The Tea Party, existing in name from 2009 to 2016 had many mistakes. From not focusing on the culture, to not owning (and running with) the ad hominem attacks launched on them from the Left, the movement was far from perfect. However, they still managed to change the course of Republican politics, and the theory with which it was advanced. Not only did Tea Partiers from all over the nation teach both fellow citizens and elected representatives that it is okay to stray from establishment herd mentality, but how to use any influence they had to rally other people, and eventually spread into every crevice of the country. 

Despite Liberal media’s eager claims of “The Death of a Movement”, the Tea Party still lives on today. Death is final. It’s something you can’t return from, something that if happens, you have no control of what happens in the material world you are looking upon, which is why the Tea Party didn’t die, but more so underwent a rebrand. When it returned to the scene after taking a short break, it changed its name, policies, and main narratives, but in terms of members, they’re still mostly the same people. Today, they’re called the pro-Trumpers, their policies balancing evenly between the economy and cultural issues, advocating a steady rhetoric of patriotism, hard work, and a little bit of fun. Utilizing Tea Party-era strategies, and learning from their mistakes, Trump revitalized the dying movement, reinvigorating American populism, and taking the Left by storm. 

Revolutionized strategies

The pro-Trump movement certainly cannot be considered a grassroots movement, considering the record $107 million he raised in campaign donations, much of that being his own loans. However, the multimillion dollar campaign had a top-down effect, which still had populist undertones, starting with a presidential ticket, and trickling down into American communities. While well-funded, highly strategic movements are often looked down upon in the modern political landscape, (even the Tea Party was accused of this, with its funding from the Koch brothers), when looking at the right wing movement, it is a favorable thing. Donors giving a lot of money to a campaign or coalition shows the attention and influence Conservatives (and all alike) are gaining across the country. 

Trump revolutionized the use of local elections and midterms as well. Learning from the tactic of making voters feel as if the big popular movement (and candidate) was also paying attention to their home state even while managing to remain stable in the primaries and general. Trump used endorsements in two ways, endorsements of other candidates, and attracting and appealing to influential politicians and pop culture icons who would then endorse him. The latter was used in Trump’s later years, when his endorsements and opinions on candidates held more importance, while the former he started doing out of the gate. What makes him a master politician is that there is a deeper strategic meaning behind everything he does. “Hold on, I’m Comin” was never merely a message of hope for his supporters, as later on, Sam Moore himself ended up performing at Trump’s inauguration. Further into his political career (carrying into today) Trump took gubernatorial as well as congressional endorsements very seriously. Realizing the unique position he was in of still having the amount of influence over Republican voters even though he hasn’t been president for 3 years and counting, Trump knew it was a necessary measure he needed to take in order to stay in the headlines until the 2024 campaign started up. After precisely calculating chances of victory, Trump decided that supporting people such as Kari Lake, Matt Gaetz, and Ron DeSantis would perfectly set him up to fly through the primaries like a bowling ball knocking down the oppositional pins, given the anticipation he had built up in voters from 2021 to 2023. 

Economic issues = Cultural issues

Even from the beginning, Pro-Trumpers have always known the importance of the culture. Possibly because they intentionally learned from the mistakes of their conservative predecessors such as the Tea Partiers. However, as your average voter isn’t researching deep into the failures of movements in history, it’s possibly more due to the fact that at the point of Trump’s primary victory, the culture had gotten to a point too impossible to ignore. Additionally, it wouldn’t be a completely out-of-the-water thing to say Trump possibly places more of an emphasis on the culture war than on the “low taxes” talking point. His culturally zeroed-in rallies and TRUTH Social media company have not only led to recent wins, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but have impacted the Congressional GOP demographics as well. With increasing swaths of people labeling themselves as “anti-establishment”, the Republican Party as a whole has over time, opted to ostracize certain RINO representatives to the point that they lost reelection campaigns to Trump-backed candidates, (like J.D. Vance) or had to change their stance on Trump because of the group’s intense pressure, like Chris Sununu, or Mitch McConnell. Of course having a plan and reason behind everything, Trump’s most recent action as the only remaining primary candidate further illustrates this point, as his Bible sale was the beginning of a move to revamp and reassure support from the Christian Conservatives. In wake of growing debates concerning whether or not a good Christian can support Trump, this was quite a smart idea. 

I digress

All in all, the Tea Party is not dead, but rather the “Toys R’ Us” of politics. After a period of booming success, the movement’s popularity had plummeted because  the “new way to buy toys”, turned out to be the quicker and easier way. After shutting down to reanalyze, it seemed, the same people opened up shop once again, and with modernized strategies and a new, hip name, rose to insane popularity once again. The Left may think their (practically) millions of lawsuits against the man are helping them gain votes, or they may be doing it because of a completely different trick up their sleeve. One thing is for sure, they’re afraid of him. They’re afraid because he works, and they know what he could do to their ideology as a whole. Let’s keep it that way.