The Tea Party as Brand

Throughout the coverage of its emergence, news stories explicitly described the Tea Party as a brand of politics that attracted white working-class or middle-class Americans and generated profit, publicity, and political power. Not only did reporters specifically refer to the Tea Party as a brand, the news coverage about the Tea Party was complicit in promoting, defining, and publicizing the Tea Party as a political brand. This chapter tracks the ways in which the news media (including both reporters and pundits) actively mobilized and constructed the Tea Party brand by explicitly discussing and advising its brand strategy, describing its values, serving as a platform for Tea Party messaging and brand promotion, attributing human emotional characteristics to the Tea Party brand, identifying and serving as its spokespersons, and participating in brand placement through advertising and publicity.