. For example, Sabato concludes that “Tea Party supporters are much more conservative than the American public on social as well as economic issues, more religious [4].” In fact, the Tea Party is not comprised of “Republicans.” All of the polls conducted on Tea Party activists have found that the partisan affiliation of Tea Party members is mixed. For example, one study by the Winston Group that conducted three national surveys of 1,000 registered voters in 2010 found that four out of [1] Tea Party members are Democrats or Independents [5]. In a survey of 11,000 members of Freedom Works, a non-profit organization that supports Tea Party election campaigns, carried out in 2013, concluded “Tea Party Activists are not Republicans [6].”

To understand the Tea Party, it is necessary to examine its origins. The Tea Party came into existence in the summer of 2009 in response to Obama’s proposed Affordable Health Care Act. The massive scope and cost of the proposal (involving as much as one-sixth of the economy) triggered widespread protests at congressional town hall meetings throughout the country. From the Tea Party perspective, it was the last straw of huge deficit spending and burgeoning debt that began with the George W. Bush administration’s $700 billion dollar Trouble Asset Recovery Program (TARP). TARP bailed-out over a thousand large banks and mortgage, car, and insurance companies and Obama’s $800 billion stimulus spending project which primarily benefited Wall Street banks and corporations.

By protesting these policies, Tea Party activists were merely following the historical precedent of the original Tea Party activists of the 1750s called the Sons of Liberty. Like the Sons of Liberty, modernday Tea Party activists created grassroots organizations in every state in the country [7]. However, the contemporary Tea Party movement is a virtual community with thousands of local organizations and millions of supporters. They are in rebellion against the leadership of the Republican Party. The only reason they vote Republican is the party’s historical populist tradition and emphasis upon fiscal responsibility. In other words, they are copying the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s that was designed to oppose the creation of a powerful central bank allied to economic elites. Unlike the Federalist Party, however, Jefferson’s Republican Party appealed for support from yeoman farmers who constituted the base of the economy at the time. The first Republican Party, created by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, was formed in reaction to the centralizing policies of the Federalist Party. The Republicans came to power in 1800 and dominated national and state affairs until the 1820s. The Republican Party was “Anti-Administration” and it opposed the Federalist Party that was organized by the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson opposed Hamilton’s financial programs that were based upon the power of the central bank. Jefferson feared that the bank would lead the country towards aristocracy and subvert constitutional Republicanism. Tea Party activists today have the same fear.

Modern Tea Party activists view both Democrat and Republican elites as an “aristocracy”- i.e., a corporate elite supported by the federal government. They see government programs such as TARP, the Stimulus, quantitative easing and zero interest rates by the Federal Reserve as serving the interests of economic elites. By contrast, millions of working, and middle-class Americans, lost their savings, homes, jobs and businesses during the recessions of 2009-2010 and did not receive any financial assistance from the federal government. Tea Party activists have organized themselves at the grassroots level to replace the leadership of the Republican Party. They call them Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). The Tea Party’s campaign strategy is to “primary” (i.e., defeat RINOs in Republican primaries and caucuses). This is a potent strategy because only one third of Republicans vote in primaries. Therefore, the influence of motivated Tea Party voters is magnified in primary elections and caucuses. The first successful Tea Party campaign was waged against a RINO in the 23rd Congressional District of up-state New York by the name of Dierdre K. “Dede” Scozzafava. The Tea Party defeated this handpicked Republican RINO who was supported by the Republican Party establishment in Washington D.C. The defeat of the RINO candidate led to the Tea Party’s use of her name, Scozzafava, to describe the strategy. Since 2009, the Tea Party’s Scozzafava strategy has been used many times to remove leaders of the Republican Party. Casualties of the primary strategy include Senator Robert Bennett’s defeat by Mike Lee in Utah and Marco Rubio’s defeat of Charlie Christ in Florida in 2010. Ted Cruz defeated a RINO, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, David Dewhurst in a 2012 primary. In 2014,the Tea Party” primaried” RINO Republican House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor. Cantor was defeated in Virginia’s 7th congressional district by a virtually unknown economics professor and Tea Party activist, Dave Brat. Tea Party activists regard prominent Republican leaders such as former Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH) [8], Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), senior senators such as John McCain (R-AZ), Rick Santorum (R-PA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and presidential candidates such as governors of New Jersey, Chris Christy, Ohio, John Kasich, Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, New York, George Pataki, Georgia, John Gilliam and Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., as RINOs. The Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, Reince Priebus, and former chairman of the RNC, Michael Steel, and Republican advisers such as Karl Rove, Republican journalists and pundits such as Gary Wills and Charles Krauthammer and TV talk show host, Bill O’Reilly, are also regarded as RINOs. With the exception of a handful of media outlets such as TV and radio talk show host, Sean Hannity, and radio host, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Party activists are skeptical about the media. Indeed, They believe that the media represents big business that serves the interests of the establishment and therefore, is patronizing and contemptuous of working, and middle, class Americans. For this reason, media criticism of unscripted, impromptu politically incorrect comments made by Tea Party candidates does not resonate with them. This explains the fact that none of Donald Trump’s, Ben Carson’s or Ted Cruz’s verbal indiscretions or peccadillos has adversely affected their standing in the polls. To the contrary, their politically incorrect language enhances their image as strong leaders who possess the courage to challenge the Republican and Democrat leadership.

