Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System

by Scott Rasmussen, Doug Schoen

Today’s raucous revolt against Washington and Wall Street is a classic populist uprising. In Mad as Hell , political pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen discuss how the Tea Party movement is fundamentally remaking our two-party system and what it means for the future of American politics. For political junkies of every stripe—from both the left and the right side of the aisle— Mad as Hell is mandatory reading.

Genres: Politics

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2010

About the author

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of Rasmussen Reports. He is a political analyst, author, speaker and, since 1994, an independent public opinion pollster.

Scott founded Rasmussen Reports, LLC in 2003 as a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion polling information. Rasmussen Reports provides in-depth data, news coverage and commentary on political, business, economic and lifestyle topics at RasmussenReports.com, America’s most visited public opinion polling site.

Scott speaks regularly at events and with the media, translating poll numbers into meaningful analysis and commentary about current events, underlying trends and the questions that Americans are curious about. He is a frequent guest on Fox News, CNBC, BBC and other major media outlets. He also has appeared on The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

Scott is the author of Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System and In Search of Self-Governance and has had several columns published in the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, his work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Investor's Business Daily, The Christian Science Monitor and other major publications.

Scott did his first radio commercial at the age of seven and considers a career highlight the opportunity to work closely with hockey legend Gordie Howe. Scott and his father also founded the cable sports network ESPN. They sold their interest in 1984.

Reviews

[Christina Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would put some effort into this review, but I truly do not feel the book deserves my effort. Therefore, I do not apologize for any errors in grammar or spelling in the following:

This book is nearly 400 pages of angry polemic that repeats itself endlessly. I found sources taken out of context and errors in citations, in addition to a lack of citations for key claims. This leaves one to question the validity of the book. The book ends acknowledging the problems of the Tea Party, much to its credit: the racism of fringe components, how to maintain movement momentum, lack of a clear way forward (mission and planning), and lack of clear leadership. Yet, the book was written in 2010 and none of these problems have been addressed to my knowledge. This may be why the movement is decreasing in significance. (I consider Eric Cantor's defeat to Tea Partier Dave Brat an anomaly.) The Tea Party's ability to shut down the government without having a forward plan did the movement some serious damage. "Shut down the government but keep our national parks open" was a ridiculous scenario that played out in public and hurt many, many people -- quite possibly more than a few of the movement's supporters. If you're going to organize, then organize...with the good, bad, and grubby work it requires. Otherwise, remain angry but get out of the way.

[Nicholas · Rating 1 out of 5]

sketch history of American populism--for a better version, with all the details, read Michael Kazin's "The Populist Persuasion", which the authors quote once or twice--followed by a lot of sleight of hand. the authors handwave comparisons between populism on the left and right, mentioning thirty years of middle class decline but detaching their arguments from all but the last three administrations. discussion as to whether or not the Tea Party is "Astroturf" or actual genuine grassroots movement is particularly weak--little discussion of financing, how the movement compares to previous populist movements by demographics, etc.

big flaw: the "paradox" of current American conservatism, as seen from what the authors would present as an "elite" view, is that many of its lower and middle class supporters ostensibly stand to be hurt by the policies they're embracing; a book on the Tea Party which doesn't touch on the argument, even to refute it, is incomplete.

biggest flaw: the description of the Tea Party as drawing from "independents" or being representative of all of America is flat-out wrong--additional research has shown it's clearly a conservative movement, based in a comfortably middle class group of older white Americans.

read The Tea Party and The Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Skocpol and Williamson)instead.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if I am reading too many political books and watching too much news television, but I was already aware of alot of the information in this book. When I see both of these gentlemen on tv or in a publication, I tend to read them with a close interest and am actually thrilled that they came out with this book. What I found absolutely fascinatating were the polls in the book. Another book to follow this book up with is Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America. These two wrote a fascinating book together, as well.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book. First, the book was really poorly edited and proofread. Errors abound: missing words, poor grammar, missing and confusing table captions, etc. Second, I wasn't convinced that the polling results inexorably lead to the conclusions the authors reached. I wanted to like this book, and I did get some good information out of it, but based on the authors' frequent cable TV appearances, I thought they would have been more compelling and/or more profound. And even though this book was just published earlier in 2010, now at the end of 2010 it already seems badly dated. I think this book is going to have a remarkably short shelf life.

[David Murphy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I loved Rasmussen's earlier book "In Search of Self-Governance" and was expecting something along those lines. This book, though, was shot through with spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and incomplete charts. Was this book edited at all? The writing was shockingly shoddy, and the ideas were so repetitive that the entire book could have been condensed into a pamphlet. I'm mad as hell that I payed almost $20 for this waste of my time.

[Cameron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting stats on the makeup of the Tea Party and what galvanized them to act. But a pretty boring read.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Balanced history of the beginnings of important populist movements.

[Bekki Fahrer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unimpressive. The author kept repeating himself.