Reading about the Tea Party movement in Texas, it looks like it became something different and longer-lasting than other Tea Parties in the United States; the Tea Party in Texas has become the backbench of the Texas GOP, taking control of local offices throughout Texas, especially in Tarrant County. 

The Tea Party is now this incredibly powerful hardline faction of the state legislature’s Republican caucus (“Freedom Caucus” in the House, “Liberty Caucus” in the Senate), often seeking to undermine the moderate Republican Speaker Joe Strauss in often very underhanded or arguably bigoted ways (Strauss is Jewish). The Tea Party arguably controls the Texas GOP’s platform, calling for every possible recrimination against LGBT people other than outright restoring sodomy laws. 

Meanwhile, despite the inspiration from the Tea Party movement’s tactics, the avowedly-nonpartisan Indivisible movement hasn’t become anything like the Tea Party except in holding local mass protests, lobbying federal legislators and holding meetings with guest speakers. The hardline progressive faction of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, also hasn’t garnered the sort of local power that the Tea Party Republicans have gained since Obama first became president.

Right now, there is no avowedly liberal or hard-left rump faction which has built a political machine like the avowedly-partisan Tea Party movement in Texas. We might need that: local, decentralized hard-left political machines which take over school boards and local governments, and don’t apologize for their power.