When the Tea Party upended order in the House of Representatives a decade ago, its brash leaders ushered in a new era of the Republican Party.
The insurgent group’s 2010 takeover marked the widest margin of Republican congressional gains since former House Speaker Newt Gingrich led the party’s 1994 crusade against then-President Bill Clinton. The Gingrich revolution upended 40 years of Democratic rule in the House, while in 2010, Republicans had only been in the political wilderness for four years. Yet a decade on, its underlying issues persisted. Its champions became a consistent voice of resistance throughout the Obama years.
The rise of President Trump exposed a widening gulf in the priorities of the movement. Some firebrands chafed at Trump’s departure from the party’s long-held economic and foreign policy principles. Others simply retired. Still, an overwhelming number of other tea partiers elected in 2010 embraced Trump as a capstone to the movement’s long battle against Democrat-led overreach.
And even as Trump prepares, however fitfully, to leave office, he has received broad support from many of the original Tea Party superstars — as well as the enthusiasm that first catapulted them into office. Of the 31 Republican House members in the class of 2010 still in office, 16 signed a brief supporting Trump’s filing in a Texas Supreme Court lawsuit challenging 2020 election procedures in several swings.
The Tea Party has come a long way in the past decade, rising from the disjointed remains of George W. Bush’s presidency and falling when Trump bundled the party into his persona. Below is a list tracing the fortunes of 10 former Tea Party powerhouses as the GOP continues to reinvent itself.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks
Brooks, who flipped his district red for the first time since 1868, has carved out a spot for himself as one of Trump’s most loyal post-election defenders. In December, Brooks led the charge in a long-shot attempt to nullify the Electoral College vote when Congress must certify it in January. Along with 17 other Republicans, he urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to reexamine the validity of the election before certifying it.
Both McConnell and Pelosi dismissed protests from House Republicans as bluster. For Brooks, the bombast was nothing new. The Alabaman has long had a penchant for making scenes: He first made waves within the party during a 2011 floor speech in which he denounced “socialist” Democrats — a charge that at the time was considered insulting. Brooks also drew national controversy in 2014 when he accused the Democratic Party of waging a “war on whites” when speaking about immigration policy. And Brooks has never been afraid to attack leaders within his own party either. This bombast extended to Trump, too, whom Brooks lambasted until after he secured the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
During his ill-fated 2017 Senate primary run, Brooks foreshadowed his present opposition to Republican leadership by laying into McConnell. During a Heritage Foundation breakfast, he proclaimed that the majority leader is the “head of the swamp” and has “got to go” — an attempt to get the outsider’s edge in a tight primary that Roy Moore eventually won.
Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar
Gosar, like Brooks, since joining Congress in 2011 frequently makes headlines with his outspoken opinions. A fellow immigration hard-liner, Gosar frequently waged war on both Democrats and centrist Republicans throughout the Obama years, notably opposing both John Boehner and Paul Ryan’s bids for House speaker. Gosar, a Catholic, made international news when he boycotted Pope Francis’s 2015 speech to Congress over a disagreement on climate change.
Gosar’s combative spirit helped enlarge his profile during the Trump era. When Arizona Sen. John McCain was hospitalized for brain cancer in 2018, Gosar almost immediately volunteered to take his seat. Gov. Doug Ducey shut him down, calling the Trump ally’s suggestion “disgraceful.” More recently, Gosar has played point man for Trump in disputing the Arizona election results. In a late December speech referencing Brooks’s congressional challenge, which Gosar signed on to, he told Trump supporters to “keep the faith” that Trump will secure a second term.
Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly
Kelly first distinguished himself as a deficit hawk, a trait that he imputed to Trump while campaigning enthusiastically for the president. And, though Trump did not fulfill Kelly’s hopes for repealing Obamacare and curtailing “explosive government growth,” Kelly has remained a stalwart defender of his record. The congressman in December appealed an election challenge to the Supreme Court — briefly raising hope among some Republicans that a conservative majority would throw out the state’s mail-in ballots.
That didn’t happen, but attorneys for Kelly told the Washington Examiner that he remains undeterred. Kelly brought the case back to the court later in the month, pending response. Kelly, like Gosar and Brooks, plans to protest congressional election certification.
