The Rise and Fall, revisited

We're coming up on an important anniversary, so it's time to reflect - and consider what could come next.

With tomorrow being Constitution Day, it’s a pretty good time to recall a movement that wanted to bring back Constitutional government.

My longtime readers know this, but those who’ve come around since the beginning of my Substack - people like David Wolosik of

The Whole American Catalog

, Cameron Keegan of

Dear Rest Of America

, and

Frederick R. Smith Speaks

are examples - may not know that I have been a passionate follower of the TEA Party since its inception back in the winter of 2009 (or, as some have argued, months or even years earlier.) It was the subject of a book I completed in time for the tenth anniversary of the Tax Day TEA Parties on and about April 15, 2009. The book, which is still out there, is called The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. (I even have a few paper copies in one of my closets.)

And yes, I’ve remained a supporter of the original TEA Party principles. When I got my new truck back in May, I made damn sure to take advantage of Delaware’s rear plate only status and put this on the front.

Luckily, my truck is tagged for awhile so they can’t fail me on inspection for this representation of the “origins of slavery.”

Anyhow, those Tax Day TEA Parties, one of which I attended on a chilly, rainy afternoon in Salisbury, Maryland, were when the movement hit the national conscience. (Now they would probably call these gatherings insurrection, particularly since we had ours in Salisbury in front of the Government Office Building.)

Obviously I lost the trail a little bit after all that went on with the scamdemic, because I used to do a quarterly update on my old book page regarding some of that which was going on with the various national TEA Party organizations, but it dawned on me the other day that next February will be the 15th anniversary of the first TEA Parties, which were held in over 30 cities nationwide on February 27, 2009.

So I decided it was time to reintroduce people to my passion in several ways over the next few months leading to what I’m calling TEA Party +15:

• First, since my book The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party hasn’t been a best seller for awhile, I have decided it’s worth serializing here on my Substack. Starting in October I will begin adding a chapter at a time every Tuesday, with the epilogue coming on Tuesday, February 27, 2024 - the 15th anniversary of the first set of TEA Parties.

• Second, I plan to do a few podcasts that review some of the local TEA Parties that went on in April, 2009. In my book I cited some of them, and hopefully those (and other) videos are still extant. (Starting on part one, I’ve found out that many of them are.) My goal in this is comparing the issues discussed then with the situation at hand now - my theory is that we have many of the same laments because the purpose of our modern (as in the last century) government isn’t to solve problems but to perpetuate the jobs of the bureaucrats therein.

• Thirdly - and perhaps most ambitiously - I would like to reach out to those I spoke to for the book and see what their take on TEA Party +15 would be. I had a lot of great interviews with the TEA Party OGs who were happy to share their memories for Rise and Fall, so we’ll see if I can get some more out of them.

That’s not to say that I won’t be covering other subjects as I roll along with this Substack, but my focus for the next few months is going to be on this upcoming anniversary. In actuality, there will be additional content because the serialization will be a Tuesday feature, which is a day I normally don’t write here. But there will be the usual Wednesday and Saturday posts sprinkled within the content that are devoted to commemorating the occasion, too. Given that 2024 is an election year, we should be bringing these TEA Party issues back to the forefront.

I want to close this first of many chapters of TEA Party +15 by remembering how I introduced my book on Amazon. I didn’t get a professional blurb writer for this, but instead wrote my description from the heart, as I did the rest of my book (and the stuff I write here.) I even get to edit it properly in this venue, since I see Amazon didn’t.

On February 19, 2009, in the wake of the umpteenth government attempt at stimulating a broken economy, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli unknowingly set off a powder keg of protest when he told viewers, "We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July! All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I'm going to start organizing!"

Barely a week later, a group of a few dozen otherwise average Americans heeded Santelli's rant and created their own TEA Parties. By that April, protests were underway in hundreds of cities around the nation and before two years had elapsed the TEA Party had shifted the entire political equation, overcoming a President who had swept into office with a mandate for fundamental change and a massive majority in Congress to carry it out.

Because it was, at its heart, a grassroots effort to restore the people's voice and eventually rightsize the federal government to a more Constitutional size and scope, I was a very willing participant in the TEA Party when it came to my adopted hometown of Salisbury, Maryland in April, 2009. As a participant in the political process thanks to my elected office, I was right there to watch how it affected government, and as a blogger and political writer I observed how the TEA Party became perceived by average people in my hometown.

By the summer of 2016, though, I was completely disillusioned with the political scene, in part because of the unfulfilled promise of the TEA Party. Once I resigned my political post in August of that year I began writing The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. Originally its premise was the belief that Donald Trump had killed the TEA Party, but - as I found out in the many hours of reading and research that have gone into this book - it was those disaffected folks who were once true TEA Party believers who came out of the woodwork and carried enough states to put Donald Trump into office. A group without a leader found a leader who didn't have a political group to back him, and the marriage lasted long enough to elect a President.

But reading and research wasn't all. In the process of writing I reached out to a number of those who were among the earliest organizers of the TEA Party, pressing them for their thoughts and recollections. Their input is the most valuable resource in making this a comprehensive overview of the TEA Party movement, which truly started months before Santelli spoke and continues to influence the political world today - but not in the way you may think. The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party is updated through the 2018 midterms and beyond, making it a relevant volume to understand our current political scene.

I'll close this description with a quote from onetime Tea Party Express president Mark Williams, one of a number of early leaders I interviewed for this book:

"The author interviewed me (among others) for this book. I have read the galley and it is a very good analysis of what happened. He also walks a tight line of impartiality and tells the story from the point of view of someone who is examining an object of curiosity. It's a well-done, fair work of recent history. I would highly recommend it as a read."

I hope you'll agree. And I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that there's a payoff at the end of the book: the idea for where to begin with TEA Party version 3.0.

In the coming weeks, you’ll get to see if you agree. It’s going on the free side, while the podcasts will be for paid subscribers.

Don’t forget: you can still Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now. And remember…