Trump did for the Republican establishment what it couldn’t do on its own in killing the Tea Party and its demands for small, constitutional government.
Yesterday’s announcement of the abrupt closure and dissolution of FreedomWorks by its board of directors is the closest thing we will get to a formal date of death for the Tea Party movement, which in truth has been dead since Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015. Trump did for the Republican establishment what it couldn’t do on its own in killing the Tea Party and its demands for small, constitutional government.
That impetus may return someday, as it has in the past — nobody during the first seven years of George W. Bush’s presidency was seriously predicting a mass movement against “compassionate conservatism,” Wall Street and corporate bailouts, socialized medicine, and the growth of the security state, any more than anybody in 1955 (outside National Review) seriously predicted the rise of Goldwater conservatism — but this particular iteration of the movement is dead as a doornail. Its institutions, of which FreedomWorks was one of the most prominent, are either collapsed or (in the case of the House Freedom Caucus) entirely repurposed toward MAGA populism. A few legislators (Chip Roy comes to mind) still define themselves in identifiably Tea Party terms, but many of those who rose within the movement have gravitated since then more toward either the MAGA side of the movement (think of Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Ron DeSantis) or the more traditional party (think of Nikki Haley).
Luke Mullins of Politico talked to people involved with FreedomWorks, including the group’s president, Adam Brandon, who were blunt that “the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era”:
After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt…“Our staff became divided into MAGA and Never Trump factions,” Brandon said in an internal document reviewed by POLITICO Magazine. It also impacted fundraising. “Now I think donors are saying, ‘What are you doing for Trump today?’” said Paul Beckner, a member of FreedomWorks’ board. “And we’re not for or against Trump. We’re for Trump if he’s doing what we agree with, and we’re against him if he’s not. And so I think we’ve seen an erosion of conservative donors.” Brandon, for his part, said some donors would contact him to complain that the organization was doing too much to help Trump, while others called to complain that they weren’t doing enough to help Trump. “It is an impossible position,” he said.
As I argued two years ago in reviewing the wreckage wrought by the 2012 election, the movement missed its moment when it failed to coalesce behind a viable alternative to Mitt Romney:
Trust in the party’s hierarchy collapsed after the fiascos of 2006–08. Presaged by 2008’s popular boomlet for Sarah Palin, the Tea Party delivered populist energy, primary wins, and new stars (such as Rubio and Rand Paul in 2010 and Ted Cruz in 2012). The moment demanded a presidential campaign that was more populist, more combative, and meant to do what it said.
No serious Tea Party candidate emerged, leaving instead the 1994-retread campaigns of Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Newt surged rapidly in the polls after attacking a debate moderator and won South Carolina in a blowout, becoming the only winner of South Carolina not to claim the Republican nomination in the modern primary era. Santorum won eleven states on a mixture of social conservatism and economic populism. These were harbingers. The pent-up demand that might have followed a principled Tea Party conservative in 2012 had moved on to something less restrained than Cruz or Rubio by 2016.
R.I.P., Tea Party.