Texas Republican Chairman Allen West
West during his 2010 Florida congressional campaign became a Tea Party standout, largely due to his sharp criticisms of Barack Obama and his attacks on the notion that the Republican movement was rooted in racism. His confidence soon won him the praise of top Tea Party leaders, with radio host Glenn Beck briefly pushing him to run for president. But success did not last long: West lost the seat two years later, largely a result of redistricting.
Since then, the former congressman has wandered in a political wilderness, though he moved states and eventually came to chair the Texas Republican Party. Several attempts to become a political commentator did not pan out. West, however, kept his larger-than-life persona, stating after the Supreme Court tossed a Texas election challenge that “law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution.”
Former Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold
Farenthold squeaked into a 2010 victory by just 799 votes. At the time, he was controversial: A 2009 picture of him dressed in rubber duck pajamas, his huge body pressed against an underwear model, fueled Democratic attempts to kill his campaign. But Farenthold hung on through Obama’s entire term, siding with tea partiers on nearly every issue while turning his office into a Capitol Hill frat house.
Farenthold drew controversy when he defended Trump following the “Access Hollywood” tapes, musing that he would only “consider” removing his full-throated endorsement of Trump had the president endorsed rape. And Farenthold soon found himself embroiled in his own sexual scandals, ending with his 2018 resignation as the House investigated his use of taxpayer money to settle harassment claims.
Since leaving office, Farenthold has laid low, becoming a lobbyist in Texas. He blamed his ouster on “f tards,” according to court documents from his case.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
When Trump nominated Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as the nation’s top diplomat, many critics speculated that the Tea Party had scored a massive victory. On its face, that was true: Pompeo used the movement to rise to prominence in the House, where he frequently railed against the Obama administration’s foreign policy stances. But as Trump’s CIA director and secretary of state, Pompeo left his publicly combative persona in Congress. And since the election, he has remained loyal to the president’s protests even as his administration winds down — only fueling existing speculation that he has presidential ambitions in 2024.
Former Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney
Mulvaney, like Pompeo, leveraged his Tea Party notoriety into a presidentially appointed position. A strident fiscal conservative in Congress, Mulvaney dropped those stances when Trump appointed him to direct the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney in 2019 reportedly said that “no one cares” about deficits, leading many to call his congressional career an exercise in hypocrisy.
As acting chief of staff, Mulvaney dealt with Trump’s impeachment and the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Following his departure, he frequently stumped for Trump on the campaign trail. Mulvaney, however, after the Electoral College cast its votes for Trump, said that continuing legal challenges would likely be fruitless.
“We have to be honest with ourselves,” he told Fox News in December.
Former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh
Walsh narrowly won his district with little help from the national party — and a huge chip on his shoulder. Although he quickly became a grassroots star, redistricting and a bad relationship with the party forced him out after just one term. Those two years were rough: Walsh was a loner even among tea partiers and often spent the night on his office couch, according to fellow one-term Illinois Rep. Bobby Schilling.
Walsh’s quixotic 2019 primary challenge to Trump brought him back into the public eye. It was a long shot — and Walsh knew it, complaining once that the whole thing was a “pain in the butt.” Walsh through 2020 has continued to criticize Trump and his allies, recently accusing Brooks of putting on a “dangerous s— show” by challenging congressional election certification.
Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger
Kinzinger, whose district contains former President Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home, throughout Trump’s term transformed from Tea Party follower to Never Trump leader. And, after Trump lost the election, Kinzinger called upon the president to delete his Twitter account after the president posted a long speech in which he spoke about election fraud. Kinzinger also criticized West for his apparent calls for secession after the Texas lawsuit’s failure.
Kinzinger’s hawkish foreign policy stances coupled with his anti-Trump credentials have led some to speculate that he plans to run for higher office — though Kinzinger denies it.
Michigan Rep. Justin Amash
Amash rose to fame in Michigan as a proto-Tea Party hero, promising as a state representative only to consider bills that he was able to read all the way through. The outgoing Michigan congressman remained consistent throughout his 10 years in office. Toward the end of his tenure, he became one of Trump’s chief critics from the Right on Twitter and memorably declared “independence” from the Republican Party on July 4, 2019. Amash then became the first declared Libertarian Party member in Congress.
With Amash’s departure from the party, and soon from office, many political commentators remarked that the lifespan of the original Tea Party drew to a definitive close.
