WHERE, OH WHERE DID THE TEA PARTIES GO?

23 Mar. 2019

Dear Friends and Patriots,

Right up front I want you to understand the Tea Parties are mostly still among us, working, and functional. But they aren’t thriving. I’ll try to explain that.

The following discussion is highly opinionated. I’ve seen no definitive study that tells me in absolute what happened to the Tea Parties. I’ve studied a few media articles written in the past few years that pose questions and offer varying opinions and I’ve reached out to leaders of Tea Parties in my region for input. I’ve incorporated much of the media and personal input into this discussion in addition to personal observations and recommendations. My intent is to provoke thought about the Tea Party movement; its successes and failures, and to offer a few of my own thoughts about the movement’s potential future.

You all are probably familiar with the story of how the Tea Party movement started, so I won’t recount it. If you aren’t familiar, go Google it and read the early part of the Wikipedia post. It’s fairly accurate. I’m not going to recount it because it doesn’t add to this narrative. I want to talk a bit about the decline of the Tea Parties, not their rise, though I do make reference to factors that created that rise as counterpoint to subsequent realities.

Tea Parties can be looked at as victims of their success. Their early success, that is.

But, they peaked after the 2010 elections and a decline set in. This is just fact. We who were and are still in the Tea Party movement are all acutely aware of the decline, and many Tea Party organizations are flailing about in vain efforts to reverse the trend. But, before a trend can be successfully reversed the factors that created that trend have to be analyzed and understood. Only then can a decent recovery plan be developed and put into action.

Immediately below are a few “then” and “now” factors I examined. “Then” was the 2009-2010 period. “Now” is … today.

THEN: Tea Parties were broad-based, loosely organized coalitions of mostly like-minded, mostly conservative people who were worried about the future of our country.

NOW: Tea Parties are narrow-based, loosely organized coalitions of like- minded, mostly conservative people who are worried about the future of our country.

THEN: Tea Parties were focused on the big national issues: debt, deficits, wars, official corruption, governmental overreach, overregulation, unemployment, expanding welfare, the future of Social Security and Medicare, the impending effects of Obamacare, governmental waste, etc., etc., etc. They worked very hard to influence political races for higher levels of state offices, US Congress, US Senate, and the US Presidency.

NOW: Tea Parties are mainly focused on state and local issues: state and local taxes, school needs, Common Core, corruption at state and local levels, property taxes, water use, firearms laws and regulations, voter identification and associated

issues, land use, local and state referendums, etc., etc., etc. They work very hard to influence political races for all state and local offices. In some states they continue to work very hard to influence political races for US Congress and US Senate.

THEN: Tea Parties had paid memberships in the hundreds and thousands. Rallies, forums, and other public events were attended by many hundreds of members and onlookers. National rallies were held that drew crowds in the hundreds of thousands. People were energized, excited, and proudly patriotic.

NOW: Tea Parties in most places have a very small core of hard-working and dedicated patriots who donate countless hours to their efforts. They gather for significant events, such as the Fourth of July and Memorial Day celebrations, but public rallies are seldom held unless in conjunction with other special interest groups that share similar objectives pertaining the rally subject.

THEN: In most states all the Tea Parties were independent. In others there were loose coalitions that coordinated certain activities to ensure uniformity of presentation. There were a few nascent national organizations formed to attempt better coordination of state and local efforts, much like a national political party.

NOW: Most states have coalitions that work with the local Tea Parties to martial efforts toward common goals. The state coalitions prioritize initiatives and depend on the efforts of local Tea Parties to work toward their accomplishment.

THEN: In 2010 and 2012 political candidates sought Tea Party endorsements. Candidates who ran as conservatives prized those endorsements and there were instances where candidates produced misleading advertising to give the impression they were Tea Party endorsed when they weren’t. Being a Tea Party candidate was looked upon in some political camps as a positive.

NOW: Candidates do not reference Tea Parties. If asked directly if they support them, some may say they do, usually in principle, but they don’t proclaim their support loudly, nor do they actively seek endorsement from Tea Party organizations.

