As one of the populist leaders of the Tea Party in Stafford County, I became an integral part of the movement in 2009. To voice disapproval with the bank bailouts, the Obama stimulus, and impending Obamacare legislation, Tea Party leaders in Stafford County and throughout the country held meetings and rallies, met with elected officials, and schooled themselves in the art of community organizing. With justification, Tea Party patriots could claim that they contributed to the 2010 mid-term election outcome. However, with the nomination of Mitt Romney in 2012, it had become apparent that the movement was beginning to run out of steam and inching towards irrelevance.
As a student of political history, I believe it would be beneficial to discuss the reasons why the Tea Party failed. I have identified four factors necessary to ensure the success of any movement.
First, movements need inspiring leaders who are capable of uplifting millions, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Without such men and women, political movements will fizzle out. The closest thing the Tea Party had was Glen Beck, the quintessential flash-in-the-pan. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I listened to his speech on The Mall in 2010, and asked myself when it was all over, “What did he just say, and what are we supposed to do now?”
Second, movements must be fueled by money – and lots of it. White liberals funded the black civil rights movement in the 1950s. German Jewish bankers, who for a variety of reasons hated the Russian Tsar, filled Bolshevik coffers and made the “Russian” Revolution possible. A decade later, the financial support of German industrialists transformed Hitler and his Nazis into a potent political force. The Tea Party had no sugar daddies to fund a professional cadre of trained and dedicated activists, as the Left has with George Soros. Our movement was fueled entirely by volunteers who had jobs and family responsibilities.
Third, leaders of movements must be able to boil down their aspirations into a simple, coherent message that can be attained and expressed by a slogan such as “Build the Wall.” The Tea Party battle cry of “Take back our country” fell flat because the Tea Party could not even identify the people or forces who took the country away from them in the first place. And even if it could, just how would its members be expected to wrestle power away from the elite banking, political, media, and cultural elites who now run the country and control most politicians? “Take back the country” was not achievable and everyone knew it, and everyone was frustrated and discouraged by it.
And finally, it did not buoy spirits among the Tea Party rank and file when it became all too apparent that many of the politicians who were propelled by the Tea Party wave in 2010 had metamorphosed into conventional Republicans, such as Marco Rubio. It is like going to the trouble to prepare a gourmet beef meal, but in the end, despite your expenses and efforts, the dish tastes like Hamburger Helper.
I recommend that right-leaning activists tackle one issue at a time – such as lobbying the Republican Congress to build The Wall or to deny sanctuary cities federal funding. Single issue groups, such as the NRA, are successful because they know how and when to muster the necessary political firepower against their opponents. They aim at one target at a time and keep a tight shot group. We conservative and populist activists must be equally focused because when we “go broad” and try to be everything to everyone, we end up, as the cliché goes, being nothing to no one.
25 comments
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Good article, but in all fairness, the Tea party didn’t make a mistake, because their efforts immensely helped Republicans to regain both chambers of Congress in historic landslide elections. Now, to give Mark Jaworowski a fair review, Rubio was wooed by RINOs, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who promised him a rapid climb to the ladder’s top ladder rung of power in return for his bootlicking as a party loyalist. That doesn’t make Rubio’s actions forgivable, but we shouldn’t blame Tea party activists for doing the right thing at the right time and having a few closet liberals riding their coat tails.
“The Tea Party had no sugar daddies…” Huh? Last time I checked the Koch brothers were heavily funding the Tea Party.
Face it, the Tea Party began to fail when folks figured out that cutting those government services would actually impact them personally. Cry me a river.
LOL
I wish liberals could hear what it sounds like to people in the TEA Party when they say this, I’m not even sure how to describe how it sounds.
Hmm.
I guess its like if someone came up to you on the street and looked you in the eye and said with the most conviction they could muster that the Pope was, in reality, a reincarnation of Scoobie Doo, and that the Vatican was responsible for the rhyme “Two all beef paddies special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun”. You just kind of smile at that.
Where did you “check,” Polly? The Koch Brothers fund Americans For Prosperity – not The Tea Party.
Sorry, but the Koch brothers’ arms have a much greater reach than you understand,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
http://time.com/secret-origins-of-the-tea-party/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tea_Party
You’re cracking me up Polly. You are literally parroting the anti-tea party talking points with zero substance to back it up. Were you part of the Virginia tea party movement? Don’t say yes because I didn’t see you anywhere. For years. I know for a fact we were not funded except by our member volunteers from 2009 until 2014. Please stop parroting Polly. Get some facts.
