Posted on 07/14/2020 6:13:00 AM PDT by silent majority rising
The Tea Party movement is a populist branch of conservative Republicans. It opposes government spending, taxation, and regulation. Tea Party members believe that the federal government uses these measures to infringe on Americans' personal liberties as outlined in the Constitution. Tea Party Members
The middle-class makes up 65% of Tea Party members. This percentage is higher than the nation’s middle-class composition of 50%. More than a third or 37% are college graduates or have advanced education. Only 25% of the country’s population possesses a college or advanced degree. Almost half or 47% are members of the Christian right. Many of them are small business people, who must stay profitable despite narrow margins. They see taxes, regulations, and Obamacare as direct threats to their livelihood.
Although they consider themselves full members of the Republican Party, they want to move it back to a more pure form of conservatism. They feel threatened by the new demographics in America. This was especially symbolized by President Barack Obama's election. They sense they are becoming a minority regarding their religion, values, and way of life.
(Excerpt) Read more at thebalance.com ...
The Tea Party never really got firmly behind the import tariff so I lost interest.
Do you mean 9/12/2009?
I was there.
I’m still here.
We elected Trump to reverse the Bush Plan for North Mexico (aka USA) that most elected Republicans have spent their career advancing.
We do not want our country stolen from us and given to illegal aliens.
Re-electing the same Bush League Republicans is counter-productive to the goal of keeping our country.
McCain Assails “Tea Party Hobbits”
https://reason.com/2011/07/27/mccain-assails-tea-party-hobbi/
The traitor.
If Biden wins, we will need a resistance and maybe the Tea Party movement can make a come back. Not sure why but it lost effectiveness somewhere
I didn’t lose interest. We/thry were vilified as extremem right wing. Most of us are/were older. Also, the grassroots effort in the beginning ( I belonged/attended several in my area) was disappointly co-opted. See Tea Party Express for example.
The Tea Party was a good movement but weren’t a lot of their candidates duds? I don’t put the blame on the Tea Partiers but one the same basic people get elected it kills any momentum they had.
It’s been Magic Lettered.
Trust Durham—or some such nonsense.
Tea Party movement is still around.
The Swamp no longer considers it a threat since Lois Lerner squelched it by revoking its tax-exempt status, so it doesn’t get the hysterical news coverage it once did.
Obama’s gone, so the members aren’t galvanized into large rally attendance like in 2010 - 2012
Judging from some of his recent comments Trump can’t even get the IRS off his own ass so surely the deep state miscreants are still hard at work suppressing the Tea Party.
Swamp is not getting drained nearly fast enough.
Came to post this. Political con artists are like Nigerian princes. I get about 100 emails a day asking for political donations. Of the emails claiming to be from President Trump, maybe one every three days is from the Trump campaign. The rest are from other groups using his name. Many of these groups are actually fighting Trump, but using his name to fund raise.
A lot of fake Tea Party groups funded the swamp. Others made deliberately inflammatory statements to damage the movement.
The biggest failing of the Tea Party was that it thought it was engaging in honest political debate, when the other side used "any means necessary."
Ousted IRS chief regrets treatment of tea party
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/05/17/ousted-irs-chief-regrets-treatment-of-tea-party
Yeah right.
IRS abuses power in targeting tea party
https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/12/opinion/macleod-ball-irs-tea-party/index.html
Fast forward to today. The purists are still there, but in diminished numbers. But the stimulus went to just about everyone. And there was much less push back. Virtually none about the money being infused in the economy. And the debt it created.
I recently saw the majority leader was pushing a threshold for the next stimulus. My guess is there will be more push back if that becomes part of it. Because "those people are getting something I'm not".
This can be extended to conservates and middle America in general.
Democrats/Communists are the brass-knuckle party; dirty tricks, take no prisoners, scorched earth, "we won, you lost, get over it".
Conservatives have to ditch the bipartisan nonsense and adopt the same political jiu-jitsu as the Democrats, or forever be an enfeebled minority even when in the majority.
Too many scammers who created “Tea Party” organizations to fund candidates, then kept the all the money for “administration purposes.”
I watched the rise and fall of the Tea Party up close. I spoke at dozens of TP events in Ohio and the Illinois/Indiana/Michigan region.
The first thing I noticed in these meetings was the age. While some were under 40, the majority were 50+. The second thing I noticed was that a lot had not participated in politics before. As an author, this made for good sales. They greedily bought up my books, the Federalist Papers, the 5000 Year Leap, etc. They were excited and active and got involved immediately at every level.
However, they also were so inexperienced and so out to get “RINOs” that they took out some pretty effective, mostly conservative people. Our county chairman was hardly a firebreather, but was pretty conservative and knew how to raise money. He wasn’t good at incorporating the TP members, but didn’t dislike them. He just didn’t know how to speak their language.
In a tumultuous vote, he was replaced with the local TP leader who had organized the 2nd largest TP gathering, 9,000 in Dayton, at the drop of a hat. This guy was a pretty good organizer, but an absolutely horrible chairman. Not only did he not know how to talk to the “other” side, but he couldn’t raise money and communicated with no one. Events came and went and no one knew about it. GOP finances shriveled. He was out after a year.
The big message was exactly what our Founders knew: that passion alone wasn’t good enough. That you had to have governing skills (as they all did, and had practiced for years). The TP was not inclined to play the “long game,” and therefore nominated people like O’Donnell.
By 2011 in my speaking to these groups, I noticed already they had a sharp decline in membership. Groups that had 200 a year before now had 50. This was across the board, in all states.
In hating the “go along to get along” nature of the RINOs, the TP had failed to strategically place good people where over time they could take over. They wanted it all instantly. So yeah, they won a lot of elections, but had no supporting infrastructure to continue the process. At least, that was my take up close.
This is going to be a very unpopular opinion:
Trump killed the tea party.
I’ve learned to love Trump for what he is, but what he isn’t is a Tea Party type of guy.
Yep. No history and no long-term plan.
I was shocked right here on FR that so few posters in 2016 had a clue about how political parties operate and how nomination process worked.
No revolution or civil war will be won by 70-year olds, no matter how many guns they have.
Spot On.
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