The most important groups comprising the Republican establishment are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the political network of Charles G. and David H. Koch, and the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, the Republican Party’s super PAC. David McIntosh, the President of the Koch-funded Club for Growth has confessed that they were grappling with how best to handle Trump. According to McIntosh, Trump’s appeal to voters is that he has “tapped into the raw Anger of Republican voters against Washington leaders [9].” In his view, the problem for the establishment is that many voters agree with Trump’s argument that Washington is ineffectual. Republican donors and strategists are puzzled, therefore, about how to topple Trump. He has stirred the Tea Party base of the Republican Party and the establishment has lost control of the party. Andy Sabin, a New York supporter of Jeb Bush said that discussions about what to do about Trump had come up repeatedly on a recent Hampton’s fundraiding circuit. Sabin who is also a donor to American Crossroads, said “(Trump) has been vile but he has also been able to bring out what people feel about their government [10]. The cost of an anti-Trump campaign would be daunting with no certainty of success. Since Trump is a wealthy candidate himself with universal name recognition and an ability to get free airtime and newspaper headlines, it could cost the establishment at least $20 million to wage a media campaign against him. If they waged a campaign against Fox News’ viewers, it could cost them $2 million per week and a campaign targeting Iowa caucus-goers would cost them $10 million. They fear that such a campaign might fail and create a backlash against them. It is certain to start a war with Trump who would fight back with a vengeance. Such a campaign would play into Trump’s narrative that Republican elites were scheming to take control of the presidency. Hence, they have followed a lower profile strategy. They decided that Trump voters could only really be persuaded to abandon him by rival candidates and not by super PACs. Therefore, they have funded Trump’s strongest RINO rivals— especially Bush, Rubio and Fiorina and then tried to orchestrate their anti-Trump attacks. Their strategy was based upon the premise that media attacks by rival candidates would deflate Trump’s standing in the polls and that by the time the Florida primary came around (March 15th), Bush or Rubio would still be standing. The smart money was betting that Rubio would likely emerge as the eventual Republican nominee. They reasoned that with the exception of Wendell Willkee in 1940, the Republican nominee has never been an outsider. Like Trump, Wendell Willkee was a former Democrat and corporate attorney and executive. They think that also like Willkee who was crushed by FDR in the election, Trump would lose to the Democrat candidate. The establishment view was that Rubio would only have to finish fourth or higher in the Iowa and New Hampshire primary/caucus for his nomination prospects to rise with a likely win in Florida.

War of words with trump

Following the establishment’s strategy, RINO candidates have tried to use Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric to sink his candidacy. For example, in response to Trump’s comments about John McCain, that he “liked people that weren’t captured,” Marco Rubio said that Trump’s remarks against Senator McCain “disqualified” him to be president. And after Trump made comments equating illegal Mexican immigrants to “rapists and criminals” and “anchor babies”, Jeb Bush twitted, “Enough with the slanderous attacks.” South Carolina Senator, Lindsey Graham, also said that Trump had “crossed the line and predicted the American voter would tell him, ‘You’re fired’.” This strategy has backfired, however. They turned out to be more damaging to the candidates. Bush’s criticism of Trump, for example, merely called attention to his own remark in 2014, that illegal immigration across the southern border “isn’t a felony-it’s an act of love” because they are in search of a better life and should have the sympathy of Americans. In response, Trump ran a 15-second TV ad containing a series of mug shots showing three such border-crossers who had been charged with murder. The first mug shot was that of Francisco Sanchez, an illegal immigrant charged with the killing 32-year old Kate Steinle in San Francisco (a Sanctuary city) after being deported from the United States five times [11]. Trump concluded the ad by saying that these illegal immigrants are hardly an act of love. Bush’s polls numbers dropped precipitously after this controversy from a high of 15% to a low of only 4%.

Establishment denies trump support

Republican donors have also tried to prevent Donald Trump from getting campaign support that was available to his rivals. For example, the billionaire Koch Brothers and their network, a coalition of 450 individual donors, independent groups and companies, have snubbed Trump. The Koch network is sometimes called the alternative base of the Republican Party—including their super PAC, the Club For Growth (CFG). According to CFG President, David Mcintosh, they decided to undertake a campaign against Trump in Iowa because he “would be a terrible leader on economic growth. He is the worst kind of politician, he says anything to get elected, and he’ll do just the opposite when in office [12]. The significance of the Kochs’ snub of Trump is that they planned to spend $889 million during the Republican nomination phase of the election campaign. They have denied campaign funds to Trump but gave it to his rivals. For example, the Koch brothers held a three-day meeting in Orange County, California during the summer of 2015. They invited Republican candidates who shared their economic policy views. It included Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz [13], Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul. Donald Trump was not invited despite the fact that his campaign staff filled out the CFG questionnaire that was required to attend the meeting. Trump was also denied support from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity (AFP), i360 their voting research company, and their Hispanic campaign organization, LIBRE Initiative.

The Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is particularly important to Donald Trump because of its grassroots nature and the fact that they have fulltime chapters in 35 states including the first four Republican primaries/caucus states—Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The AFP was also affiliated with 2.3 million Tea Party and Veteran activists in almost every state in the union. There were 45,000 Tea Party activists in 99 counties in Iowa, the first caucus state. AFP’s stated goal is to “educate citizens about economic policy and the importance of returning the federal government to its Constitutional limits [14].” The AFP supports cutting taxes, government spending, ending government waste and fraud, reducing government regulation of energy, government healthcare and intrusion into the lives of most Americans. A Bloomberg news report correctly observed that the Koch brothers “harnessed the Tea Party’s energy in service of their own policy goals. As the Tea Party movement grew, the AFP emerged as its staunchest ally [15].” However, since the Tea Party does not support the establishment’s three major legislative policy goals, there is some separation between the AFP and the Tea Party. A Koch founded non-profit, Freedom Partners, also created a private voting research company called i360. It has become the leading supplier of conservative voter data. It has a massive database of 191 million voters. According to President Michael Palmer, the company gathers details about an individual’s consumer habits, voter registration and Twitter activity. Palmer’s i360 and the RNC voting data company, Data Trust, signed an agreement in 2015 to share voting data for the 2016 elections. Trump’s campaign asked i360 if they could get access to the voting database and were refused. Likewise, a Koch-backed Latino-voter-targeting organization, LIBRE Initiative refused to invite Trump to any of its events and called him “an inconsistent conservative who has gotten ahead through sensationalism [16].” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, backed by mega corporations has also declared war on Donald Trump, and all Tea Party conservatives. The chamber announced that they planned to spend $100 million in 2016 to defeat Tea Party candidates in Republican primaries. Their top target is Donald Trump and who has opposed their corporate agenda in Congress [17].