That’s exactly why I think it is so funny, because people like polly try to tell us stuff we know, undeniably, is not true, and they can’t wrap their minds around the simple fact that we KNOW it isn’t true. It’s like they’re trying to tell you that the sun isn’t shining when it is right there in the sky, sunny as it can be, and you’re looking right at it. And then they just keep saying it, over and over, and are completely oblivious to the fact that they look crazy when they keeping saying it. They say this stuff like we don’t know any TEA Party members, like we’re stupid or something.
Please explain how you *know* this isn’t true.
Don’t you get it ? This isn’t some Huff Po forum where you can say stuff like this and nobody really knows one way or the other, where you can talk your way through a bunch of nonsense and just convince people you’re right. There are people here who have put together TEA Party fundraisers, people who have worked to get candidates elected, have put together and attended TEA Party events, made signs, protested, and been knee deep in the TEA Party. You are in a place that was ground zero for the fight between the TEA Party and the establishment Republicans in this state, where rivalries between groups have been at times bitter. You’re in a place where people have argued about how best to move forward, where people have fought about slating, about who should run the state’s Republican party, about conventions vs. primaries. There are people who post here who literally ran the TEA Party convention in this state.
And then there’s you … who obviously has no idea what they’re talking about, but is used to being able to post this crap and get away with it.
I know because I’ve been a tea party leader/organizer since inception in 2009. I have DIRECT knowledge.
What is your proof that the Koch brothers did NOT fund the Tea Party? And not funding the Virginia wing in no way means they were not funding other chapters.
You can’t prove a negative. Geeez….full of lies, and not even a basic understanding of functional logic.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/145/Proving-Non-Existence
Sure you can. Release the donor records.
Don’t you see how insane what you’re saying is, it’s like if I told you that your mother’s name is Zooey Dashanel and then I refused to listen to you, her own child, tell me that isn’t her name. Yes, it is, it’s Zooey. It is. What is your proof that your mom’s name isn’t Zooey ? Here are a couple of fake news articles saying it’s Zooey, written by people who don’t know your mom, and don’t even like her. No, your brother is wrong too, and your dad, they’re stupid because they don’t know your mom’s name is Zooey. We demand you post your mom’s birth certificate lol.
polly, you’re just the latest in a long line of dip^%$#’s who have tried to troll this forum, you’re going to have to work harder to be original.
Just calling them “other chapters” means you know nothing of what the Tea Party is or was. There were no “chapters”. It wasn’t a national or structured organization. There might have been a couple of opportunists that tried to rope together a national organization, but it wasn’t in Virginia and it came a couple years after the Tera party had been working.
Exactly. Most of the TEA Party groups in Virginia were organized when random people with signs started shaking hands with each other in the parking lot or on the street corner where they were protesting. It was as grassroots as grassroots gets.
These articles mention billionaire funding of AFP and Freedom Works. But those groups were NOT the Tea Party. Now, it just so happens a close relative of mine was a regional coordinator for AFP in VA, and I worked closely with that group. AFP has been successful in Virginia and elsewhere precisely because it had a cadre of PAID and SUPPORTED (and sometimes) dedicated organizers, NONE OF WHICH THE TEA PARTY HAD. I am sorry, but a liberal “journalist” such as Frank Rich knows Jack Shit about the Tea Party. No go eat a cracker, Polly, and kindly shut up.
And articles such as this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html are a farce. While I connect speak for every Tea Party chapter in the USA, I know of no TEA Party chapter in Virginia that received any sort of financial support from the Kochs or other big party donors. What you libs fail to consider is that big donors want control. And the Tea Pary unlike individual politicians, was something they could not control. Thus, they had no interest in funding it.
I never read the Huffington Post.
False. No one is heavily funding the tea party. Of course, there is no singular “THE tea party”, so its a false assertion from the outset.
The TEA Party failed ?
2008
Presidency – Democrat
House of Representatives – Democrats 257, Republicans 178
Senate – Democrats 58, Republicans 40
Virginia House of Delegates – Democrats 40, Republicans 57
Virginia Senate – Democrats 22, Republicans 18
State House Control (all U.S. States) – Democrats 23, Republicans 15
Governor’s Mansions – Democrats 29, Republicans 21
Gallop Poll of Partisan Lean of U.S. States – Democrats +30
2017
Presidency – Republican (R +1)
House of Representatives – Democrats 194, Republicans 241 (R +63)
Senate – Democrats 46, Republicans 52 (R +12)
Virginia House of Delegates – Democrats 33, Republicans 67 (R +10)
Virginia Senate – Democrats 19, Republicans 21 (R +3)
State House Control (all U.S. States) – Democrats 12, Republicans 32 (R +17)
Governor’s Mansions – Democrats 16, Republicans 33 (R + 12)
Gallop Poll of Partisan Lean of U.S. States – Republicans +6 (R +36)
If that is the definition of failure, please can we have more.
