Last edited Tue Jul 21, 2020, 09:14 PM - Edit history (1)
or them 50 years before, were John Birch Society types passionately fighting the liberal commies. Same sort of people, different political iterations.
It's not widely known, but the Kochs et al had had agents secretly create the Tea Party by organizing and exploiting resentful populist passions in order to continue dividing and conquering the electorate, and specifically to block Democrats. They reportedly got the idea from the successful exploitation of populist passions by the tobacco industry. In NC or SC, VA or wherever, locals especially were encouraged be outraged at the congressional hearings into the industry's making cigarettes more addictive.
At first the Tea Party attracted people from the left also but quickly distilled into a RW populist movement, a rebellion against the RW establishment that was trying to eliminate progressive benefits and programs the populists depended on, but organized by libertarian billionaires determined to do just that.
Anyway, of course it was a big secret to them that their activities were being funded and directed by very clever people hired by RW libertarian billionaires. The agents' greatest success was manipulating these people, economically progressive but passionately conservative on "culture war" issues, to expand their passions to opposition to national debt and government spending (turning them against taxation for and funding of their own favorite programs).
That worked well until the tea partiers got so full of themselves that they turned on their masters by also fighting "big government spending" that benefited big business. They caused so much trouble that the Kochs had to write congress officially disclaiming the connection. And cut off the money.
Which left the TPers bereft. Until Trump came along. Then they gathered behind him in a new populist rebellion, rejecting all the RW establishment candidates offered expectantly by the party leadership and their libertarian billionaire backers. And with their support, Trump eventually got control of the entire party.
There's a lot else going on, but that's the general idea: The TPers became today's trumpsters, with most of the rest of the conservative voters also falling in in opposition to the greedy people who'd taken over the GOP and betrayed them.
I wouldn't know how accurate the article linked below is, but it gives an overview of what was going on in the GOP about the time Covid started exploding in its trumpian-orange face. (The Freedom Caucus mentioned had been the economically extreme Tea Party faction libertarian billionaires got elected to the Republican house caucus.)
The Five Wings Of The Republican Party
... As long as Trump is in power, I don’t expect these blocs to feud much. They might differ on tactics or strategy in the run-up to the 2020 campaign. But if they want to win in 2020, all the blocs but the final, most anti-Trump one are probably better off aligning with one another and with Trump.
But if Trump loses reelection in 2020, these blocs are a useful guide to a post-Trump GOP. The old divides between the GOP establishment and the tea party or moderates and conservatives are now outdated ways of looking at the GOP. The former insurgents in the GOP now run the party — Trump is the president, and one-time House Freedom Caucus member Mick Mulvaney is the president’s chief of staff. Many of the party’s remaining moderates lost in 2018 to Democratic opponents.
Instead, the new dividing lines in the party are likely to be about how various Republicans dealt with Trump and Trumpism. ...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-five-wings-of-the-republican-party/ 
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