You won’t be surprised that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know history. After all, this is the president who doesn’t realize that the original Boston Tea Party was the first No Kings protest.
But this history lesson is actually not about the OG Tea Party – but the so-called Tea Party protests that ballooned soon after President Obama’s first election.
The Tea Party movement actually predated Barack Obama’s election. It was a cruel libertarian movement launched by then-Congressman Ron Paul (father of Rand) in 2007, popularized through the last of Paul’s ill-fated presidential runs. The level of cruelty is exemplified by a 2011 exchange between Paul and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about uninsured Americans. Blitzer asks, “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?”
Paul, to his credit, hemmed and hawed, but his Tea Party audience had no such qualms. One joyously called out: “Yeah!” And others applauded as Paul said that it was up to churches to save the uninsured, if they were to be saved. An interesting note is that, at that time, Texas, where Paul’s district lay, had the highest rate of uninsured, 26% of the state. The national average at the time was 16.3%. Cruelty, apparently, begins at home.
But I’m not going to discuss the racism and cruelty that were the cornerstones of the Tea Party movement and of its ideological descendant, the MAGA movement. Instead, I’m going to point out what a harbinger it was of the 2010 bloodbath election, and what it means for us today.
Republicans love to say that the No Kings Day protests are underwritten by George Soros, a cabal of wealthy Democratic-leaning non-profits, or any number of other bugaboos who feature in QAnon conspiracies. And it’s no wonder they think that – because Big Oil, Big Tobacco, and the Koch brothers so heavily funded their Tea Party movement. Jeff Nesbit, a onetime Bush official, wrote an entire book on the Tea Party, but he outlined in Time magazine in 2016 how the idea for the Tea Party began as long ago as 1993. Billionaires began spending millions on stoking resentment for a long time before the Tea Party burst on the scene.
That Tea Party furor, whether legitimate or astroturfed, led to a loss of 63 Democratic-held House seats in the 2010 election, the largest swing since 1948. Democrats held the U.S. Senate by a hair, but lost six seats, including Washington fixture Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
But appreciation for the real power of the Tea Party did not come until 2014, when a nobody defeated Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Four years later, the Democratic Party was shocked when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez defeated a longtime congressman for a seat in the Bronx – but Cantor’s upset defeat was 10 times as surprising. No sitting majority leader had lost a primary for more than a century. Cantor outspent his challenger by 40 to 1, and polls all showed Cantor comfortably ahead.
The Tea Party dupes were able to terrify Democratic officials at town halls, screaming about lower taxes, a balanced budget, and a smaller government for you and me (not for the rich, of course). Now it’s the same gambit, but in reverse, as voters confront Republican Trump appeasers.
The Tea Party had a lot less going for it than the current pro-democracy movement. Their so-called Taxpayer March on Washington on Sept. 12, 2009, drew 300,000 participants. And that’s according to the National Taxpayers Union, one of the organizers.
In contrast, the June No Kings Day march drew 5 million participants, while the one on Oct. 18 drew 7 million. And without a dime of Koch money or Charlie Kirk paying for 80 buses or the help of troll farms.
Each No Kings march is larger than the last, and participants keep organizing between marches, confronting Republican elected officials, and running for office themselves, both taking on Republicans and primarying recalcitrant, milquetoast Democrats.
And Republicans see the writing on the wall. Why else is Trump demanding gerrymandering now? Why is he putting unprincipled loyalists in place to undermine the 2026 elections? How about placing National Guard troops in Blue cities, just where you’d need them to steal elections?
Trump and his minions — like authoritarians across the planet today and in history — want to portray themselves simultaneously as victims and victors. They want Americans to think that the demise of democracy is inevitable. If an astroturf outfit like the Tea Party can topple a government, how can an authentic grassroots movement not?
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