The Chamber President, Tom Donohue, listed their agenda for 2015.

1. Full implementation of ObamaCare without repeal.

2. Comprehensive Immigration Reform to include Amnesty.

3. Full implementation of Common Core education standards.

Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce have funded these priorities. They want government healthcare, more immigration and national educational policy because it “levels the playing field” of the global economy. That means that government spending in these three areas lowers their cost of production. They reason is that their international competitors have government health care and low-cost skilled labor. Therefore to be competitive they also want the U.S. government to pick up the costs of health care and the education of their workers. They also want a large immigrant pool of skilled workers to lower their costs of production and help them compete in the world market. Therefore, they have financed opponents of Tea Party candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Wall Street prefers a Bush v. Clinton election in 2016 because they believe the candidates are “two sides of the same coin.” Wall Street wins with either candidate. However, they could accept Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina if Bush faltered in the primaries. By contrast, Donald Trump and the Tea Party oppose the corporate agenda and this has started a war between the Republican establishment and the Tea Party [18].

The reason that the Republican establishment wished to eliminate Trump’s candidacy is that he challenged the party’s electoral philosophy. That philosophy was first established in 1994 when Newt Gingrich created a 10-point Contract with America as the basis of the Republican congressional campaign. They stunned the Democrats by winning control of Congress and elected Gingrich Speaker of the House. The Republicans retained control of the House for the next 12 years. Gingrich’s electoral philosophy was called the “big tent” strategy. The strategy was designed to appeal to non-Republican independents in order to expand the base of the party and thus win more elections. By big tent, Gingrich meant that liberal views were welcomed in the Republican Party. Since America was a big, complex country, it was necessary for Republicans to create a big coalition of diverse (i.e., liberal and conservative) opinion. The GOP from then on sought to carry out the big tent strategy by relying upon public opinion polls as the basis of their campaign agenda. Pollsters told Republican leaders that in order to win more elections, they had to transform their “intolerant conservative” image by electing “moderates” in liberal districts and states. In other words, they could only win in “blue” states by following the advice of pollsters and campaign professionals. Gingrich and others began to admonish conservatives in the Republican Party to be more “pragmatic” and to support moderate, meaning liberal, Republican Candidates. Gingrich’s big tent strategy had thus become the conventional wisdom of the Republican Party.

Republican’s campaign strategy

The Republican Party’s postmortem for its failed 2012 presidential election bid, set the stage for their 2016 election strategy. The Republican pollsters basically copied the Democrat Party’s election strategy. That was based upon the premise that Mitt Romney lost the election because he relied too much on the “suburban white voter.” This was a failing strategy because since 1992, the share of these voters shrank from 87 percent of the electorate to 83 percent in 1996, 80 percent in 2000, 77 percent in 2004, 74 percent in 2008 and was even less in 2012. The Republicans believe that they were in a no-win situation of their own making. In other words, the party’s reliance upon a decline in the percentage of white voters ignored the fastest demographic voting bloc in the country Hispanics. Republican campaign strategists also argued that Romney’s “antiquated” or traditional view of women and the failure of the party to nominate women candidates resulted in a “gender voting gap.” Therefore, the conventional wisdom among Republican campaign advisers was that the party should reverse the “Hispanic voting gap” and the “gender gap” by nominating Hispanic and women candidates. This explains the RNC’s embrace of Marco Rubio and Carly Fioina as their secondary, preferred candidates. This was the reason, for example, that Rubio was selected by the Republican Party to give a speech to the presidential nominating convention in august 2012. It was the final day of the convention and was designed to preview Rubio as a possible future candidate for the nomination in 2016. Likewise, despite Carly Fiorina’s relatively low standing in the polls before the first president debate, the RNC agreed to her demand that RNC rules governing the debate be changed for the second debate scheduled for September 16, 2015 [19]. Under the old rules, Fiorina would have been ranked 2.2% in the polls or ranked in 11th place and thus would have been relegated to the “loser” or “children’s hour.” However, under the new, revised rules, she was ranked at 4.4% or ranked in 7th place and thus was included in the “happy hour” (“prime time”) debate. After the second debate, Fiorina standing in public opinion rose to 11.3% in a Real Clear Politics average poll. However, Tea Party activists and regard Fiorina as a RINO. Therefore, without Tea Party support it would be difficult for her to secure the Republican nomination [20]. Indeed, the polling trends from June 2015 to September 2015, suggest that Fiorina has took the place of Bush as the leading establishment candidate. For example, in the August 13-16, 2015 CNN ORC poll, Bush was the preferred candidate by 13% compared to Fiorina’s 5% and in the September 17-19, 2015 poll, Fiorina led by 15% whereas Bush dropped to only 9%. During the same period, Trump remained at 24% and Carson increased his vote from 9% to 14% [21]. In fact Trump and Carson combined, received 33% of the vote in August and increased that percentage to 38% in September. This suggests that Bush and Fiorina are competing for the same bloc of pro-establishment voters without making any inroads into the Tea Party voting constituency.

