Quote Originally Posted by joe
The tea party was taken over by establishment republicans. They basically used the tea party name because of all the hype, but didn't maintain the original ideals. Idk exactly what the original ideals were but I'm pretty sure they weren't, "rape babies are Gods will." lmao.
The Tea Party Movement was never truly a grass roots organization. It was formulated and funded by Dick Armey and promoted right from the beginning by FoxNews and CNN.

And, Armey is just about as "establishment" as you can get. He has spent three decades as a very active Washington insider.

His organization, FreedomWorks, was directly responsible for many of the "spontaneous" rallies during the whole health care ordeal early in Obama's tenure.

Yes, the Tea Party has melded with some very far right extremist social ideals that weren't there in the beginning, but that just helps prove to me that it was never much more than a very strategic political movement whose ideals change with the seasons and those ideals are decided by the establishment.

Obviously, there are Tea Party members that are very serious, very angry citizens who do feel like their movement have been hijacked... But, what I would say to those people is it was never really your movement and manipulation by establishment Republicans was always a part of the Tea Party, right from its inception.