Of course not. Any movement, however, certainly may be killed by actions taken (or not taken) in Washington... as the current blighted crop of "Republicans" in Congress amply demonstrates.
I suppose I can sort of agree with that. Hard to point to any particular action that “kills” a movement, but I think movements die when the so-called leaders of these movements don’t act on opportunities when they see them. If you want to blame unspecified RINOs in congress for putting electioneering ahead of their political agenda for killing the movement in question, I’d agree with you. But losing elections doesn’t necessarily kill a movement. Likewise if you think the movement died when the leader of the Republican party diluted conservatism to the point that it became liberalism, and then spent the rest of his time in office redefining conservatism as a philosophy of big government initiatives, I’d agree with you as well, even though the Republicans did pretty well for most of Bush’s presidency. The movement has eked out some victories in the courts, hopefully lasting ones, but from the other branches of government it has gotten little more than lip service.