A hostile takeover backed by all the right wing media. The tea party was working but grass roots. The established Republicans might have regretted it but nothing about the tea party was organic except the absolute nutters that got elected.
Trump took over the GOP too. Right wing media was initially against him. You can reductively dismiss this as him still being on the side capital , but Trump’s trade policy is NOT what rich people wanted in general or else the US wouldn’t have championed free trade for the last 70 years.
More to the point, building a national party with enough recognition to actually win is extremely difficult. Hijacking the Democratic party and giving people a reason to vote for it, difficult though it may be, is far easier.
A hostile takeover backed by all the right wing media. The tea party was working but grass roots. The established Republicans might have regretted it but nothing about the tea party was organic except the absolute nutters that got elected.
Trump took over the GOP too. Right wing media was initially against him. You can reductively dismiss this as him still being on the side capital , but Trump’s trade policy is NOT what rich people wanted in general or else the US wouldn’t have championed free trade for the last 70 years.
More to the point, building a national party with enough recognition to actually win is extremely difficult. Hijacking the Democratic party and giving people a reason to vote for it, difficult though it may be, is far easier.
MAGA was a hostile takeover but the tea party wasn’t the grass roots effort it was portrayed as.