The tea party’s campaign strategy

The Tea Party has an entirely different election campaign strategy. They believe that Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama in 2012 was due to the Republican Party’s selection of a “weak, moderate, handpicked” candidate by the Republican establishment. According to Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, the election debacle was due to their failure to select a candidate who embraced the principles of the Tea Party i.e., limited government principles of the conservative base of the Republican Party [22]. The Tea Party’s model campaign strategy is Ronald Reagan. According to Sarah Palin, Reagan warned the party against “blurring the (party) lines.” He felt that Republican campaigns that are designed to win the support of Democrats and Independents are the wrong strategy. This can only lead to a “me too” Republican Party without any real difference with the Democrats. In fact, Tea Party activists refer to Liberal Republicans as “Democrat-lite.” By contrast, they believe that the Republican Party must stand for something. Ronald Reagan did not pander to special interests or “identity groups” such as blacks, Hispanics, Evangelicals, or young single professional women to win elections. His campaigns were based upon conservative principles. Tea Party activists use the analogy of a “magnet” that attracted Independent and liberal voters who were sick and tired of what was going on in Washington. Reagan did not try to ingratiate himself to the Democrat opposition by diluting conservatism and this propelled him and the party to victory. Tea Party activists believe that moderate Republican presidential candidates such as Gerald Ford, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney all lost presidential elections because they could not win over the conservative grassroots center of the party. Ironically, their highly vaunted electability as “moderates” was precisely the reason that they lost the elections. Tea Party activists reluctantly supported Mitt Romney in 2012 but as many as three million did not turn out to vote for him. The Tea Party feels the same way toward the 2016 establishment candidates including Bush, Rubio and Fionia.

Tea Party activists subscribe to 10 basic principles that were patterned after Newt Gingrich’s 10 points of the Contract With America. Only the Tea Party’s 10 point Contract From America was based upon more than half a million Tea Party Activists voting for it. Ryan Hecker designed the Tea Party Contract. He was a 31-year old Jewish, Harvard trained Law School attorney. Hecker sought to create a new Republican platform to take back control of the party and the country from the political establishment [23]. The 10 points of the Tea Party Contract are as follows.

1. Protect the Constitution

2. Reject Cap and Trade

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

4. Enact Fundamental Tax reform

5. Competitive Health Care insurance across state lines

6. End Runaway Government Spending

7. Defund, Repeal and Replace Government-run Health Care

8. Pass “All of the Above” Energy Policy

9. Stop the Pork

10. Stop the Tax Hike

It is important to recognize that the Tea Party did not include social issues in its platform. Ryan Hecker had the foresight to recognize that social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, for example, would be divisive and therefore, would not unify the Tea Party movement. Foreign policy was also excluded from the Tea Party agenda. That means that Tea Party activists include social liberals and evangelicals under their banner. Likewise, it includes foreign policy non-interventionist such as Rand Paul and interventionists such as Marco Rubio. The core of the movement is the constitutional principles of “separation of powers,” and the Bill of Rights (i.e., the first 10 amendments of the Constitution) limiting the size and intrusion of the federal government into the lives of ordinary Americans. That also means an end to “crony capitalism” or government subsidies to green industries that are not economically viable and removing regulatory restrictions on energy production, lowering burdensome taxation, and eliminating mandates on businesses and taxpayers especially the Affordable Healthcare Act. Tea Party activists believe that Congress has surrendered its constitutional authority to legislate and has allowed the executive and judicial branches of government to usurp the powers of people. Presidential executive orders, for example, to negotiate a nuclear treaty with Iran and Supreme Court overreaching to remake legislation deciding that the Affordable Health Act is a tax bill, and executive amnesty for illegal aliens are perceived as threats to the Republic. The Tea Party is particularly upset that in 2014, the Republicans won control of both houses of Congress and yet the leadership refused to fight against outof- control federal spending, growth of the national debt and funded the Affordable Health Care Act. For that reason they are determined to remove the Republican leadership of Congress and place a Tea Party Candidate such as Trump, Carson, or Cruz in the White House in 2016. They are also determined to replace the congressional leadership with Tea Party leaders.

As of September 2015, three of the top five Republican presidential candidates: Trump, Carson and Cruz were Tea Party candidates. Marco Rubio, a fourth potential Tea Party candidate won election to the US Senate from Florida in 2010 with Tea Party support. However, once in the Senate, he distanced himself from the Tea Party by refusing to join the Senate Tea Party Caucus. As the head of the so-called “gang of eight” bipartisan senators sponsored a bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill which included a form of amnesty for illegal aliens without first securing the US southern border with Mexico. Since national security of the country is the first principle of the Tea Party, this undermined their support for him. Indeed, Rubio’s collapse in the polls reveals this drop in support. In April 2015, he led the Republican field with an 18-point approval poll but by October 2015, he dropped to less than nine percent. No amount of support from the Republican Party is likely to help him overcome this deficit. Rand Paul was also elected 2010 to the Senate from Kentucky with his father’s Tea Party support. However, he was never able to expand his support beyond Ron Paul’s Libertarian constituency he could not match his father’s fund raising ability in the 2012 campaign.. Rand Paul’s campaign was particularly hurt in the polls by his noninterventionist stance against Islamic Terrorism in the Middle East and insistence upon placing strict limits on the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of potential terror threats. His standing in the RCP average in September 2015 sank to only 2.2 percent. Jeb Bush, and all of the other Republican establishment candidates are languishing without Tea Party support and are at 11 percent or below in the polls. Their policy expertise, experience in political office, campaign funding, or oratorical skills on TV cannot overcome this absence of Tea Party support at the base of the party.

According to the Real Clear Politics average of major national polls, trump led the pack of 15 candidates by 23.3 percent followed by Ben Carson at 16.3 percent, Carly Fiorina, at 11.8%, Marco Rubio with 9.5%, and Jeb Bush with 9.0 percent, Cruz 6.2 percent. Trump led the Republican field by an average spread of 7 percent [24].

National: GOP (Table 1)

Table 1: Polling Data.

