My take on this is that the Tea Party had no particularly inspiring, thoughtful leader which is why it's never been spectacularly successful. It was often called "the right-wing equivalent of the Occupy Movement." If that's true, then it shows how conservatives are generally more civilized then leftists. The Occupistas were routinely violent, and when not turning their violence towards their opponents, would occasionally rape and assault each other. Tea Partiers were either to decent or old for that depravity.
But when the Tea Party started embracing imbeciles like Sarah Palin, they might as well have hung out a sign that said, "We're suckers, please con us."
As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it’s time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives
What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164#ixzz4HMyGg2Cx
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