Btw, don’t let all of the Democrat’s posturing fool you, the reason they’ve gone bonkers is because they have been soundly rejected by voters and they have no idea what to do about it. They’ve been in control so long and have become so institutionalized as a culture that they have no idea how to even have an honest conversation about what it would take to turn their party around, all they have left is name calling and faux-moralizing. They don’t know how to fix what they’ve broken. They don’t know how to win voters back. They are effectively leaderless. That’s why they are out in the streets, because they need a movement like the TEA party, they need what Republicans have had, a movement that rebuilds their party from the inside out, they need a makeover. The personal popularity of Obama hid a multitude of problems within the Democrat party
The TEA Party may appear to be diminished today, compared to the early days, but in many ways it has been enormously successful. The beauty of the TEA Party movement was the spontaneous, grass roots nature of it. Ordinary citizens, finally had a voice against the “establishment”, and it was as much a rebuke to the Republicans as to radical leftist Democrats. They didn’t need Republican donor money in the beginning. They just loudly said “Enough Already”, and thereby gave voice to millions who otherwise were just yelling at their TVs every day.
It was inevitable that a populist uprising would emerge from the failure of the current political parties to address the concerns of most Americans. Donald Trump is just one consequence of that failure, but not the only consequence. I agree with the author that the TEA Party as an organization has seen better days, and now we need more focused organizations. However, I give the TEA Party a lot of credit for giving millions of Americans hope that they are not alone in this fight.
Good job Jaws,
I always said the Republican party gives just enough rope for the TEA Party to speak , not enough to lead.
If folks want that we must separate from the Republican Party. Make Republicans lobby this electoral base.
The Republicans take us for granted after poll day.
Jaws, one issue is spot on .
This is why I stay on point with payroll fraud and her wife unlicensed contracting.
I don’t go after the illegal immigrant just the means of the illegal employment where they are employeed ( a free market to some).
This one issue has produced McAuliffes EO 24
How would Ed deal with this issue?
End it and broaden the base?
Absolutely hell no that is just campaign talk . Broaden the base ha ha busting me up.
Build the Wall
(around Richmond GA) then flood it.
At another blog I opined the following which fits here very well:
I attend meetings of of local TEA Party and local Democratic Socialists.
… the TEA Party folks – and Republicans by and large where the TEA-rs associate politically – appear ignorant of how to talk with, argue with, convince people of color, poor and struggling working class people who need a safety net, because they ooze a tone of dis-respect, dis-regard, and dis-dain for people they consider marginal in the economy (calling them ‘takers’ for example, and obstinately refusing to say the simply accurate words ‘Black Lives Matter’). How can any group – in America, in the South, or in Virginia – not know how to take respectfully with Black people? That is not just a shame but a damn shame. And predicts failure.
The Democratic Socialists are a bit more on track to re-set discussions among Usual Democrats by pushing living wage and minimum wage policies. As Representative Garrett says: the ‘ultimate minority’ IS ‘the individual’. AND INDIVIDUALS ABSOLUTELY MUST MAKE a good wage if they are working! The Democratic Socialists openly say that they want to assume leadership and advocacy roles with the Usual Democrat and post forward their agenda focused on working class issues.
Working class issues ought to be every political party’s primary attention.
Republicans – and Democrats – TEA Party and Democratic Socialists – should be falling all over themselves to protect and reward INDIVIDUALS who WORK!.
Laws and policies ought to be focused – like a laser, or at least a search light – toward respecting, supporting, and rewarding INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK! MORE THAN individuals who make a living from profit making off interest and capital gains, from rent-taking, from financial speculation, etc. Housing policies should be helping INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK afford nice housing, not rewarding individuals with luxury homes or vacation-second homes. Transportation and energy policies should be helping INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK get to work and get to recreation and to live their lives more easily and with less pollution and not rewarding individuals who make the lives of working class folks less convenient, more polluted, and more dangerous. Education policies should be helping INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK learn and keep learning to fill well paid jobs that need to be done. Etc.
A successful third party or new Republican Party or new Democratic Party might focus on INDIVIDUALS WHO WORK.