Table 1: Polling Data

Donald Trump’s phenomenal rise in the Republican presidential primary polls is almost unprecedented. Polling experts are dumfounded by his rocketing to the top position in state and national polls. For example, Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute said “throw out the rulebook when it comes to Trump.” His meteoric rise in the polls challenges the conventional wisdom in presidential politics [25]. Trump’s favorability among Republican voters rose from 20 percent to 52 percent within one month of announcing his candidacy in June 16th between July and August 2015. No candidate in modern history has accomplished such a fete. The polls also showed him leading by five percent over his nearest Republican rival in Iowa and New Hampshire and by 15 percent in South Carolina. Polling experts such as Lee Miring off said “Trump is weathering political storms that would doom other candidates [26].” Donald Trump’s unexpected success has alarmed the GOP and establishment candidates especially Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Trump’s critics have made two claims about his candidacy. The first is that if he were the nominee, he would alienate independentleaning Republican voters resulting in Republicans losing the general election. Secondly, if he did not get the nomination, he would run as a third party candidate that would also cost the Republicans the election. They cite as evidence of this threat a recent Rasmussen poll that found 36 percent of Republican voters said they would back Trump even if he ran as a third party candidate. And according to a Rasmussen Report, 19 percent of Democrat voters said they were were likely to vote for Trump [27].

While Tea Party candidates have a potential institutional advantage over establishment candidates in Republican primaries, they nevertheless must compete for Tea Party support. To use a sports analogy, it is commonplace for football, basketball or soccer enthusiasts to have favorite teams and players. The same applies to competition in presidential campaigns. There are four Tea Party candidates among the 15 remaining candidates for the nomination. They are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul. Their standing in opinion polls in primary/caucus elections is based in large part upon their statewide campaign organizations. In other words, some Tea Party candidates have been more successful than others in organizing and mobilizing Tea Party voters. This is clearly evident in the early primary/caucus states—Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Indeed, many pollsters regard these states as representative of regional trends in the country. Iowa represents the mid-west, New Hampshire the north east, and South Carolina the south.

Donald trump’s campaign organization

Donald Trump attributes his decision to enter the 2016 race to the Tea Party. Four years ago, Trump stood before a cheering crowd sponsored by the South Florida Tea Party and declared that he “had the qualities needed for the White House [28].” Everett Wilkinson of Palm Beach Gardens who organized the rally said at the time “Now that (Trump) has decided to run, the support that he gained there has become a whole lot more to where he is the leading candidate.” However, the reason that the Tea Party supports Trump is simple. What they like about him is his “Trumpisms and his message“. Make American Great Again [29].” This message resonated with the Tea Party from its founding in 2009. Obama’s message of “fundamentally changing America scared a lot of hard working over-taxed citizens. Eric Olson, a leader of the Montana Tea Party explained that the Tea Party’s voice imploring conservatives to Make America Great Again was the impetus for the Republican Party taking over of the House of Representatives in 2010. Trump now embodies that voice and is a perfect example of how someone’s life experience can lead him to conservatism. Dr. Gina Loudon, an early Tea Party organizer and host of “America Trends with Dr. Gina,” explained Trump’s appeal in the following way.

The whole idea of the Tea Party was to get people to come into conservatism. Trump’s actions make it okay for other Americans to do the same. With his action has come a mass migration of people into the conservative movement. You don’t have to want Trump to be president to see that he opened the doors of conversation for the voiceless. And this hit the establishment and political correctness right in the face. Whether he becomes the voice of those silenced or the President of the United States, it is hard to overlook what he has done for conservatism and how he has buffered our know conservatives in the race, such as Cruz and Carson that the establishment would otherwise have vilified by now [30].

The Tea Party movement remains Trump’s base of support and that has propelled him to the head of the Republican pack in national polls. Since 2011, Trump had continued to address Tea Party groups throughout K; the country. For example, In April 2014, Donald Trump addressed a Tea Party Freedom Summit in Manchester, N.H. When he entered the room, he was greeted with a standing ovation and Trump declared the “Tea Party loves me.” The chairman introduced him as “the only person who could tell the president, “You’re fired [31].” Trump also addressed the South Carolina Tea Party Convention in January 2015. Joe Dugan, the head of the Myrtle Beach Tea Party and organizer of the annual conference, praised Trump as “a solid opponent of amnesty and part of their “stellar (Tea Party) lineup” including Ted Cruz and Ben Carson [32]. In September of 2015, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP), a national coalition of more than 3000 Tea Party groups organized a protest rally to pressure Congress to block the Iran nuclear agreement. Trump and Cruz were the headliners who were invited to address thousands of protestors at the rally along with other Tea Party leaders such as Sarah Palin and conservative broadcaster, Mark Levin [33]. In addition to giving speeches to Tea Party groups throughout the country, Trump co-opted the leadership of grassroots organizations in order to mobilize Tea Party voters to support his candidacy. Because the Koch brothers blocked any support for Donald Trump’s candidacy, Trump out-smarted David Koch by hiring the leadership of their grassroots Americans for Prosperity (AFP) out from under him. Trump hired Corey Lewandowski in February 2015 to be his national campaign manager. At the time, Lewandowski was the National Director of voter registration for Americans for Prosperity. He joined the AFP in 2008 as the East Coast regional director and New Hampshire state director.

