Look at who funded the Tea Party. Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity--both libertarian groups that were paid to do astro-turfing for the Koch Brothers. And why did the Koch Brothers want smaller government in the first place? To keep their billionaire tax rates as low as humanly possible and to kill government-mandated decarbonization programs in the crib. They got what they wanted, that's for sure.

Look at how much "fiscal responsibility" was on the table from the GOP when Trump added $7.8T to the national debt. If the Tea Party was ever sincere, they went insincere as soon as there was GOP control of government. So weird how as soon as a dem wasn't in the WH that all of a sudden all that talk of "fiscal responsibility" disappeared.

If fiscal responsibility was at the core of the Tea Party, for some reason culture wars and tax cuts for the rich were at the forefront of their agenda come 2017 when they got full control of government. Ideological conservatives were a dinner party in a larger movement that was all about a gentleman's agreement between rich libertarians and christian culture warriors, whereby the christian culture warriors promissed tax cuts for the rich libertarians as long as the rich libertarians were funding the culture warrior candidates that the christian right wanted fighting against abortion, gay marriage, and racial/sexual equality.