The Tea Party started with Rick Santelli's rant against government bailouts. The next element was the lead-up to the ACA, which resulted in millions of Americans losing the insurance plans they had and liked -- despite Obama's "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan" pledge, which many Americans rightly suspected was a lie. Many people lost their doctors too. I recall a substantial exodus of physicians out of the profession subsequently.

The Tea Party rallies had a lot of "Don't Tread on Me" flags, and complaints about taxes and heavy-handed regulation, and displays of the upticking federal debt.

If culture-war issues had been the whole purpose from the start, it would have been more visible. What other popular political protest movement has concealed its real agenda under a completely different one?

No doubt some (not all) Tea Partiers from back then are now culture warriors, but that doesn't prove that the original popular movement was some kind of carefully orchestrated deep fake just to get some people elected and then outlaw drag-queen story hour.