Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America - Hardcover

"Parker and Barreto have conducted exacting research to probe the contours of support for the Tea Party, and their innovative, scientific, and critical book highlights how Tea Party sympathizers differ from mainstream conservatives in crucial ways. The authors demonstrate that despite the public image of the Tea Party, its supporters cannot be characterized as either patriotic or freedom loving. This is a must-read for all students of American politics and anyone concerned about democracy in America."--Michael C. Dawson, University of Chicago

"This original and important book is the most well-researched and significant scholarly study of the Tea Party movement and its members yet to appear. Unfolding a profile of Tea Party activists threatened by liberal changes and ill-formulated images of big government and state regulatory power, Parker and Barreto tease out core beliefs and views, ranging from commonplace conservatism to racist antagonism. Their book is an outstanding contribution to understanding American politics."--Desmond King, University of Oxford

"The Tea Party has attracted a great deal of attention since it burst on the scene in 2010, but few books about the movement have rested on as impressive an empirical foundation as this one. The portrait Parker and Barreto paint of the model Tea Party sympathizer is chilling and sure to anger movement apologists who insist the group is made up of typical patriotic conservatives. This timely, important work deserves the widest audience possible."--Doug McAdam, Stanford University

"Through a statistically and historically informed analysis of the views of Tea Party sympathizers, Parker and Barreto show that at bottom, many condemn America as it has come to be: a country in which white straight Christian men do not set standards for all. Precisely because their American dreams must go unfulfilled, the passions of these sympathizers will remain forces in American life for years to come."--Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania

"This book's main contribution to the growing literature on the Tea Party movement is its focus on the characteristics and political beliefs of Tea Party supporters--rather than activists--and its theoretical framework, which locates the Tea Party in the broader structure of far-right social and political movements in the United States."--Alan Abramowitz, Emory University

"Winner of the 2014 Best Book Award, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association"

"A scathing analysis of the Tea Party movement, linking it in spirit to the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. Taking today's conservative populists to be dangerous and their ideas self-incriminating, the authors speculate that Tea Party supporters may perceive of social change as subversion. Based on research and interviews, they suggest racism, desire for social dominance . . . drives the Tea Party."--Publishers Weekly

"Change They Can't Believe In offers valuable empirical data on the Tea Party, and its focus on supporters' antagonism toward Obama is critical to understanding the movement."---Michael O'Donnell, New Republic

"[A] rigorous scholarly investigation of the tea party. . . . Parker and Barreto make the case that tea party supporters are driven above all by 'anxiety incited by Obama as President.' Intuitively, this may already make sense to many readers, but the authors muster the evidence in support, dividing and subdividing different categories of political activity and belief to arrive at a firm basis for their conclusion. . . . [S]upported by reasoned facts in place of political passions."--Kirkus Reviews

"[Parker and Barreto's] statistically informed analysis helps us understand the Tea Party's priorities, its fervor, and its contempt for compromise."---Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post

Christopher S. Parker is the Stuart A. Scheingold Professor of Social Justice and Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of Fighting for Democracy (Princeton). Matt A. Barreto is associate professor of political science at the University of Washington, Seattle, and director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality. He is the author of Ethnic Cues.