The tea party movement was a movement that focused on a reduction in the size and scope of the US government. This movement started in the late 00s and was based on the ideas of the original Boston Tea Party. Their main advocation was to “Stand for economic freedom which means a growing economy with reduced tax rates and reduced government spending so we all have a chance to earn more money and businesses can hire more people.”
The tea party was a mix of both grassroots protests and organized protests mainly headed by the “Intellectual godfather” of the movement, Ron Paul. Some of the earliest protests were against the taxes on sugary foods and drinks in New York in 2009. Their method here was almost an exact copy of the original tea party as they emptied bottles of soda into the Susquehanna River. Their next target for protests was the Affordable Care Act.
After these protests, the group was endorsed by Trump in his 2016 election campaign and was cited as the highest-supported candidate by the party at around 37%. His endorsement brought back some light to the group but overall it was still losing the fire.
I would say the main reason we do not hear much about this group anymore is because of their dated ways of spreading their message. It was a very grassroots movement at the beginning and it was mainly run by an older generation that didn’t take advantage of the current technology. Much of the advertisement and messaging was done by word of mouth or in person which lead to small but well-knit groups. These groups could accomplish things on a local scale but when they would attempt to make a large change it was rather unsuccessful as no one knew what was happening with the dated and poor communication.
Currently, they have basically been abandoned by the republican party as a whole and tend to just participate in more local movements rather than attempting to participate at the national scale.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
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Hi Ryan,
The New Tea Party is a great example of a failed social movement. As you noted, the methods that this group tried to utilize in their movement were outdated and unable to reach wide swaths of the public, due to their close-knit community nature. The Republican party has widely abandoned this group for a variety of reasons, including the group’s disruption of GOP leadership policy goals during the Obama administration. The Tea Party failed to gain support across the nation, and has yet to achieve any real goals and I doubt they ever really will.