Is the Tea Party Dead?

And so it seemed that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan forgot the platform that an entire Caucus of Republicans ran on platforms of fiscal responsibility, and as such with the passage of tax cuts and a federal spending deal that will cost $300 billion. It flies almost directly in the face of every member of the Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, and, as he put on full display during his late-night filibuster, Sen. Rand Paul’s entire purpose for being in office.

It is easy to explain away the ideals Republicans are currently touting against the ones they despised during Obama. The party in power always wants to be seen as “doing something” while the party out of power wants to defend obstructionism as “fiscal responsibility. Schumer and Pelosi have highlighted such recently by attacking the tax cuts as hypocritical of Republicans.

The only problem is that Republicans did such a great job of selling their souls to the idea of fiscal responsibility under Obama, that entire demographics of their base are slightly pissed off about the recent change of heart. That coupled with President Trump’s recent change of heart in granting a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, commonly seen as amnesty for undocumented immigrants by the Tea Partiers.

It does, more and more appear that while Trump’s tough talk was great for his election his lack of follow through has been less than extraordinary. Take the administrative issues his cabinet has undertaken like cracking down on legal marijuana or going back and forth on domestic surveillance and FISA warrants, which most all conservatives support as necessary for public security (save for Rand Paul and a few other diehards).

It also seems he has ramped up, rather than draw down, international security operations (more commonly referred to as shadow wars), and he has done it with little to no public accountability. This is not surprising as Kelly, Tillerson, and Mattis are large supporters of the War on Terror and American interventionism despite calls by Trump to put America first. Again, just some of the topics ignored by Republicans today that Trump’s supporter championed forever, but I digress.

The real test will come in the form of a budget crisis. As ballooning defects harm economic growth, the taxes may fall short of estimates to “pay for themselves,” and then tough cuts will likely follow rather than restoring taxes on corporations those reliant on government aid like farmers, Medicaid and Medicare recipients, the military in general, and so on will be forced to cut and draw back as tax increases are always more unpopular than cuts in conservative circles. One only needs to look at Montana’s budget crisis this past year to know that arbitrary cuts are way easier to stomach than tax increases despite the economic impacts to the state that worsen the overall crisis rather than help it, but again I digress.

My point as I am so often slow to make is that Trump sank the Tea Party, while Ryan and McConnel marginalized a caucus so powerful it sank the former Speaker of the House and had the Houses third in command voted out just a few years prior. I would speculate that the Tea Party’s fall is mostly due to Trump’s lack of leadership and McConnel’s and Ryan’s ability to capitalize on the vacuum and deteriorate that once indomitable spirit known as the Freedom Caucus. The other reason I believe the Tea Party is failing is because they blindly trusted in Trump to do them proud, and as a result ignored his policies in exchange for his rhetoric. This blind faith has cost them dearly, and my speculation is that the 2018 midterm will not have too many fresh Freedom Caucus wins in its prospects, but that will have to be seen.