Nick Gillespie: Did MAGA Kill The Tea Party?

"Former Rep. Justin Amash and Fox News’ Kennedy join Nick Gillespie to examine how MAGA populism reshaped the Tea Party’s limited-government mission, why Congress no longer acts as a check on power, and what it will take to spark a new libertarian revival... 

From Reason Magazine

"In 2008, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) ran for the Republican presidential nomination and did surprisingly well with a campaign focused on stopping the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ending the Federal Reserve, and reducing the size and spending of the federal government. Two years later, the Tea Party movement burst on the scene, bringing people like Paul’s son Rand to the Senate and one of today’s guests, Justin Amash, to the House of Representatives. In 2012, Ron Paul again ran for the GOP nod, finishing second to the eventual nominee Mitt Romney, and helping to usher in what The New York Times called “the libertarian moment.”

What happened to the Ron Paul Revolution’s and Tea Party’s promise to shrink government, especially once Donald Trump and the MAGA movement emerged in 2015? Did the broad-based alliance that rose to cut spending and limit power transmogrify into one that prizes wielding the state instead of restraining it?

Today’s episode was recorded live on Saturday, August 9 at Ron Paul’s 90th Birthday BBQ in Lake Jackson, Texas. The guests are former Rep. Amash and Fox News personality Kennedy. They talk with Nick Gillespie about how the MAGA movement grew out of the Ron Paul Revolution and the Tea Party and redirected the right’s anti-establishment energy toward expanding government power rather than limiting it. They also discuss why Congress refuses to legislate, whether social media has expanded freedom or increased anxiety, and if Gen Z is libertarian or conformist." 

Source:Reason Magazine talking to former U.S. Representative Justin Amash & Reason Magazine anchor Lisa Kennedy. 

From Reason Magazine

From Britannica about the early days of the 20th Century Tea Party: 

"Tea Party movement, conservative populist social and political movement that emerged in 2009 in the United States, generally opposing excessive taxation and government intervention in the private sector while supporting stronger immigration controls...

From Britannica

The Tea Party at it's best, (I guess from a Liberal Democratic perspective) was movement of lots of ordinary Americans, who were literally getting screwed by the Great Recession and were very angry at Washington for that, during a time when the national debt was growing out-of-control, when trillion-dollar budget deficits were now the norm. And you had all these constitutional and fiscal conservatives in this movement who got reelected to Congress because they were against big government, high debt and deficits. 

But then Donald Trump runs for President in 2015-16, wins in 2016 and now all the sudden debt, deficits, and big government, are no longer concerns with the Tea Party, because their man is now in-charge and those things don't matter to them, as long as they're in charge. 

You can blame MAGA for a lot of things, but most of their members either at the activist level or who are in public office, are politicians at heart. If running against high debt and deficits, and shrinking the size of the Federal Government, we're popular and winning issues for them, they would still be running on those issues. 

It's 1 thing to go after the national debt and deficit, when the other party is in power and you don't expect anything to ever be done about that, as long as the other party is in power, or at least controls The White House. But it's another thing when you are now in complete control of government and now have the power and responsibility to deal with those fiscal issues and then have to run on the fact that you've just cut all these government programs or reformed them, to help deal with the deficit and debt. 

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