Shocking! Study Shows Tea Party Was Decades In The Making, A Creature Of The Tobacco Industry & The Koch Brothers

[AverageOldGuy]

6. Well . . .

. . . am I ever shocked and surprised!!

During the height of the Tea Party movement I lived in a very red rural Virginia county, surrounded by others that were the same. There were two local Tea Parties --
-- both very active
-- monthly meetings with guest speakers
-- they had a dozen or so 4 X 8 road signs, professionally done, new slogans from time to time
-- 100% old white people

I noticed a few interesting facts.

-- The guest speakers were all the same. I checked in regularly with the website of the Virginia State Tea Party where I found these same guest speakers making the rounds of local Tea Parties statewide, indicating to me some sort of central control.
-- Whenever they showed up in public they had professionally-made signs -- across the state.

One of my favorite photos was of a meeting of one of the local Tea Parties -- a room filled with old, white people, all with grey hair (for those who still had hair), all seated, all holding signs that read "Keep The Government Out Of My Healthcare." I laughed at the sign because it was clear that everyone in the pic was on Medicare -- a government program.

Both of them eventually dissolved into in-fighting.

And both of them disappeared when Obama left office and Trump emerged.



One of these two emerged from our county Republican Party. Seems that for a year or so, certain members of the county Republican Party would interrupt meetings, demanding a "point of order," making fiery speeches, and the like. So -- at the county Republican Party's 2007 Christmas party -- after social hour and dinner, the leadership stood up, resigned, and walked out of the room along with some Republican Party loyalists, to the cheers of the Tea Party insurgents. The Tea Partiers who remained convened an emergency meeting on the spot and elected their own slate of officers and officially changed the name of the organization to the XXXXX Tea Party. The next day, they discovered that the former Republican chair and treasurer had emptied their substantial bank account (around $80,000) and sent the money to the state Republican Party.

The other one dissolved in late 2016 after attendance at their meetings went to 4, 5, 6, attending. In 2022 their website was taken over by a rump group calling themselves "The XXXX Patriots," who were dedicated to defending the Jan 6 rioters.