“We’re the most powerful nonexistent group in the country”
Scholars and activists say it is a mistake to cite recent blows, including the shake-up at the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, as evidence that the movement has met its end. After all, most House Republicans backed by the tea party in 2010 were re-elected in November.
“The tea party has to be understood as a pincer movement,” said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University political scientist who has studied the movement since its inception in 2009…
In 2010, Skocpol documented the existence of 900 tea party organizations that met regularly around the country. A year later, 600 remained. “That’s a big survival rate for voluntarily organized groups,” she said.
Scholars compare the tea party to the activists of the Christian right, who were first regarded as outliers in the early 1990s but successfully wedged conservative social issues into the modern-day Republican Party platform.
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Keep thinking we don’t exist and you will pay the fiddler.
Bishop on January 8, 2013 at 7:46 PM
speaking of doesn’t exist, it doesn’t appear this article does either.
vegconservative on January 8, 2013 at 7:55 PM
Suffer the fools!
D-fusit on January 8, 2013 at 8:16 PM
It is the “Tea Party Movement” not a “Tea Party.”
And as such, there is only a loose structure, sort of like Occupy, but well, actually effective.
I think we’ll see a resurgence in the Movement as 2014 elections approach if things continue as many of us suspect it will continue.
And of course, start grabbing guns and you’ll find Tea spilled all over the place.
ProfShadow on January 8, 2013 at 8:19 PM
It is only powerful when the person they are pushing has purity of what “they” believe, what ever that is. One waffle and they are out. Is there even one person who won in 2009 under the Tea Party wave that was not having calls to primary next election. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Allen West have all had votes that some called for their primary outing and with West it worked.
tjexcite on January 8, 2013 at 8:50 PM
“Purity”. The new “dirty word” which equates essentially to “integrity and consistency”.
ddrintn on January 8, 2013 at 9:30 PM
tjexcite is correct. A search for “true conservatives” turns into a witch hunt for anyone who dares to not agree with everything and you become as bad as the left and their search for “sellouts” to capitalism. Allen West was a good member of the Tea Party and there were cries on here last April for his ouster for one issue that he was wrong on. If we keep fighting each other, the Dems really will rule for 40 more years and that, to put it lightly, would SUCK.
thebrokenrattle on January 8, 2013 at 10:54 PM