Trump first met Lewandowski in April 2014 at an AFP and Tea Party (Citizens United) “Freedom Summit” in New Hampshire. This was the first meeting of Republican candidates for the 2016 election. They met and decided to stay in communication. Lewandowski agreed to manage Donald Trump’s campaign shortly after he announced his candidacy in March 2015. As the director of the New Hampshire AFP, Lewandowski showed his skill to draw large crowds to events with attention-getting gimmicks. For example, in 2010, he organized a Tax Day rally in which he produced a cardboard cutout of Democrat Governor John Lynch on the steps of the Capitol building and began debating it. Lewandowski has been Trump’s constant companion since then. Lewandowski explained Donald Trump’s unconventional campaign style. He said that Trump has no use for the “GOP establishment consultant class.” Consultants, pollsters and pundits, have no say in Trump’s campaign or platform. Donald Trump is his own spokesman, campaign manager and political consultant. According to Lewandowski, the “consultant class” is “grasping at straws to find a way to stop him from being the nominee. “ Lewandowski described their initial criticism in the following way. He won’t file the paperwork. He won’t fill out his personal financial disclosure statement. He won’t be a factor in the race [34]. Time and again they have been wrong and continue to be wrong. Lewandowski said “We have a large team in place in Iowa, a big team in South Carolina, and a big team in New Hampshire. The number of people volunteering for the campaign is incredible and humbling [35]. Trump also hired, Michael Glassner, another Tea Party campaign operative as his National Political Director. Glassner worked for the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008, for Joe Miller as Alaska’s GOP Senate candidate, and for Sarah Palin as her chief of staff in 2011. Glassner fits the mold of Donald Trump’s management style. His is an effective detail man assigned the task of “organizing the best grassroots network in the country [36].” Donald Trump added 10 more top political strategists spearheading the grassroots organizing in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. For example, he hired veteran strategist, Chuck Laudner to spearhead the campaign in Iowa, Matt Ciepielowski in New Hampshire and Gerri McDaniel in South Carolina. All of them had extensive experience conducting grassroots campaigns for the Americans for Prosperity and for Tea Party candidates. For example, Chuck Laudner was the campaign coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots in Iowa. Formerly, he was the chief of staff to Iowa congressman Steven King from 2003 to 2006. Steven King was the co-founder, along with Michele Bachmann, of the Republican Congressional Tea Party Caucus. He was widely regarded as a power broker in Iowa Republican politics. King has backed Trump. He said that Trump’s [37] remarks about illegal immigration were riding a wave of support and if the Iowa caucus were held today, he would “come out on top.” Gerri McDaniel worked on Governor Nikki Haley’s gubernatorial campaign. Nikki Haley was a Tea Party endorsed candidate when she ran for Governor of South Carolina. She supported the election of two Tea Party senators from South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and then appointed Tim Scott to fill his seat in 2013 when DeMint resigned. Matt Ciepielowski was appointed the New Hampshire field director at Americans for Prosperity and was formerly, the Youth for Ron Paul regional coordinator in Louisiana, 2011-2012. Another coup for the Trump campaign in Iowa was the hiring of strategist Sam Covis, once proclaimed a “conservative icon.” He is a popular Iowa talk radio host and previously worked for Rick Santorium’s victorious campaign in the 2012 Iowa caucus. Covis and Chuck Laudner co-chair the Iowa state campaign. Trump’s campaign organization fits his personality and it appeals to the Tea Party. He is his own man and is not controlled by others. His independent style is the basis of the conflict with the Republican Party leadership and campaign donors, however, this is highly attractive to Tea Party activists. They particularly like the fact that he is self-financing his campaign and thus is not beholden to any special interests. In August 2015, Laudner reported that the campaign had so many volunteers that they have trouble tracking all of them. However, they have volunteers down to all 1,774 voting precincts in Iowa. They have expressed confidence that they will be able to “build a grassroots movement and seal the deal with interested voters [38]. Tea Party support for Donald Trump is widespread but not irrevocable. His potential Achilles heel is two-fold: his history of political independence and fear of demagoguery. Glenn Beck, who inspired one branch of the Tea Party, called the 9/12 project [39] has attacked Donald Trump on the grounds that he is not a true conservative. Beck posted this criticism of Trump on his Facebook page.

He is part of the problem when he by his own admission, buys politicians; he said he identifies his “policies more as a democrat”; he makes President Obama look truly humble; he was very pro abortion until recently; he still says “don’t defund planned parenthood”; he is pro ”assault weapon ban”. He is in favor of a wealth tax that would just “take money out of people’s bank account” he is a progressive ‘republican; He says single payer health care works; he said he would give people more than just Obama Care; the First Lady would be the first to have posed nude in lesbian porn shots; he said that. He keeps all the bibles he is given in a “special place” outside the city-and he only goes to church on Christmas and Easter; he is generally not a likable guy; he has around 16% favorability with Hispanics and he has gone bankrupt four times. The second criticism is that Donald Trump is a demagogue and would be a threat to the Republic if he were elected. According to George LeMieux, a former US Senator from Florida, and chairman of the Republican Party in Broward County in Florida, Trump is a “mixture of P.T. Barnum and Joseph McCarthy, a showman with the knack for sensationalism combined by a demagogue whose first response is to attack and ridicule his opponents [40].” LeMieux compared Trump to Huey Long, the “populist and bombastic governor and U.S. senator from Louisiana” whose dictatorial control of Louisiana was only stopped by an assassins bullet in 1935. The only difference between Long and Trump in LeMieux estimate, is that Long had an ideological set of beliefs (wealth distribution) whereas Trump has none [41].”Despite these criticisms, however, most Tea Party activists see him as their best hope for a strong leader who will challenge the Republican establishment and return the country to the historic traditions. They like Trump’s success in business and his blunt rhetoric. But, most of all, they value his willingness to challenge the Republican elite even in the face of media attacks and ostracism by Washington and Wall Street. Like most Americans, they dislike the political correctness of the elite and are cheered by the fact that the more the establishment attacks him, the more popular he becomes. The politically correct weapon that the establishment has used against the Tea Party since 2009, by branding them “extremists,” “racists,” “sexists,” “homophes” and Islamophobes” no longer works. The Tea Party understands this tactic and is immune to it. Nevertheless, the media and establishment elites continue to demand that Donald Trump withdraw from the presidential campaign because he does not follow the elite’s language etiquette. The shorthand for this is that the “Donald is not presidential.”

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Ben Carson’s Campaign Organizatio

Dr. Benjamin Carson is a 63-year old retired African-American neurosurgeon. He decided to enter the Republican presidential campaign after he appeared at a National Prayer Breakfast in May 2013. At the prayer breakfast, Carson made a 27-minute presentation with President Obama seated at a table on the dais a few feet away from him. Dr. Carson talked about the dangers to the Republic of huge federal deficit-spending, political correctness, the collapse of public education, the irrationality of the tax code and the waste and inefficiency of Obama care.