THEN: Tea Party meetings and rallies were attended by a broad cross-section of citizens of all ages. Public events had something of a county fair atmosphere, with food, fun, interesting speakers, and lots and lots of people who showed up just out of curiosity.

NOW: Tea Parties have reduced memberships of stalwart “believers” who are mostly older in age, retired or in jobs that have a lot of time flexibility. There are few rallies held, and those can often be characterized as akin to family reunions. Far fewer events are held in public places than in the early days. Tea Parties are far less visible, though still in evidence.

If you can accept my “then” and “now” characterizations you’ll accept general characterizations that indicate Tea Parties were a national force in 2010 and still were in 2012, but have waned greatly in strength and influence since then.                                                                                                                                   So, what happened? Several things. All fixable things.

Following the 2010 election, when many Tea Party-endorsed candidates won elections all over the country and the Republican Party swept into the majority in the US House of Representatives there was a certain sense of accomplishment among Tea Party organizations, but also a bit of “what next?” Few of the organizations thought about the

long game. There were some that did, like the ones that tried to re-brand as nationwide umbrella groups. Others sort of retired into the background, thinking they were going to enjoy a well-deserved slack period while waiting on the campaign ramp-up for 2012. Both the forward-looking organizations and those who thought they were in hiatus were wrong in what they did.

The budding national organizations started ad campaigns through major media outlets. National advertising soon cause financial pressures that forced them into fund- raising efforts. They resorted to tactics much like the major political parties and soon were producing mass-mailing and robo-call campaigns that alienated many supporters. The national Tea Parties failed to understand if they were to succeed as anti-establishment organizations they couldn’t use the same support- and money-raising mechanisms the establishment did. It was a huge miscalculation; their death knell. It nearly spelled the death of the entire movement as well.

Those Tea Parties that essentially stood down just after the 2010 elections didn’t quite comprehend they had a lot of work to do to get set up properly for 2012. They didn’t have a year of slack, yet they thought they did. Interest among those organizations’ members waned, as did paid memberships. In most cases the membership losses weren’t crippling, but the effects of not establishing long-term goals, developing strategies to accomplish those goals, and implementing tactics to ensure the success of strategies meant a lot of effort before the 2012 election cycle was a bit more chaotic and ineffective than it should have been. Still, in 2012 Tea Party support played a positive role in pushing Democrats out and rolling control of the Senate to the Republicans.

National groups like the Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express initially found membership easy to come by, but to an extent they were robbing from the local organizations. Because they were national, they took on big and difficult issues and took public stances against big and important people. It didn’t take long for financial pressures to set in. Their response was to continuously fundraise. They didn’t quite understand the Political Action Committee (PAC) as a business model, and when they set up PAC operations to defeat politicians they considered particularly egregious they slowly learned a reality. In many cases PACs are the least efficient means of funding major initiatives.

They do raise money, but because fund-raising is a capital-intense undertaking, most of the money raised went into the overhead expense of raising even more money. Precious little of the cash raised actually went to its intended purposes. It wasn’t hard to hide the fact that despite raising gobs of cash the national Tea Parties were amazingly ineffective. They didn’t impress in 2012 and did even more poorly in 2014. Their lack of success in influencing election outcomes and the constant bombardment of demands for donations finally wore out their Tea Party support base. People grew tired of being called every day by 6 or 10 solicitors, all wanting money to “defeat Boehner and his establishment cronies” or to elect the next darling of the Tea Party in a state far away. What started out to be fun and meaningful turned into something generally viewed as invasions of privacy.

Tea Parties have always had a peculiar strength in their loose organizations and their essential lack of overarching coordination. That strength is in how hard it is to attack them. Lois Lerner found that out when she let the dogs of the IRS loose on Tea Parties in an effort to intimidate them and drive them back. If she’d had a couple of major nationwide groups to attack it’s almost certain she and her IRS bullies would have won and may have shut the entire Tea Party movement down. But, when faced with many hundreds of

relatively small organizations that had no formal ties to each other the IRS soon realized they had little chance of their tactics working. The best they could do was to worry all of the Tea Parties and stall their applications for 501.c. tax status.

