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This presents a crucial test to the tea party movement that has reshaped American politics since 2008. The most obvious challenge is that Trump has chosen to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, two of the biggest components of the federal budget and two prime targets for conservatives like Speaker Paul Ryan.

Trump is going to assure Congress that the draconian cuts to domestic programs like the Environmental Protection Agency, reductions which tea party Republicans love, will balance out the huge increase in military spending. But the reality will be different.

President Ronald Reagan learned in the early 1980s that cutting government programs is extremely hard in practice. When Reagan slashed income taxes and boosted military spending, promising to balance the budget with domestic cuts, he failed. Reagan also backed away from cuts to Social Security and Medicare when he faced a political backlash for trying.

In the end, deficits skyrocketed in the 1980s. Reagan faced a Democratic House. Yet we have seen that Trump is already learning how hard it is to cut government, even in a moment of united partisan control, as he backs away from eliminating increasingly popular parts of the Affordable Care Act. In his speech to Congress, he also promised to move forward with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which surely won't sit well with fiscal conservatives in his party.

Finally, this increase in military spending is a significant expansion of the federal government. While tea party Republicans might want to distinguish national security from the rest of government, in reality if they swallow this proposal they are revealing that conservatism really is about what kind of government to support, not whether big government is bad.

Tea party Republicans insisted that they would be different and for much of the time that they have had representation in Congress since 2008 they have been true to the word. They have been an intensely ideological coalition, insisting on a commitment to purity on policy that left the Obama administration deeply frustrated and tied up in knots.

Added to all this is the curveball that the president threw when he announced that he is open to immigration reform that would allow a large number of undocumented immigrants to remain in the country. Despite his continued attacks on undocumented immigrants in his address, the mere mention of a proposal to liberalize policy is anathema to many Tea Party Republicans who represent constituencies that are sympathetic to hardline anti-immigration sentiment.

The Republicans went to great lengths to fight Obama on spending cuts. When Obama sought compromise, they stood their ground in the budget battles of 2011, threatening to send the federal government into default. Hawkish Republicans were equally frustrated with their tea party colleagues when Congress could not reach agreement on spending in 2013 and as a result of the rules put into place in 2011, forced the implementation of budget sequestration that imposed caps on military and not domestic spending.

When Republican leaders like former Speaker John Boehner showed that they were willing to give even an inch to the Democrats, the tea party toppled them from power.

The current Speaker, Paul Ryan, has built much of his career around promising tea party Republicans that he would move forward with "entitlement reform" (meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts) despite the political risks. He has been a zealot on this issue and hoped that this moment of unified government would offer an unprecedented opportunity. A frustrated Speaker Ryan, who said after the election that Trump had a "mandate," has now warned: "I've been a big time entitlement reformer for a long time because if you don't start bending the curve in the out years, we are hosed."

By supporting Trump, tea party Republicans would also put themselves on the record as being in favor of big increases in certain kinds of government spending.

Tea party Republicans will soon discover that President Trump's budget doesn't really add up. They will be receiving numbers from a Republican administration, which generally is sympathetic to their goals on most major issues, that will contradict their promise to the reddest constituents that they would hold firm on the anti-government cause. Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina senator, said, "America cannot wait any longer before we get serious about balancing the budget."

Trump is putting the Republican Party in a difficult spot at a moment of united government that could easily have turned into a period of triumph. If tea party Republican members of Congress swallow what the President has sent them, they will quickly reveal to their supporters that they are as craven and opportunistic as anyone else in Washington. They will place themselves at risk to be "tea partied" out of office and they will greatly damage their own credibility with the electorate in the coming election cycle.

If they hold to principle, as they did under President Obama, then the Republicans as a party will be facing a dangerous moment. A Republican President, who has shown that he doesn't have much loyalty when it comes to people getting in the way of his success, will be facing off against a huge portion of the congressional Republicans. The Freedom Caucus, with about 32 votes, has the numbers in the House to tie up the administration.

Will Republicans unite and make the most of their control of Congress and the White House? Or will many of them remain true to their small government philosophy and risk war with a White House that wants to reshape Washington?

