The Beginning of the End of MAGA
By: Ross Barkan (Intelligencer via MSN)
The TEA Party has killed MAGA. Told ya' it was going to happen. Now Republicans got nothing they can use to win elections.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
There’s a narrative that Democrats are adrift or, at the very minimum, bereft of obvious leaders. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries aren’t very popular, and none of the 2028 contenders seem, outside of redistricting brawler Gavin Newsom , to stir the blood all that much. Yet after Tuesday night, there’s much for Democrats to celebrate. Virtually every election result, from New Jersey to Virginia to Georgia to California, was exceedingly good for them. Every faction of the party could exult in the outcomes: Leftists got their new mayor, Zohran Mamdani , and moderates spiked the football over the ascensions of Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger. Virtually all Democrats were thrilled that Proposition 50 passed in California, allowing Newsom to oversee a Democratic gerrymander that can counter the Texas GOP’s. There are plenty of similarities between 2025 and 2017, another strong off-year for Democrats that foreshadowed the blue wave of 2018.
The greater reality, which even chest-thumping Democrats may not want to acknowledge just yet, is that MAGA is in twilight. In the days before his inauguration, Donald Trump was actually liked by a majority of Americans. He had won a popular-vote election, and voters were largely disillusioned with all the Democrats had to offer, whether it was Joe Biden slipping into senility or milquetoast Kamala Harris. While MAGA will never quite believe it, they will probably never have it as good again as they did in January 2025. Americans had given Trump a second chance. Enough of them earnestly believed he was going to address the cost-of-living crisis and begin to make their lives better.
As disorienting and terrifying and overwhelming as second term Trump has been, the elections on Tuesday demonstrated the fundamental — and likely unfixable — flaw of the entire MAGA movement. It revolves fully around Trump and can only thrive if he sits at the top of the ticket. And since it is so deeply tied to one man, his failures undercut whatever populist realignment they believed was possible at the close of 2024. Today, Trump is unpopular , with most polls showing a significant dip since the start of the year. During his first term as president, and again as a candidate over the last several years, he was a trusted voice on the economy because he was a businessman who once presided, through luck, over an era of low inflation. That economic edge is now gone. The tariff regime is alienating, housing and grocery prices remain stubbornly high, and Trump has given little indication he cares about — or can focus on — this affordability problem. Americans wanted a tighter border, not marauding, maniacal ICE agents in their streets, and almost no one asked for DOGE, National Guard invasions, or furious crackdowns on free speech. Again and again, Trump and his most vicious cronies, including Stephen Miller, have tried to manufacture crises to justify all of this gross federal overreach.
It’s obvious enough that most Americans aren’t buying it. They’re sick of Trump and weary of what MAGA stands for. And for the many rank-and-file Republicans who have hitched their wagons to Trump over the last decade, a new reality is settling in: Trump, in fact, isn’t eternal. It’s always possible that Trump, in his 80s, decides to violate the Constitution and seek a third term, but that seems to be growing more unlikely, if Trump’s own public pronouncements are to be believed. For younger Republicans, there is very much life after Trump, and they’re going to have to start contemplating it — especially as the Supreme Court readies to potentially invalidate his tariffs and the odds of Democrats storming to a House majority in 2027 keep increasing . Republicans are still favored to hold the Senate, and Trump will be the most powerful man in the world for another three years. But no matter who his successor is — J.D. Vance is most likely, followed by Marco Rubio — none of them are him. Trump’s charisma fused the disparate factions of MAGA and kept a great deal of peace within the Republican tent. When he exits the scene, there will be a bloody contest for the future of the movement and the Republican Party itself.
Still in full control of the federal government for at least another year, Trump and his MAGA allies can exert themselves plenty. They can keep bullying Democrat-run cities, harassing college students, and terrorizing immigrants. They can indulge their autocratic fantasies. What they can’t do is force Americans to like any of it. The old fascist regimes, or even the Bush-Cheney post-9/11 regency, had — at least in the beginning — a great deal of popular buy-in. The masses collectively yearned for that style of punishing leadership. Trump won a popular vote by less than two points and has governed like he was delivered a far greater mandate. He squandered whatever goodwill he had with the public, and MAGA’s future is now much murkier than it was a year ago.
The final dark question is how Trump will exit the scene. Scenarios of an illegal presidential run or an attempted seizure of power must be entertained , as well as the possibility of Vance, or another Republican, trying to steal an election in the event of a loss. As unlikely as it is, Trump could try to declare martial law and somehow cancel elections. With him, everything is on the table. The saving grace, in the end, might be federalism — it’s the states and counties that control election apparatuses, not the president — and MAGA’s deficit of competence. Full-blown autocracy is very hard to implement. As the days tick down in 2025, Trump may be finally understanding this.
