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Pundits keep puzzling over what party President Donald Trump belongs to, since he emphatically is not an orthodox Republican, even though he sails under the GOP flag. But the answer is simple. He is the Tea Party president.

Just think back to 2009, when the Tea Party movement began with CNBC financial commentator Rick Santellis furious on-air rant against Barack Obamas stimulus package. How many of you people want to pay your neighbors mortgage, that has an extra bathroom and cant pay their bills? Santelli asked the traders behind him on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. When they roared their disapproval, Santelli invoked the Founding Fathers and announced that he was thinking of staging a Tea Party in Chicago, fair warning that citizens were fed up with taxation without representation and a government that, like George IIIs, had become swollen with a multitude of New Offices, as the Declaration of Independence had put it, and with swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Santelli was more prophetic than he knew, for the stimulus saved few Americans from foreclosure on their over-leveraged houses. Instead, it mainly kept state and local government workers employed, while the citizens whose taxes formerly payed their salaries were losing not just their houses but also their jobs. If Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could see what America had become and was becoming, Santelli spluttered, theyd roll over in their graves. It was certainly not the republic they created, and that Franklin had warned wed need steadfast vigilance to keep.

But we failed to keep it; and it turned out that millions of Americans shared Santellis sense of that failure and his red-hot anger over it. Millions who signed up for local Tea Party chapters and rode buses to rallies from coast to coast recognized that somehow we had lost the Constitution that the Founders had given us, and that we now lived in a polity those great men wouldnt recognizeand that was certainly not the one described in our history books, with its strictly limited powers and its exquisitely designed checks and balances. What exactly it was, and how it had slouched into being, the Tea Partiers didnt really know, but they saw that it was closer to rule by a government without the consent of the people than to the self-government, liberty, and self-reliant and self-realizing pursuit of happiness that the Founders had envisioned.

Commentators are right that a big portion of Trump voters were working-class Americans displaced from their jobs by Obamas war on fossil fuels, by globalization, automation, and the shifting balance in manufacturing from the importance of the raw materials that go into products to that of the engineering expertise that designs them. These are the people Trump referred to in his Inaugural Address as the forgotten men and women of our country.

But thats only part of the new presidents coalition. As Amity Shlaes shows in her 2008 book The Forgotten Man, that term, which Franklin Roosevelt applied to the man on the breadline in the Great Depression, the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid, more properly applies to those unhappy-if-silent taxpayers who funded the New Deals social-welfare schemes. And these are the forerunners of the Tea Partiers, another key class of Trump voter: the widow on a fixed income whose property-tax payment helps house a public-sector retiree comfortably but whose inexorable rise is making her own paid-off home unaffordable; the retiree whose IRA savings the Great Recession eroded or who can no longer get an adequate income from safe bond investments, thanks to the Federal Reserves policies; the small businessman or farmer ruined by undemocratic government regulation lacking even the pretense of due process; the ex-soldier abandoned by a dysfunctional Veterans Administration; the parent disgusted with public schools that impose ideologies she abhors on her children, while leaving them inadequately educated; and all those sincere believers in God or traditional values whom Obama dismissed as clinging desperately to outmoded pieties, as the arc of history, which the elite professor-president claimed to understand and direct according to his politically correct enlightenment, swirled them down the drain.

The Tea Partiers wanted a second American Revolution that would sweep away the Administrative State that the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the War on Poverty set loose to devour and fatten on the carcass of the Founders republic, replacing a government of limited and enumerated powers with an unlimited government that rules by administrative decree and redistributes wealth as if it belonged to the governors and not the governed. No wonder Obamas Internal Revenue Service worked to squash that movement as tyrannically as George IIIs tax collectors. Lets see if the new revolutionaries picked a leader who knows what they want and how to get it.

Myron Magnet,City Journals editor-at-large and its editor from 1994 through 2006, is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. His latest book isThe Founders at Home.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Our Tea Party President - City Journal

The massive marches this weekend will be remembered as the starting point of a massive protest movement against President Donald Trump, but what will become of the sleeping giant that has awakened?

If the extraordinary energy that was on display across the country is effectively channeled into electoral politics, some of the long-term demographic trends that Trump's victory obscured will accelerate. He could be the last Republican elected president for a long time.