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Trump's huge challenge to the tea party - CNN.com - CNN

This presents a crucial test to the tea party movement that has reshaped American politics since 2008. The most obvious challenge is that Trump has chosen to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, two of the biggest components of the federal budget and two prime targets for conservatives like Speaker Paul Ryan.

Trump is going to assure Congress that the draconian cuts to domestic programs like the Environmental Protection Agency, reductions which tea party Republicans love, will balance out the huge increase in military spending. But the reality will be different.

President Ronald Reagan learned in the early 1980s that cutting government programs is extremely hard in practice. When Reagan slashed income taxes and boosted military spending, promising to balance the budget with domestic cuts, he failed. Reagan also backed away from cuts to Social Security and Medicare when he faced a political backlash for trying.

In the end, deficits skyrocketed in the 1980s. Reagan faced a Democratic House. Yet we have seen that Trump is already learning how hard it is to cut government, even in a moment of united partisan control, as he backs away from eliminating increasingly popular parts of the Affordable Care Act. In his speech to Congress, he also promised to move forward with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which surely won't sit well with fiscal conservatives in his party.

Finally, this increase in military spending is a significant expansion of the federal government. While tea party Republicans might want to distinguish national security from the rest of government, in reality if they swallow this proposal they are revealing that conservatism really is about what kind of government to support, not whether big government is bad.

Tea party Republicans insisted that they would be different and for much of the time that they have had representation in Congress since 2008 they have been true to the word. They have been an intensely ideological coalition, insisting on a commitment to purity on policy that left the Obama administration deeply frustrated and tied up in knots.

Added to all this is the curveball that the president threw when he announced that he is open to immigration reform that would allow a large number of undocumented immigrants to remain in the country. Despite his continued attacks on undocumented immigrants in his address, the mere mention of a proposal to liberalize policy is anathema to many Tea Party Republicans who represent constituencies that are sympathetic to hardline anti-immigration sentiment.

The Republicans went to great lengths to fight Obama on spending cuts. When Obama sought compromise, they stood their ground in the budget battles of 2011, threatening to send the federal government into default. Hawkish Republicans were equally frustrated with their tea party colleagues when Congress could not reach agreement on spending in 2013 and as a result of the rules put into place in 2011, forced the implementation of budget sequestration that imposed caps on military and not domestic spending.

When Republican leaders like former Speaker John Boehner showed that they were willing to give even an inch to the Democrats, the tea party toppled them from power.

The current Speaker, Paul Ryan, has built much of his career around promising tea party Republicans that he would move forward with "entitlement reform" (meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts) despite the political risks. He has been a zealot on this issue and hoped that this moment of unified government would offer an unprecedented opportunity. A frustrated Speaker Ryan, who said after the election that Trump had a "mandate," has now warned: "I've been a big time entitlement reformer for a long time because if you don't start bending the curve in the out years, we are hosed."

By supporting Trump, tea party Republicans would also put themselves on the record as being in favor of big increases in certain kinds of government spending.

Tea party Republicans will soon discover that President Trump's budget doesn't really add up. They will be receiving numbers from a Republican administration, which generally is sympathetic to their goals on most major issues, that will contradict their promise to the reddest constituents that they would hold firm on the anti-government cause. Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina senator, said, "America cannot wait any longer before we get serious about balancing the budget."

Trump is putting the Republican Party in a difficult spot at a moment of united government that could easily have turned into a period of triumph. If tea party Republican members of Congress swallow what the President has sent them, they will quickly reveal to their supporters that they are as craven and opportunistic as anyone else in Washington. They will place themselves at risk to be "tea partied" out of office and they will greatly damage their own credibility with the electorate in the coming election cycle.

If they hold to principle, as they did under President Obama, then the Republicans as a party will be facing a dangerous moment. A Republican President, who has shown that he doesn't have much loyalty when it comes to people getting in the way of his success, will be facing off against a huge portion of the congressional Republicans. The Freedom Caucus, with about 32 votes, has the numbers in the House to tie up the administration.