Obama was embarrassed and offended and within 15 minutes of the breakfast, the sponsors of the prayer breakfast asked Carson to apologize to the president but Carson refused saying that he had nothing for which to apologize unless the president felt that Carson’s comments applied to him. The video went viral and millions of Tea Party activists throughout the country saw it. Within hours, Rush Limbaugh began playing excerpts of Carson’s address on his show and telling his 20 million listeners, “I love this guy [42].” According to politico, his prayer breakfast speech was accessed over three million times during the subsequent 14 months [43]. The same week as the prayer breakfast, the Wall Street Journal, ran an editorial entitled “Ben Carson for President.” The following month, Carson was invited to address the influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C. While there, Carson met Sarah Palin who greeted him with “We are not worthy” presumably to be his companions. This was followed by a series of interviews with Sean Hannity who asked Carson, “would you ever run for president, sir,” and Fox News hired Ben Carson for a series of interviews. He also gave four or five speeches a week for Republican congressional candidates, for the causes he supports and to promote his books. Carson wrote two books, One Nation and an e-book entitled One Vote. The second book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 20 weeks and was number one for five weeks. This book outsold Hillary Clinton’s book, Hard Choices. This started a grassroots Carson-for president drumbeat throughout the country.

Carson’s super PAC

John Phillip Sousa IV, the great-grandson of the composer, a Tea Party activist, and supporter of the Tea Party Express, undertook a mission to persuade Carson to run for president. Sousa said “we only have one objective to get him to the White House in January 2017. In August 2013, Sousa and his friends created the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. They sent out thousands of mailings to Tea Party activists asking for supporters to sign a petition asking Carson to run and to send-in donations. His goal was to raise $13 million by the end of 2014. Their super PAC was called “Run Ben Run” and within one year, they raised $13 million from more than 150,000 donors. This exceeded the $12.1 million raised by Hillary Clinton’s super PAC, “Ready for Hillary”, during the same period [42]. Carson also had his own PAC called the American Legacy PAC. It raises funds to “build public support for a series of patient-centered reforms to replace Obama care and help elect congressmen who are committed to implementing those reforms. The PAC has raised about $6 million for the project. Sousa sent Dr. Carson a letter a week to his home in West Palm Beach containing between 3,000 and 6,000 petitions. The letters included books on policy issues they thought he should read. When Carson did not discourage Sousa’s draft effort during an interview by Fox News in 2013, the committee concluded that Carson had given the draft effort a “wink.”

A CNN/ORC presidential poll of Republican voters carried out from November 21-23, 2014 transformed Ben Carson from a political phenomenon to a serious candidate. The poll showed that 20 percent of voters choose Mitt Romney as their first preference for the nomination followed by Ben Carson with 10 percent of the vote. Big name establishment candidates, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, trailed Carson with 9 and 8 percent respectively [43]. This poll result was followed by a series of straw polls at Tea Party gatherings in which Carson won the vote. For example, in early September 2014, Carson won the Polk County, Iowa Party Dinner Straw Polls with 62% of the vote easily defeating Ted Cruz who came in second with only 7%. On September 15, 2014, he won a Maryland straw poll by 31.8% vote. And Carson was consistently ranked number one in polls on likeability and trustworthiness. In February 2015, NBC News/Marist polls discovered that Carson had the support of 6 to 10 percent of Republican voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He also had 7% support from Florida Republicans in a Quinnipiac University poll [41]. Armed with public support and campaign funding, Ben Carson announced his decision to enter the presidential race on May 3, 2015. Even before Carson decided to enter the presidential race, John Philip Sousa IV and Vernon Robinson the co-founders of the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee established a campaign organization in Iowa (the first caucus state). They hired a full-time staffer, Tina Goff, She was Herman Cain’s Iowa State director for his presidential campaign in 2011 and started working with Carson’s super PAC in April 2014. She assembled a campaign team and with the help of the PAC, they made 40,000 phone calls per month with a staff of 32 in the Midwest. The PAC paid for Dr. Carson’s books and sent them to every caucus member. They also built a dozen well-placed billboards in the Des Moines area and attended county meetings and festivals throughout Iowa. Therefore, like Trump, when Carson declared his candidacy in May 2015, he inherited a formidable readymade grassroots campaign apparatus. For example, Sousa and Robinson bought a list of past Republican caucus goers and sent them four mailers. They managed to get 4,000 of them to declare their favorite candidate in 2016. The undecided were first, 22%, Ted Cruz, was 17% and Carson, received 14% of the votes. In early primary states, Carson’s staff also has Tea Party connections. For example, the Iowa state director is Ryan Rhodes. He was a former chairman of the Iowa Tea Party and was the outreach director on Michele Bachmann’s Iowa caucus campaign in 2011. Congresswoman Bachmann was the co-founder along with Steve King, of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus that was formed in 2010. Rhodes has built a “massive volunteer network.” They have chairs or co-chairs in all 99 Iowa counties and are well on their way to organizing at the precinct level with about 800 of 1,682 precinct chairs [43].