But a new protest movement could also upend the Democratic establishment, just like the tea party movement did eight years ago. With the president viewed as illegitimate by so many progressive activists, even small compromises will be viewed as apostasy. This could fuel nasty primary challenges, without a president in the White House to stop them, and prompt a lurch to the left that would make it harder to topple Trump in 2020.

FOR REPUBLICANS, THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF PROPOSITION 187:

The protests foreshadowed the long-term damage that Trump might be inflicting on the Republican brand. I found myself wondering what percentage of people in the streets hadn't voted in 2016 and whether they will in 2020. Both statistics are important but unknowable.

Trump is a reactionary figure, but the long arc of American history bends toward reform. With his pledge to "make America great again," the septuagenarian president tapped into nostalgia for a bygone era among fellow baby boomers. But the "good old days" were not so good for lots of folks, including but not limited to women, gays, Latinos and African Americans.

Every time Trump did something like attack Judge Gonzalo Curiel, which House Speaker Paul Ryan called the textbook definition of a racist comment, I raised the specter of Proposition 187 in this space. California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson embraced a ballot measure to deny all public services, including education and health care, to undocumented immigrants. The idea was to adopt a wedge issue that would gin up the base and woo disgruntled independents as the state struggled to fight its way out of the post-Cold War recession. Wilson ran ads with footage of Mexicans running across the border. "They keep coming," a narrator said ominously. The campaign to push the ballot initiative was called "Save Our State," as in SOS.

What a lot of people forget about Prop 187 is that the gambit worked - in the short-term. Republicans cleaned up in that election, though the measure was quickly blocked by a federal court. But while Wilson won the battle, Republicans lost the war. The GOP candidate for president carried California in nine of the 10 presidential elections before 1992. Democrats have won handily in all six elections since Prop 187.

Significantly, Prop 187 didn't just alienate a generation of Latinos, galvanizing them to register to vote and get engaged in the political process. It also repelled moderate suburban whites who wanted no part of nativism and xenophobia. To be sure, correlation is not causation. There were demographic trends that were making the state bluer before the measure passed, but it supercharged them.

Latinos were not inevitably going to become a lynchpin of the Democratic coalition. Just compare California to Texas, where George W. Bush proved during his gubernatorial bids around the same time that a conservative can make inroads with the community.

National conservative leaders warned publicly in 1994 that what Wilson was doing would hurt the whole party in the long term, just as they did when Trump launched his campaign by declaring that many Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals and drug traffickers. "He's scapegoating, damn it, and he should stop doing it," Bill Bennett, who had been Ronald Reagan's Education secretary, said of Wilson at the time.

While Trump won the election in the Rust Belt, he was weaker than past Republicans in the Sunbelt. Mitt Romney carried Arizona by nine points in 2012, for example, but Trump only won by 3.6 percent. It's hard to imagine the Grand Canyon State not being in play next time. And don't forget that a shift of fewer than 100,000 votes would have tipped Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to Hillary Clinton. It's not like he can count on a realignment working to his advantage.

One small but telling illustration of how little the Trump administration actually cares about expanding his coalition:The Spanish-language version of Whitehouse.gov no longer exists. You get a 404 error if you try to visit.

FOR DEMOCRATS, A CAUTIONARY TALE IN THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT:

Right now, the Democratic coalition is united in opposition to Trump. But the edifice could begin to show cracks as issues like Obamacare replacement and infrastructure spending come to the forefront.

While a lot of establishment leaders - like John Kerry - came out for the Women's March, it was revealing that the leading candidates for DNC chair were instead courting deep-pocketed donors at a conference put on by David Brock in Florida. That they were not out in the streets, standing in solidarity, didn't go unnoticed among some grassroots leaders.

The Democratic establishment is giddy right now about all the new enthusiasm, but veteran organizers warn that it will be harder than it looks to channel it toward sustained engagement in the political arena. "Saturday's marches, which featured speeches from many leading Democrats, were not explicitly Democratic events," The Washington Post's Dave Weigel and Jenna Portnoy note. "Melissa Byrne, a candidate for DNC vice chairman, said that the crowds . . . will encourage even more people to become activists. But having organized for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and for the Occupy D.C. movement, she saw how the new activists would be tested even if the rallies grew in size. 'People are going to get frustrated, because you want your wins to come quickly,' she said. 'For people who are new to this, it takes a while to get that.'"