Will Republicans unite and make the most of their control of Congress and the White House? Or will many of them remain true to their small government philosophy and risk war with a White House that wants to reshape Washington?

See original here:
Trump's huge challenge to the tea party - CNN.com

It's tempting to compare widespread, influential movements to the Tea Party's formation in 2009. It was done in 2011 with Occupyand in 2015 with Black Lives Matter.

Now, the 2017 protests against President Trump's administration are being benchmarked against the Tea Party movement, with observers wondering if a durable political movement will form, elect a congressional class of protest representatives in 2018 and resist the Trump administrations policies for the next four years.

While it is too early to answer those questions with any precision, the volume of protests thus far this year suggest it is a worthwhile one to consider. To do this, two important dimensions of the tea party are worth considering.

First, from its earliest days, the Tea Party was defined by bold imagery and clear symbolism. The immediate naming of the movement and use of images, such as the coiled "Don't Tread on Me" snake, alluded to popular notions of American history. These communicated an easily understandable political message of personal freedoms and liberty.

And, while many of the strategies used by the Tea Party were directed at opposing President Obama at every turn, the movement's messaging suggested broader ambitions for political change and an overhaul of Washington.

Second, the Tea Party wasn't limited to clever messaging. One of the most interesting aspects of the Tea Party protests of 2009 and 2010 was the association with the formation of a vast network of new organizations, some formal and others informal or virtual.

These organizations quickly formed and then drew loyal members. Based on the best recent data, membership in the major Tea Party organizations expanded rapidly from 2009 to 2012, but continued to grow, though at a slower rate, through 2015. As a result, the Tea Party has been a durable political movement, able to rely on this national network of organizations to mobilize voters to support candidates and a largely conservative policy agenda.

Thus far, it is hard to see the clear messaging or the organizational formation associated with the Tea Party in the 2017 protests.

To be sure, the Women's Marches in January drew millions of supporters of women's rights, likely more than the Tea Party protests in 2009 (Erica Chenoweth maintains excellent original data at theCrowd Counting Consortium). Subsequent protests supporting immigrants and voting rights and opposing the refugee executive order have regularly attracted large crowds. The recent round of town halls held with members of Congress also seem to be drawing record numbers of constituents.

While many of these protests are targeted at the president, a unifying message or image has not set. Given the variety of concerns expressed from reproductive rights to immigration policy to healthcare to LGBTQ rights this may not be a bad thing. Yet this recent period of protest doesn't yet have the common and consistent messaging as the Tea Party did.

Additionally, while the crowds have been record-breaking and hundreds of civic organizations have been involved in the careful planning of each event, there does not appear to be the same creation of new organizations as we saw in 2009 with the Tea Party.

Now, we are just two months into 2017, and at this point in 2009 few of the Tea Party organizations had moved beyond a quickly designed website. Nevertheless, if new organizations were essential to the Tea Party's influence, that has not yet defined what is happening today.

In 2009, many commentators focused on whether the Tea Party was a truly authentic grassroots movement or a manufactured Astroturf one. I've argued in the past that it was both: an expression of real concerns by citizens organizing around kitchen tables and in local town halls, as well as a well-orchestrated communications strategy supported by major political money.

In 2017, I suspect the same could be said of the recent protests. To be successful, political movements need money and people. Political success comes from organizing and effective strategy.

The important question today seems to be not whether the protests are Astroturf or grassroots, but whether they will build the durable institutions needed to be sustain political action over the next four years.

Following the direction of the Tea Party is one option, but not necessarily the only way forward for protesters.

Heath Brown is an assistant professor of public policy at the City University of New York (CUNY), John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of "Tea Party Divided:The Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement" (Praeger, 2015).

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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Do anti-Trump protests really compare to 2009 Tea Party ...

Fake news media has the nerve to place the Left's paid deranged, violent, and chaos-producing thugs on a higher moral level than the Tea Party. Heaven forbid

Harriet Baldwin posted on Facebook: Pisses me off when the alt-left media likens these paid Obama/Soros/Alinsky violent protesters to the Tea Party.

To Harriet, I say, Amen sister!

