LAUSR

Objective: Research on the Tea Party finds that both libertarian and authoritarian attitudes drive support for this movement, but political scientists lack a satisfactory explanation of this contradiction. Methods: Factor analysis of nine attitudes from the 2012 American National Election Study is used to explore whether statism and moral traditionalism are intercorrelated on a dimension distinct from attitudes toward government; regression analysis is used to test if these distinct dimensions help to explain support for the Tea Party. Results: Controlling for several competing explanations, the multiplicative interaction of anti‐government and morally statist ideological factors is shown to be a predictor of Tea Party support, especially among conservatives. Conclusion: Our results suggest the Tea Party movement is in part driven by what Nietzsche called “misarchism,” an ideological mixture of moralism, statism, and libertarianism he first observed in Herbert Spencer.