After the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey this fall, next year's biggest battles in the midterm elections will play out on deeply-red terrain. There are just two clearly at-risk GOP senators up for reelection, in Nevada and Arizona. Jeff Flake, the Arizona senator, is more worried about getting toppled during the primary by a challenger who has the endorsement of President Trump than losing in the general election. Few GOP senators have separated themselves more from Trump.

To be sure, something that made Saturday so special was how many marches took place in red states and small towns where Trump dominated. The Post's Jose DelReal notes that sizable crowds gathered in places like Wichita, Kansas, rural towns in Virginia, and throughout the South: "In Anchorage, thousands of protesters gathered despite an unforgiving snowstorm and 10-degree temperatures, holding signs with slogans such as 'My body. My rights. My choice.' Farther north, in Fairbanks, thousands were undeterred by the extreme temperature, which approached minus-20 degrees. At the same time, thousands marched outside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise as snow fell over them."

But party leaders could quickly lose control of the energy, if they don't play their cards right. Take Nevada. The smartest operatives on both sides agree that Sen. Dean Heller is the most vulnerable GOP incumbent on the ballot next year. But what happens if the Democratic Party - now that Harry Reid has ridden off into the sunset - nominates its own Sharron Angle, who subsequently blows a totally winnable race? People like Angle and Christine O'Donnell only got oxygen in the 2010 primaries because the tea party movement turned on the governing class.

Furthermore, Trump's success as a first-time candidate will embolden an array of celebrities and billionaires to consider coming out of the woodwork. Keep an eye on Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz and Mark Cuban. They'd try to run as outsiders and use their fortunes to tap into this activist energy. It could lead to a very messy battle over what it means to be a Democrat.

James Hohmann is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post.

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The liberal tea party movement has begun. What will become of it? - Chicago Tribune

Gonzalo Martinez De Vedia, Jeremy Haile and Sarah Dohl, Tribune News Service 1:14 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2017

More than 1 million rally during the Million Women's March on Washington in Washington, D.C., Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. (Dawn J. Sagert photo)(Photo: Dawn J. Sagert)

Donald Trump represents a grave threat to liberal democratic values. On Capitol Hill, Republicans are falling in line and some moderate Democrats have signaled a willingness to cut deals. But ordinary Americans have the power to resist. We know this is true because we have seen local, grassroots organizing take hold before.

Eight years ago, two of us worked as congressional staffers and the other in immigrant rights organizing. President Obama had taken office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and seemed poised to enact many of our shared priorities. Another force was taking shape, however, that would eventually bring federal policymaking to a halt.

The tea party protests began early in 2009, as small groups of conservative activists organized against government intervention in the housing and financial markets. By summer, they had grown into a formidable opposition movement, flooding congressional offices with angry letters, emails and calls. Enabled by a media that thrives on conflict, these minority voices soon dominated the national discourse.

When members of Congress retreated to their districts for what should have been an uneventful summer of little league games and pancake breakfasts, tea party activists awaited them. Two of us worked for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who was mobbed in an Austin parking lot by protesters carrying Revolutionary War battle flags and signs denouncing "socialized health care." Their simple chant, which would soon become familiar, was, "just say no."

The tea party organized for the 2010 midterms, targeting both Republicans and moderate Democrats. By the time the dust had settled, Democrats had lost their large majorities in Congress and, with their lost seats, any hope of realizing a bold progressive agenda.

Although their policy ideas were destructive, the tea party demonstrated that a small group of activists can take on a newly elected president with a majority in Congress and win.

Now it's our turn.

We learned two key lessons from the tea party's success.

First, they organized locally, focusing on members of Congress in their home states and districts, pushing them to use every available tool legislation, letters, public statements, media interviews to oppose Obama's every move.

Under Trump, similar efforts will be just as important in "blue" districts as anywhere else. By keeping relentless, local pressure on progressive members of Congress, we can embolden them to stand firm. We can remind them that making nice with an administration built on racism, authoritarianism and corruption is not bipartisanship it's collusion.

