Catching Flies with Honey

Similarly, the Tea Party also suffered a rather similar fate. It originally started as an anti-tax, anti-bailout, right-wing movement. The protestors were rather obnoxious, reminiscent of old hippies from the 1960s trying to relive their flower child days in ways that weren't quite so embarrassing to them, at least to themselves. Lots of American flag shirts, tea bags hanging from hat rims, things like that. However, the voice was clear: no corporate bailouts with taxpayer dollars. Companies that chose to engage in risky behaviors and prey on the masses deserve to die rather than have Americans' money, especially in the time of recession, helping them stay afloat.

However, there were also extremist elements from within it. Being a right-wing group, it tended to attract support from groups desperately looking for something to cling onto, such as the Klan. Racists would show up to rallies and start to make it about Obama's race rather than the government-financial complex. This led to much derision from outside, casting them as hold white extremists, similar to the kind of treatment that Trump supporters get today. That group was only tentatively involved at best, though.

Their poison pill, however, didn't seek to sow dissent from within, but to bring the Tea Party within the establishment fold. Dick Armey and Sarah Palin, both rendered irrelevant by failed political ventures, chose to use their celebrity to create two wings of the Tea Party that were largely indiscernable from one another. There was no anchor, only groups seeking to co-opt it for their own ends, which made this type of co-opting rather easy. The Tea Party then became about standard fare conservative ideals, with a dash of libertarianism added. The original intent, in which corporate malfeasance was rewarded with taxpayer dollars, was lost, and while the Tea Party remains an ideological force to this day, it has completely lost its way. It was pulled into the bubble, rather than pulling the bubble to it.