“The Tea Party rallies had a lot of "Don't Tread on Me" flags”
So do Trump rallies, including the one he held on January 6th
“and complaints about taxes and heavy-handed regulation, and displays of the upticking federal debt.”
Republicans lower taxes and cut regulations which makes lots of corporate and rich people happy at the expense of the working class people who vote for them. This never decreases the national debt or the federal deficit! But I’m willing to bet most Tea Party candidates couldn’t tell you the difference between the two. They certainly didn’t understand what raising the debt ceiling meant or care about the effects of *threatening* to shut down the government (much less actually doing so).
I’ll also bet they didn’t realize that if you ranked each President by how much they increased the deficit, Reagan would be among the top five. Turns out that decreasing revenue by cutting taxes and increasing military spending by an absurd amount - the default policy of every Republican since Reagan, ends up not to be very fiscally conservative after all. Who knew? Maybe Bill Clinton, the last President who actually left office with a budget surplus.
To this day members of The Freedom Caucus (started by the Tea Party remember) will rail against Dems for out-of-control spending. To be fair, some of the criticism *is* justified. But they would do it even if it wasn’t. They’re vestigial accusations of the old GOP. Matt Gaetz, MTG and Chip Roy have no more genuine concern about spending or debt or any greater understanding about economics than Michelle Bachman and the other Tea Party hacks. It’s just that with people like Paul Ryan gone, they can still make these hollow accusations while continuing to approve spending that their base approves of.
“If culture-war issues had been the whole purpose from the start, it would have been more visible.”
Do you remember who elevated “birtherism” from a fringe conspiracy theory to a legitimate topic for debate? Do you remember how often Tea Party members quoted scripture? This White Christian Nationalism subtext was less visible then, sure. And if you happened to be a Republican who also happened to be White, Christian and pro-America (almost all of them), it would probably have slipped under the radar. The rest of us, though found it a bit of an alarming departure from traditional politics.
“What other popular political protest movement has concealed its real agenda under a completely different one?”
“The Tea Party rallies had a lot of "Don't Tread on Me" flags”
So do Trump rallies, including the one he held on January 6th
“and complaints about taxes and heavy-handed regulation, and displays of the upticking federal debt.”
Republicans lower taxes and cut regulations which makes lots of corporate and rich people happy at the expense of the working class people who vote for them. This never decreases the national debt or the federal deficit! But I’m willing to bet most Tea Party candidates couldn’t tell you the difference between the two. They certainly didn’t understand what raising the debt ceiling meant or care about the effects of *threatening* to shut down the government (much less actually doing so).
I’ll also bet they didn’t realize that if you ranked each President by how much they increased the deficit, Reagan would be among the top five. Turns out that decreasing revenue by cutting taxes and increasing military spending by an absurd amount - the default policy of every Republican since Reagan, ends up not to be very fiscally conservative after all. Who knew? Maybe Bill Clinton, the last President who actually left office with a budget surplus.
To this day members of The Freedom Caucus (started by the Tea Party remember) will rail against Dems for out-of-control spending. To be fair, some of the criticism *is* justified. But they would do it even if it wasn’t. They’re vestigial accusations of the old GOP. Matt Gaetz, MTG and Chip Roy have no more genuine concern about spending or debt or any greater understanding about economics than Michelle Bachman and the other Tea Party hacks. It’s just that with people like Paul Ryan gone, they can still make these hollow accusations while continuing to approve spending that their base approves of.
“If culture-war issues had been the whole purpose from the start, it would have been more visible.”
Do you remember who elevated “birtherism” from a fringe conspiracy theory to a legitimate topic for debate? Do you remember how often Tea Party members quoted scripture? This White Christian Nationalism subtext was less visible then, sure. And if you happened to be a Republican who also happened to be White, Christian and pro-America (almost all of them), it would probably have slipped under the radar. The rest of us, though found it a bit of an alarming departure from traditional politics.
“What other popular political protest movement has concealed its real agenda under a completely different one?”
America First? MAGA?