The Patriot Post® · In Brief: The Tea Party Is Not Dead — It's Evolving
FreedomWorks recently shut its doors, sparking some consternation over the death of the Tea Party. But Erick Erickson and Akash Chougule of Americans for Prosperity say that’s overblown.
The Tea Party movement has, of course, always been larger than any one organization and even any one ideology — like “libertarian” — or one moniker, like “Tea Party” itself. The movement is simply in the process of evolving from a cause born of the issues of 2008 and 2009 into one focused on the challenges of today.
The idea that the Republican grassroots has abandoned the limited-government and free-enterprise principles at the heart of the movement — a popular belief among wannabe populists who seek to grow government and people who rarely, if ever, leave the Washington Beltway to spend time with actual grassroots activists — is nonsense.
Republican voters, even highly engaged Tea Party activists, are not ideologues — libertarian or otherwise. They are everyday Americans who generally believe in the country’s Founding principles and have, at times, been seriously concerned about its direction. More often than not, they’ve correctly diagnosed that the source of the problem is the federal government in Washington, and specifically politicians — including some Republicans who call themselves conservatives — who seek to make the federal government larger, costlier, and more intrusive. Nothing about that sentiment has changed.
Many voters still object to the wild and inflationary spending in Washington. But, argue Erickson and Chougule, “two key factors have changed” since the early Tea Party days.
First, the scope of issues that potentially represent serious threats to our way of life has expanded since 2009. That Republicans are worried about an inflation crisis created by overspending at the same time they are enraged about a porous southern border that increases drug trafficking and myriad other problems — or an unaccountable administrative state that uses regulation to ram unpopular social-progressive ideologies, which Congress has rejected, down Americans’ throats — does not indicate the death of the Tea Party. Rather, it indicates an expanded application of the principle that the federal government should do a small number of things properly instead of trying to be all things for all people.
Second, elements of other key institutions of society are more proactively working with the government to promulgate these threats today than they did in 2009. Major corporations that receive billions in taxpayer subsidies and carveouts may not be able to employ the same threat of government force when they engage in progressive activism that undermines basic common-sense values and is wholly unrelated to their core business. But those efforts can feel just as ubiquitous and problematic. Similarly, much of higher education, which also receives billions from taxpayers and has long been a breeding ground for radical progressivism, seems more intent than ever on aggressively combatting the nation’s foundational principles.
The two discuss various factors at play in today’s politics before concluding:
No one wishes the Tea Party dead more than those who wish death on its limited-government ideals. Their ranks include the mainstream media, their progressive allies in government, and a few faux-populist Republicans who have misread the party’s base and want the party to embrace big government. But a movement that started to fight back against big government can also fight for a secure border and traditional values at the same time, and that’s what the Tea Party has become. There are undoubtedly pain points and lessons that come with change. The Right is experiencing many of them today while grappling with important questions, but — much to the chagrin of many in Washington — reports of the Tea Party’s death have been greatly exaggerated.