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Donald Trump has been in office less than 10 months. In that 10 months the TEA Party has killed off all its 'culture war' issues, used DOGE to wreak havoc and release the dogs of war, bombed Iran, have taxed the poor and given to the rich, destroyed the White House to build a party palace for nouveau royalty, killed soybean exports, increased beef imports, wasted money on coal, played shell games with rare earths but left the US just as vulnerable.
Somebody is obviously winning but it's not the MAGA base. What do TEA Party Republicans run on now? The misery they've caused? The grifting they've created? The American values they've sold out? Or will the TEA Party just use their scary black guns to intimidate people?
Tea Party? MAGA?
The TEA Party is an anti-establishment movement whose focus is reducing taxes and shrinking the size of government (so taxes aren't needed).
The MAGA movement emerged as an effort to restore Constitution government based upon the idea of Originalism. The MAGA movement wasn't anti-establishment or a small government movement.
There really are distinct differences between the TEA Party and MAGA.
There are differences between the definitions of "tea party" and MAGA but not so much the members of each.
Utter horseshit. MAGA was created for only one purpose, to unite the uninformed under Donald Trump for his election. MAGA is a cult and the cult leader is Trump.
MAGA is a living breathing contradiction.
Thanks for the clarification. Honestly, to me, MAGA is TP Plus or Extreme: a more aggressive, openly bigoted and hypocritical but lesser politically & financially educated and savvy version. Each shares a lot of traits, like
sticking it to the Dems / whomever disagrees with them,
Do what harm you want to them but don't touch me and mine
Poor people suck and are always begging for handouts but don't you dare touch my subsidies
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps but continue to hook me up; you know, that whole DEI, white discrimination ain't fair thing
Deport, deport, deport...wait, not my nanny, landscapers, handy-people installing my roof, wait-staff at my favorite restaurant...
Pro-Life / Anti-Abortion, stop having all those babies then begging for welfare while your teen is spitting them out left and right and "needs help" (Palin anyone?)
Right to Bare Arms is the only part of the 2nd amendment that counts, you know, because I have THE RIGHT to shoot people I don't like; but that same right doesn't apply to said people I don't like; repeat same principle to 1st amendment
Replacement theory...
Pushed and led by incompetents who only wanted their votes and after getting used, got lumped and bumped with everyone else
Well, that would be wrong. Jesse Ventura's election as governor of Minnesota in 1998 was MAGA (before the name was coined). Yes, Trump coined the name "Make America Great Again" but Trump did not create the political movement to restore government to it's original Constitutional form. Trump did not create the idea of Constitutional Originalism. And Trump is not immune from MAGA dissent over war powers and imperial foreign policy. Neither Ukraine or Russia come first; only America comes first.
The grassroots movement that Trump gave a name has more in common with Truman Democrats and Eisenhower Republicans than with Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution or the TEA Party.
The TEA Party is anti-government; not anti-establishment. The TEA Party serves the private sector financial establishment. The TEA Party sees government as interfering with the true establishment in the US.
MAGA (as it is now know) is not anti-government. MAGA isn't even that strongly anti-establishment. MAGA is very anti-elitist.
MAGA is very anti-globalist.
Yes, that too.
Yet it is pro-Trump? The most extreme elitist in America? He's rich, he's powerful, he's immune from the law, and he likes everything gold plated.
The two aren't exactly the same, but they can't really exist without each other. The two words should just be pushed together.
Tea MAGA... TeaMaga. They are Team-aga, all on the same team, some are just playing different positions.
"We love Trump because he's destroying big government, cutting government regulation and giving tax breaks to corporations that have promised to bring manufacturing jobs back so we don't have to go to college to get a decent paying job!"
"We love Trump because he owns the godless liberals and lgtbq sinners!"
Quite the conundrum, isn't it? So far, Trump's 2nd term is the opposite of his 1st term. Trump may discover that broad support is not very deep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned on Trump.
Democrats lump together all those who oppose the Democratic Party agenda of identity pandering and social bullshit. The Democratic Party agenda does not address fiscal concerns, Constitutional restraint, or sovereign fundamentals. The Democratic Party has embraced globalist anarchy and elitist autocracy.
The TEA Party oppose Democrats solving every problem by just throwing public money. MAGA oppose Democrats propensity to govern through delegation to administrative technocrats and an autocratic judiciary.
That's the way it looks to Democrats simply because Democrats' political priorities have nothing to do with governing a sovereign nation or preserving American values, traditions, history, and heritage.
The reason his support is waning is because his policies are beginning to directly effect his MAGA base and his promises are being broken..
MTG wanted to run for senator and Trump prevented her from doing so. She is not turning on him for any altruistic reasons.