A few weeks ago, the NYT ran an op-ed from a woman who identified herself as a stalwart of the Tea Party. The gist of it was that the whole point of the Tea Party was to regain control over the size of the federal government, and that the GOP had betrayed the movement by signing off on the new budget agreement. Paul Krugman responded by saying that the actual purpose of the Tea Party was to prevent the federal government from helping “those people,” not to reduce federal spending overall, so the budget agreement was not a betrayal of principle. Who was right?
Both of them, in their own way. This question, like many others, revolves around the GOP factions.
The Tea Party was actually a movement containing both Reactionaries and Conservative Libertarians; the latter oppose all increases in the size of government on principle, while the former are primarily concerned with funneling government money to the right people. The two factions were temporarily united in their loathing of the measures that Obama took to fight the recession. Now that the GOP is in power, however, they have gone their own ways. The op-ed writer was a justifiably disgruntled CL; Krugman was talking about Reactionaries.
The Tea Party is a concept that, due to events, is past its expiration date. That is the reason you don’t hear anything about it anymore.