Parallels with the trump campaign

Ben Carson’s campaign parallels that of Donald Trump. Both candidates depend upon Tea Party support. In an opinion editorial in the Washington Times, on April 8, 2014, Carson made the following statement. These modern-day patriots (Tea Party members) are ordinary citizens who toil day by day to provide food, education, and safety for our citizens. These are the people who fill the ranks of the Tea Party. They are not demons, but defenders of freedom. They are you and me [42]. Carson also criticized “establishment conservatives” who attack the Tea Party. They are patriotic citizens who seek to preserve the liberties that were fought for by early Tea Party patriots. Ben Carson has even tied his candidacy, in theory at least, to Donald Trump campaign. For example, in July 2015, Carson said that his candidacy befitted from Trump’s entry into the race. Carson explained that Trump gets a lot more media attention than he does and “the things that we talk about are very similar.” Carson implied that Trump’s supporters also supported him [43]. When asked about Donald Trump as his possible vice presidential candidate, Carson said “all things are possible [40].”Dr. Carson also shares with Donald Trump a visceral contempt for “political correctness.” While addressing the “Defending the American Dream Summit” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, Carson made the following comment. I hate political correctness so much because it’s antithetical to the founding principle of our nation freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We have reached the point where the average citizen is afraid to express himself. If you believe in traditional marriage, then you’re anti-gay; you’re a homophobe. If you are a white person and you disagree with a progressive black person you’re a racist. If you‘re a black person and you disagree with a progressive white person you’re crazy. It is all about intimidation [41]. Carson also shares in common with Trump the fact that he is not a “Republican.” In fact, Ben Carson only registered as a Republican in Florida on November 4, 2014 in order to enter the presidential race. When Carson was a young man, he was in his words a radical liberal Democrat. However, President Reagan’s “pragmatic” approach to policy persuaded him to shift to a Republican. However, when Republicans impeached President Clinton in the 1990s, he was so disgusted by the self-serving hypocrisy of Republicans in Congress that he declared himself an Independent. This parallels Donald Trump’s contempt for both political parties and an inclination to be critical of them. It is also in synchrony with the views of the Tea Party and that explains Trump and Carson’s popularity with the Tea Party. Likewise, Carson’s Achilles heel is the same as Trump’s. Carson has come under attack by the Republican establishment as an “amateur” or novice politician whose gaffes prove that he isn’t a serious candidate. Ben Carson has a long history of making provocative comments. For example, he has compared the United States to Nazi Germany (as a threat to free speech), said that “marriage is between a man and a woman,” said that “liberals are the most racist people there are,” and said that “Obama care is the worst thing to happen since slavery.” Most Tea Party supporters, however, are unfazed by what they term “sound bites” taken out of context. They note that the country elected a “sound bite master” as president in 2008, and again in 2012, only to discover that the sound bites were “outright lies” and their true meaning was largely hidden by the media [42]. In other words, the Tea Party sees media “outrages” as political theater that is selectively used by the elites of both political parties against the Tea Party and their political candidates. To date at least, these attacks against Trump and Carson have not diminished their campaigns.

The significance of the Tea Party in the 2016 campaign is that its candidates led all other candidates by a large margin. Before 2014, the Tea Party only challenged Republican candidates in congressional, state and local elections. In the 2016 campaign, the top two candidates for the nomination are Tea Party candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson. These two candidates combined have more than 42% of the total Republican votes in the polls. If the other two Tea Party candidates, Ted Cruz’ and Rand Paul’s poll numbers are added, the total percentage is 50%. By contrast, if all of the establishment candidates’ poll numbers are combined (i.e., Fiorina, Rubio, Bush, Kasich, Huckabee, Christy, Santorum and Jindal) they have less than 37%. That suggests that RINO candidates are competing for just over a third of the potential votes in the primaries and caucuses. This gives Tea Party candidates an institutional advantage. This change in the Tea Party’s electoral power suggests that the Tea Party has taken over the base of the Republican Party. More than 60% of Republican primary voters and caucus goers now support the Tea Party. They also represent the majority of campaign donors and “opinion leaders.” Regardless of the TV debate performance of RINOs or media attacks against them, Tea Party supporters will not support RINO candidates. Indeed, Tea Party advocates fiercely defend their candidates in the face of their so-called gaffes. In fact, the media attacks reinforce their belief that the establishment is trying to destroy them and their candidates. In order to understand the full impact that the Tea Party has had on the Republican Party, it is important to examine the characteristics of their leaders. Both of them are independents. Trump and Carson have at various times in their careers been Democrats and Independents. This fits the profile of Tea Party voters. Indeed, they are not “Republicans.” They have affiliated with the Republican Party only because of its historic commitment to fiscal discipline. Both of the candidates also have a crossover appeal to voters. For example, the polls indicate that 20% or more of Democrats would vote for Trump. And an estimated 17% of black voters would vote for Carson. This is the reason that other Tea Party candidates are not performing to their expectations. Ted Cruz, for example, relies heavily upon Tea Party evangelicals for support. He has virtually no cross over appeal to Independents and Democrats. Likewise, Rand Paul narrowly appeals to Libertarians and he has not been able to transcend that limitation. And despite the fact that Marco Rubio was elected to the senate in 2010 with strong Tea Party support, he has since lost their support. Rubio’s rise in the Republican Party establishment has virtually killed his grassroots support. Indeed, in the polls, Trump defeats Rubio in his home state, Florida by a substantial margin. The Tea Party’s primary mission is to overthrow establishment elites in the Republican Party and then to challenge the Democrat Party’s establishment and restore the country’s constitutionally limited government. They believe in the Founders’ philosophy of amateur patriot citizens leading the country and reject any hint of a lifetime sinecure of professional politicians. Likewise, the Tea Party rejects “political correctness.” They want their candidates to speak their mind without fear of offending particular “identity groups” such as young professional women, blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims. Family dynasties are also anathema to the Tea Party. They also oppose “professional consultants” and pollsters who determine candidates’ policy positions, and object to rehearsed speech, debate coaching and copying the mannerisms of establishment political elites. It is precisely the impromptu speech and “gaffes” of candidates that is valued by the Tea Party. They take the view that everyone has opinions and it is better for voters to know what candidates opinion are rather than hide them only to discover them after the election. “Gotcha” interviews on national TV or character assassination of Tea Party candidates is, therefore, unlikely to change Tea Party voting behavior. Ironically, the Tea Party may have pushed attack campaigns out of the limelight and forced candidates to actually reveal their own true views on a wide range of issues that they are trying to hide from the public.