Washington Post: “The tea party movement was just getting started when I began writing a history of the Republican Party in 2009. I viewed the movement as the latest iteration of a basically cyclical populist phenomenon. It would push American politics to the right, I thought at the time, but eventually its impact would dissipate. The country would then swing back toward the center for a number of years until the next conservative counter-reaction. But the tea party never really faded away. It mutated. It became the Trump movement, which is likely to dominate the Republican Party and have a major impact on politics for years to come. If the best guide to conservatism was once Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s ‘The Cycles of American History,’ now it might be Leon Trotsky’s ‘The Permanent Revolution.’ Conservatism’s familiar pattern of advance, consolidation, retrenchment and renewal has vanished. In its place is something that looks like #MAGA Forever.”

“Periodic upwellings of grass-roots anger and enthusiasm have energized the conservative movement for decades. They shared a basically populist character and to some extent opposed the Republican establishment as well as Democrats; their energies peaked and then diminished, followed, until the tea party, by 10- to 15-year periods of quiescence. Why did this cycle persist? For one thing, it’s hard to keep any political movement going at full steam for a long time. Activists can put their jobs and personal lives on hold for a while when their efforts gather force and advance toward victory, but that’s not sustainable indefinitely. Equally important is that these different conservative movements succeeded in electing at least some people who sincerely tried to address the grievances and aspirations that animated the grass-roots activism. These activists turned legislators chose, in short, to govern.”