Whatever transpires in Kentucky’s Republican primary, the populist right no longer disguises its indifference to spending or government overreach.
In one of Tuesday’s most watched primaries, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) will face a challenger backed by President Donald Trump. The victor of the primary will almost certainly win the general election in Kentucky’s 4th congressional district. As Reason‘s Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward noted in The New York Times last week, “Congress, and the Republican Party, would be worse off without the friction and clarity Mr. Massie provides.”
I share her assessment, adding only that the country would be worse off as well. Since arriving in Congress in late 2012, Massie has been a steadfast advocate for smaller government, lower spending, and abstention from foreign entanglements. More of all of that, please.
But as important: What kind of country have we become if unlikely figures like Massie no longer haunt the halls of power? By his own account, he’s a mix of country kid and tech whiz, and his “gateway issue into liberty was gun rights” when he arrived at the urbane, liberal Massachusetts Institute of Technology after growing up in Kentucky’s wildlands. As he told me a decade ago, “I grew up in a rural area where everybody had guns. And then I went to college and realized people in college wanted to ban these things.” As an engineer, he moved from that insight to building a mental framework that consistently places him on the side of a federal government that does less and exercises less.
But if Massie loses, it’s not merely the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he’s going back to his plow and “nobody will ever hear from me again”). It would also effectively mark the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose coalition of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti- Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s.
Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the “taxed-enough already,” the rallying cry of the early Tea Party movement was “stop the spending.” For a brief, gleaming moment, the populist right was fully committed to actually reducing government spending across the board, full stop.
Covering the movement for Reason, including a truly massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009, what struck me about the Tea Party at the time was that it drew a diverse cross-section of people from all corners of the country. As Reason‘s Matt Welch observed:
The general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush’s spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a “throw-all-the-bums-out” strategy. All but one did not care about Obama’s birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.
As our early video coverage suggested, this was a movement that was fairly tightly (though not exclusively) focused on spending and debt issues. Remember that under the self-styled compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, the federal budget grew by roughly 50 percent over eight years, including sizable increases in domestic programs such as Medicare prescription drugs for seniors and the No Child Left Behind education initiative. Bush was a big-government disaster, and, entering office at the onset of a major recession with a large Democratic majority, Obama pushed spending into even higher gear, first in the name of stimulus and then in the name of universal health care for all.
The 2010 and 2012 elections swept dozens of Tea Party candidates into office, including high-profile senators Ted Cruz (R–Texas), Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rand Paul (R–Ky), and representatives such as Justin Amash (R–Mich.), Mick Mulvaney (R–S.C.), Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), and Massie himself.
In 2011, Amash and others formed the Liberty Caucus, which stayed very true to Tea Party principles and was openly libertarian. By 2015, Tea Party Republicans still had enough swagger to create the Freedom Caucus, a broader coalition still devoted to Tea Party ideals and concentrating on procedural rules to ensure even a GOP-led Congress allowed for fair hearings of pending legislation.
At its peak, the Tea Party could claim credit for electing dozens of people to the House and the Senate, and fueling the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). But even as all that was happening, leaders in the movement, including veteran Members such as Reps. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) barely held on to their seats or were defeated like Rep. Eric Cantor (R–Va.), while rookies like Reps. Allen West (R–Fla.) and Joe Walsh (R–Ill.) were sent home.
Often described as a “leaderless” and “decentralized” movement, key organizations claiming to speak for Tea Party voters began to include anti-immigrant messaging in their communications and called for defense exemptions to spending cuts. The spectacular failure of Mitt Romney not only to defeat an eminently beatable Barack Obama in the 2012 election but also to advance a genuine small-government agenda did not energize the GOP to become more principled; instead, it opened the door for Donald Trump, who promised something for everyone.
With Trump’s rise, whatever energy remained in the Tea Party was pure populist rage and tribalism rather than an anti-government stance. Senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz rarely opposed Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio continued to take on more roles in what some described as his second administration. Members of Congress like Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney joined the first Trump administration, only to confront his temper and be sidelined, even after pledging loyalty to his expansive spending approach. Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, drew rebukes from the Freedom Caucus, and exited Congress in 2021 amid a challenging primary. His 2024 bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Michigan pitted him against a Trump-backed candidate who ultimately lost the general election.
The lone, consistent libertarian-leaning Tea Party politicians remaining from the early 2010s are Rand Paul, who appears to be reinvigorating his small-government credentials, and Thomas Massie, who may soon be returning to civilian life. Indeed, even if Massie wins his primary and secures reelection, the GOP he belongs to today is markedly different from the party he joined when he first arrived in Washington.
And the question remains: what could ignite the next broad-based movement capable of challenging and trimming the size, scope, and expenditure of government while still being able to elect dozens of people to office?