Folks, I am a black singer/songwriter who has been in the Tea Party from the beginning. In 2008, Our Country Deserves Better PAC invited me on their Stop Obama national bus tour. In 2009, I wrote the American Tea Party Anthem which I performed at Tea Party rallies on 14 national bus tours with Tea Party Express and others.

It has infuriated me the way the despicable fake news media intentionally branded the salt-of-the-earth good Americans at the rallies a bunch of redneck racists vehemently opposed to America electing its first black president. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many of those folks at the rallies excitedly voted for Obama assuming it would heal Americas racial divides. They became aware that Obama was the Lefts bait and switch president; running as a moderate governing like an out-of-control lawless far-left radical.

Folks, Tea Party people are not racist. They love their country. They desire equal justice for all Americans. They do not want government dictating how to raise their kids and micromanaging their lives to achieve the Lefts absurd goal of equal outcomes.

Trump calling out fake news outlets is exhilarating.

Along with media from around the world, CNN was embedded on one of the Tea Party Express tours. The CNN reporter attended 35 rallies for a CNN documentary. I was a headliner, opening every rally, rocking the house with my American Tea Party Anthem. I closed every rally with a powerful rendition of God Bless the USA in which I invited every veteran in the audience to join me on stage. Audiences spontaneously jumped to their feet, cheering and applauding as vets made their way to the stage. The crowds expressed extra enthusiastic love when a WWII vet made his way or was helped to the stage.

The people loved me and I loved them back because we were united in our love for America and our desire not to see her transformed into a socialist/progressive Godless nation. Rally attendees treated me like a rock star; purchasing my CDs, asking for autographs, asking me to take pictures with their kids.

When the CNN documentary was aired, not one time was my black face shown, nor were black Christian publishers William and Selena Owens, Kevin Jackson, Herman Cain, or other black speakers at the rallies.

Consequently, my 80-year-old black dad believed the Tea Party was a bunch of hate-filled scary racist white people because he heard it on CNN. I said, But dad, Im on the tour bus and they allow me to ride up front!

As I said, the complete opposite of the fake news narrative regarding the Tea Party is true.

In Texas at a Tea Party rally, a white cowboy approached me pushing a stroller with two black babies. The proud father of adopted babies from Africa said he and his white wife asked God to give them kids who needed their love. He was excited about his babies soon becoming American citizens.

In Michigan at a rally, a white woman in a wheelchair, spotted me. Oh my gosh, its Lloyd Marcus! Can I please have a picture with you? The womans adult daughter told someone on our staff. My mom is dying. She said all she wanted to do was meet Lloyd Marcus.

Tea Party attendees endlessly apologized to me for opposing the first black president. Folks, I could go on and on with fond memories of heartwarming incidents, acts of kindness, love, respect, and tearful moments of patriotism.

So, when fake news media goes messin with my tea party family, theyre on the fightin side of me. The decent, hardworking, orderly, and responsible patriots in the Tea Party have been purposely slandered by the fake news media. It is beyond disgusting.

Meanwhile, the scum-of-the-earth Black Lives Matter, which encourages blacks to kill white people and cops, is celebrated in the fake news media. Though unreported, black attacks on whites and ambushes and assassinations of police have skyrocketed.

Since election night when We the People stunned the fake news media by defeating Hillary, Leftists have literally lost their minds with vitriolic hate for us. Obama and Soros launched violent hate groups and protesters to wreak havoc in our streets to create the illusion that a majority of Americans hate Trump.

And now, fake news media has the nerve to place the Lefts paid deranged, violent, and chaos-producing thugs on a higher moral level than the Tea Party. Heaven forbid.

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Fake News Still Lyin' About the Tea Party - Canada Free Press - Canada Free Press

Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Tea Party Logos at Polling Places Wall Street Journal (subscription) (blog) A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld a Minnesota ban on wearing political insignia at polling places, throwing out a lawsuit by tea-party groups that alleged they were victims of selective enforcement. A three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit ...

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Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Tea Party Logos at Polling Places - Wall Street Journal (subscription) (blog)