The second lesson we learned from the tea party is that we need to play defense. The movement's members understood that if they tried to choose among competing conservative priorities, their coalition would fracture. Rather than putting forward plans to stimulate the economy or to improve the health care system, they chose to "just say no." The tea party kept its movement strong, broad and unified by concentrating relentlessly on opposition.

Loud, localized resistance is already proving effective against the new GOP regime.

On the first day of the new Congress, Republicans moved to hamstring the Office of Congressional Ethics. Within 24 hours, activists had taken the fight to the home district office of Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, (R-Va., who had led the effort, demanding a meeting and posting video of their visit on social media.

They took the "just sayno" approach, and it worked.

Republicans' swift retreat affirmed that every constituent's voice across every state, in every district, red or blue will be vital to expose and block what we expect will be an aggressive attempt to remake government in Trump's image.

To stand united in opposition is not about abandoning a positive vision for the future. Progressives should continue working to develop policy ideas. But for the next two years, at least, we can't set the agenda, we can only respond to it.

If the tea party's approach could stop President Obama, it can stop President Trump. Unlike his predecessor, Trump lost the popular vote, and has no mandate. He also has slimmer majorities in Congress than Democrats had eight years ago.

Americans against Trump are in the majority. If we want to resist his agenda, we have to do it together, and we have to start now.

You can find like-minded people through a website we started, Indivisible, or start your own group. Meet in person. Tell your member of Congress to represent you, not Donald Trump. Together we can win.

Gonzalo Martinez de Vedia, Jeremy Haile and Sarah Dohl are contributors to "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda."

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OPED: To stop the president, imitate the tea party - York Dispatch

Day Four of the Trump Administration. Sky status: Intact.

The Democrats Find Their Own Version of the Tea Party Movement

If the Tea Party movement had held its first rally on January 21, 2009, instead of midsummer of that year, would anything have changed?

Probably not, as the Obama administration and the majority of congressional Democrats were hell-bent on passing Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, their version of the stimulus, and so on. Scott Browns improbable Senate victory in Massachusetts didnt drive them to the center, so its unlikely that any outside force could have spurred them to rethink their approach to governing in the opening years of the Obama presidency.

Critics argued that the Tea Party movement was driven by a panoply of issues: opposition to Obamacare, outrage over the TARP bailouts, the threat of tax increases, the growth of government, concern about the national debt, among others. It was a fair criticism, but it was ultimately moot. Most members of the Tea Party unified around the idea of staunchly opposing what that guy in the Oval Office is doing.

The Womens March on Washington Saturday certainly had its own smorgasbord of concerns: abortion rights, racial profiling, gay rights, opposition to deporting illegal immigrants, opposition to Islamophobia, workers right to organize, concern over global warming...

But as much as we on the right might chuckle at the contradictions a lot of labor unions work in the industries that environmentalists would like to see shut down, and a lot of Muslims have views on gay rights that this movement would oppose the people involved in Saturdays marches will unify around the idea of staunchly opposing what that guy in the Oval Office is doing.

Fear is a powerful motivator; fear gets peoples butts up off their couches. When you have more people caring about whats going on in Washington, you have more people who become interested in running for office. In 2010, Republicans suddenly had bushels of candidates usually good ones in places they rarely had one before: After surpassing a goal to recruit 80 candidates in key races, Leader Boehner set a more ambitious objective of 100. At the end of the day, McCarthy and the team at the NRCC were able to help get a Republican on the ballot in 431 of the 435 House congressional districts.

The Tea Party movement gift-wrapped a message for Republican candidates: Democrats in Congress had grown arrogant and out of touch, and were completely oblivious to the growing anger and dissatisfaction in their districts:

The townhall protests that erupted in August 2009 provided the first visible signs of the anger and frustration that Americans of all political parties were feeling. While Speaker Pelosi and other Democrat leaders criticized these citizens as un-American, the NRCC embraced the movement and highlighted the rude awakening that vulnerable Democrats were receiving with daily emails entitled Recess Roastings. Events held by Reps. Baron Hill (IN-09), Steve Driehaus (OH-01) and others became instant YouTube sensations and were proof that Democrats had a much bigger problem on their hands than they originally expected.

Throughout the Obama presidency, the Democrats desperately yearned for their own version of the Tea Party. They envied the crowds, the passion, the visible signs of grassroots opposition, cropping up across the country. You only demonize something if it matters.

