I've always been interested in the tea party, not because I agree with them (I don't) but because I wanted to know what they believed. It seems that they had a lot of idiosyncrasies/contradictions and could never fully grasp what their ideology was. But the more I read about them, the more I realized that they were similar to other populist right wing movements of the past.
Not all tea party people believe in this, but it is my opinion that the tea party's ideology has its roots in a certain ideology that has no real name for it. It's a nationalist worldview and an "America-as-Zion" view of Christianity that America was sort of the chosen country. It romanticizes a frontiersmanlike America where any setbacks are like that of Moses and the red sea and how if they are faithful, they will enjoy the fruits of their labor. They see capitalism as not some fat cat businessmen but rather as small town, small business, frugal, hard working people; a kind of Horatio Alger type.
They don't really call it capitalism but rather free enterprise, which they see is a natural extension of Christianity and without it, will fail. They also like to scapegoat certain things. They tend to be pro-life but rather than seeing it as a human rights issues (and I respect those type of pro-lifers), they see it as a symptom of moral decline. They see it as a symptom of increasing "statism" and how people are worshiping the government and the United Nations (a golden calf of sorts) instead of god. They don't like to send their children to public schools for those reasons. They don't see this as an ideology but rather "Americanism"
They also like finding scapegoats to blame for the country's "moral decline". They see certain movements as all branching off the same tree such as civil rights, open borders, environmentalism, gay rights, abortion rights etc. They see a conspiracy where organizations and people like the National Council of Churches, ADL, ACLU, NAACP, the Frankfurt School etc are all behind the scenes doing the bidding.
This is not a new ideology, and dates back as far as the 1920s. Here are some earlier examples of this type of ethos:
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