Regardless of the truth that the Tea Parties were in the right and the IRS was completely wrong and literally criminal in its attempt to persecute and harass Tea Party organizations and members, the episode did scare members away. Who wants to go up against “the most feared agency in the world?” There were many people who reacted to their fear by abandoning their Tea Party. Were they sunshine patriots or just trying to be pragmatic?

In the first years of the Tea Party movement the lack of issue coordination at any level worked against effective lobbying. There were instances all over the country of Tea Parties aligning on both sides of issues, which resulted in some degree of embarrassment. Some membership was lost due to frustration over what appeared to be the lack of a cohesive philosophy to guide the various Tea Parties in positioning. The problem was solved after a relatively short time as the individual organizations began to form state-level coordinating committees and loose knit coalitions. But, it was apparent that once a member became disillusioned they seldom returned to the fold. They still seemed to be supportive of the goals of the Tea Parties and would show up occasionally to demonstrate their support, but the early thrills they felt and the energy commitment they made to the movement had dissipated.

By 2013 we began to see articles in mainstream press outlets that declared the death of the Tea Parties. It was clear to outside observers that the crowds at public events had grown smaller and politicians were referring to themselves less and less within a Tea Party context. While the signs were clear and obvious, the causes weren’t. What seemed a mystery to many was why, when essential structural problems were pretty much resolved everywhere, were the Tea Parties losing support, membership, and obvious clout. When examined the evidence points to two problems; one a matter of organizational emphasis, the other a general perception perpetrated by a lack of consistent organizational philosophy regarding their internal operations.

The organizational emphasis of Tea Parties began to shift after the 2012 elections.

There was a dawning awareness that the lack of a viable national presence meant candidates for national office might swear their support for the ideals and goals of the Tea Parties, but once in office they paid almost no heed to them. Tea Parties were used as leverage to win elections, but once the incumbent was seated, they often viewed their affiliations to be more of a liability. Tea Parties were easy to ignore by those in Washington. The result was a re-focus by Tea Parties everywhere to state and local concerns. The theory was there would be far greater leverage within a state or local area because Tea Parties could martial members to personally lobby, address public hearings, and speak out through local media outlets and have a greater effect than with those who had gone off to Washington. While the shift in emphasis was apparent, in many instances it wasn’t communicated effectively to members. Those members whose focus was predominately in national or international concerns began to lose interest. They felt the Tea Parties had given up, and in doing so had removed their own voices from national debates. A common comment heard over and over during the period was, “I really like the idea of the Tea Parties and we did make a difference, but no more. Now they just don’t

seem to be doing anything at all.” The implication was that Tea Parties had walked away from their members, not the other way around.

The problem with organizational philosophy appeared in many, many places. There was a constantly heard complaint that the Tea Party movement had been “hijacked by the religious right.” While it can be said that many organizations had become dominated by religious factions, there are logical reasons for that. It should have been obvious to Tea Party leaders everywhere that for their organizations to thrive, retain membership, and gain new members and support they had to ensure they made a “home” for anyone who shared their conservative political ideology. Unfortunately, in far too many instances, that didn’t happen. Instead of concentrating on politics many Tea Party groups took on the outward appearances of extensions of particular religious denominations. What was missing was a consistent, well developed, and policed philosophy that all who wanted to work toward the restoration of good, Constitutionally-based government were welcome, regardless of any religious belief. As time went on many people left Tea Parties because they perceived a religious emphasis they objected to. There were Tea Party groups here and there that did establish rule sets that avoided those problems, though not in numbers sufficient to keep the movement strong.

Beyond the issues of organizational emphasis and organizational philosophy there was one other factor that worked against Tea Parties. It would be fair to characterize that as the “establishment” factor. Politicians who were elected to office before 2010 and those who never entertained the notion of a Tea Party endorsement worked very hard at ignoring the fact Tea Parties exist. They gave the Tea Party advocacy efforts no respect. If they entertained a conversation with a Tea Party activist or leader they might promise them they’d consider their input, but the evidence was in their votes. Votes indicated Tea Parties were getting stiff-armed by establishment politicians of every party, everywhere.

The result was a rather impressive record of legislative losses all across our nation.

Tea Parties may have had the right positions and justifications, but politicians routinely had other ideas. What was missing? What were the Tea Parties doing wrong? The answer (one of my opinions, mind you) was … nothing! No, the Tea Parties were doing everything right, but there was something missing in most interactions they had with state and local politicians – leverage! Tea Parties have no leverage. They have nothing to offer politicians, who by and large are a class of people who rarely do something for nothing. If you can’t make your position somehow worth his/her while you very often will find they’ll be pleasant and make promises of support, then proceed act as if they’ve never met you.

Establishment politicians have their own game, and they play that game with or without the support of their constituents. The Tea Parties can’t play, they can only appeal to the conscience of people who’ve learned that in politics a conscience is a liability.

I don’t want to prate on endlessly, so let me get to that part where I said I’d offer a few of my own thoughts about the movement’s potential future.

There is and should always be a future for Tea Parties. If you look around you’ll find there are many progressive advocacy groups and many others that we characterize as special interest lobbies. Do you wonder what makes them so different from Tea Parties, and what makes them viable? There are a couple of hints if you study their web sites and Face Book presence. One is in their financial backing. Most other groups are the result of the interests of their financial backers. They’re not true grass-roots organizations, and their mission statements often indicate they are pure lobbyists for progressive initiatives.

While Tea Parties by and large advocate for a full restoration of the Constitution and rule of law, good governance, and smaller and less intrusive government, the progressive and special interest groups diametrically oppose us. And, they have both the mainstream media and the swamp-dwellers of the federal bureaucracy supporting them. It’s hard to succeed when faced with the kind of opposition the Tea Parties have. We are David to their many Goliaths! But, that only means our mission is a very difficult one that needs to constantly be re-considered and adjusted.

I’ve come to a few personal conclusions about Tea Parties, what they should do, and how they might be more effective. I’ve decided that political issue advocacy shouldn’t be the principle focus of their efforts. We should always fight for right whenever we see clearly there’s an impending wrong, but there’s a wrong already out there that we need to be fighting in a different way. I propose Tea Parties think about this and decide if we’re identifying our priorities and action plans correctly.

If I take the position that the number one issue Tea Parties need to pay heed to involves K-12 education, would you agree? I know you’d agree that Common Core should be eradicated from all schools, but I’m talking about things beyond that. I’m talking about becoming advocates for the return of American History classes that teach children about the miracle that our founders created when they fought for and chartered this nation. I’m talking about a push for all schools in the country to start teaching the true principles and meanings found in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And, I’m talking about forcing all schools to revise commentary within textbooks that discuss economics to ensure they are advocates for free market capitalism instead of the socialist ideals they now present. Tea Parties can have a strong impact if we rededicate ourselves to ensuring the next generation of our young doesn’t grow up to be indoctrinated socialists like the last two have. We can make a real difference, where in politics our effects are always going to be uncertain. To state this plainly, the Tea Parties should reorient themselves to be education advocates instead of political advocates. We need to recognize where we patriots have lost our most important fights for the past 50 years – in the classrooms.

Lenin, Stalin, Alinsky, and all others like them who’ve pushed utopian communist propaganda have always understood the future of any nation is determined by how children are taught. For almost six decades now the children of our nation have been indoctrinated in progressive ideology. It was subtle at first, but today is different. Today’s children endure curricula that blatantly states America is a foul and evil land, founded by evil people for evil intent. They are taught that capitalism is a tool of the wealthy to steal from everyone else what is rightfully theirs. They are also taught the government is the grantor of citizens’ rights and privileges and whenever there’s anything in life that causes them to suffer, the remedy will be found in a government action. This is an ideology fed to our young people for one purpose only – to destroy our Land of the Free and Home of the Brave once and for all. As long as America is strong our enemies can be held at bay and all in the world who value freedom and liberty have an advocate. The international progressive cabal understands for it to succeed in their plan for world domination they first have to eliminate America’s ability to stop them.

If we cannot save our young, we cannot save our nation. Nothing that goes on in Washington tomorrow, next week, or next year is nearly as important as wresting control of the education of our young from the clutches of the progressives that have it. I appeal to all in the Tea Parties everywhere to understand how vital it is and how little time we have