It now appears that as the Trump presidency dawns, angry liberals are building something akin to the Tea Party movement. It will look different, it will be geographically concentrated in different areas, and of course, it will get much more sympathetic media coverage. But it will be there, and it could be a big factor in 2018 midterms.

Its also worth remembering that the Tea Party was ultimately a mixed bag for the Republican party. Yes, it brought them Mike Lee, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Paul LePage, Trey Gowdy, Ron Johnson, etc., but it also brought Sharron Angle, Christine ODonnell, Carl Paladino, and Richard Mourdock. An impassioned grassroots movement giveth, and an impassioned grassroots movement taketh away.

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The Democrats Find Their Own Version of the Tea-Party Movement ... - National Review

While Tea Party groups are generally praising Donald Trump following his inauguration as President, not all are in accord. Moreover, the praise of Trump is diametrically opposed to the view top Tea Party leaders voiced during the GOP primary.

A debate is underway inside Tea Party Nation (TPN) about the Trump Presidency. While TPN leader Judson Phillips wrote on January 20 that he was part of the Never Trump movement during the campaign, he has now changed his tune. Donald Trump won and started acting like a conservative, says Phillips. The TPN leader continues,

Conservatives, who are still members of the Never Trump crowd have berated Trump since his election. Shortly after being sworn in, President Trump issued some executive orders. He is freezing regulations. He issued an executive order directing the administration to unwind regulations created by Obamacare to help businesses and individuals. The White House website now touts the new administrations support for law enforcement as well as support for the Second Amendment. What here isnt good enough?

As Judson Phillips sees it, Conservatives have two choice (sic) here. We can work with the administration, when it is right, and we can advance a conservative agenda. Or, we can simply go sit in the corner, like spoiled, petulant children and accomplish nothingI vote for working with President Trump and his administration when they are right.

Apparently one of those spoiled, petulant children, Rev. Larry Wallenmeyer, a TPN blogger, attacked Trump on January 21 from a Christian Nationalist standpoint:

I am a Constitutional-Conservative, i.e. meaning Principled Conservatism defined and restricted by Americas Founding Documents as written by Americas Founding FathersBUT ABOVE THAT I AM A BIBLICAL-CHRISTIAN, i.e. meaningThe Bible Is my sole authority on ALL things spiritual, doctrinal, cultural, moral, philosophical and political.I can NOT and will NOT budge from these common, foundational precepts and principles, to compromise is a sin as a Christian, and treason as a Patriot [Capitals in original].

Posting material on the TPN website assailing Trump for committing adultery and generally being immoral, Wallenmeyer writes We should NOT support anyone, regardless of party who is as immoral, corrupt, dishonest, vile, arrogant, proud, vulgar, and leans as hard left as DT does.

Conversely, in a January 20 statement, Tea Party Patriots President and co-founder Jenny Beth Martin unequivocally praised the reality TV President:

Tea Party Patriots and our network of supporters across the nation congratulate President Donald Trump on his inauguration as the 45th President of the United StatesAmericans elected President Trump because they sincerely believe he is the right leader to Make America Great Again and he will do this by putting the interests of our country and its citizens first. We look forward to the opportunity to work with President Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a new system that prioritizes freedom over government control, secure our borders, reduce the size and scope of government while balancing our budget, and enacting an America First trade policy.

Martins statement reverses her opinion held during the Republican primary. Recall that Martin denounced Trump in no uncertain terms at the April 2016 Conservative Political Action Committee Conference:

Donald Trump loves himself first, last and everywhere in between. He loves himself more than our country, he loves himself more than the constitution. He doesnt love you, me, and he doesnt love the tea party. Donald Trump has no business thinking hes tea party and every tea party person who truly loves the constitution should take that into account when youre casting your vote.[1]

We here at IREHR tend to agree more with Martins pre-election assessment.

[1] Citied in Galloway, Jim and Tamar Hallerman. Tea partyer Jenny Beth Martin takes on Donald Trump at CPAC. AJC.com. April 9, 2016. http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/03/04/tea-partyer-jenny-beth-martin-takes-on-donald-trump-at-cpac/.

Donald TrumpJenny Beth MartinJudson PhillipsTea Party NationTea Party Patriots

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The Tea Party and the Trump Inauguration - Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights News