We got rolled’: How the conservative grassroots lost the fight with Biden because it was focused on Trump
We got rolled’: How the conservative grassroots lost the fight with Biden because it was focused on Trump
The former president’s presence on the political landscape is making it harder to launch a modern day Tea Party movement.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump walk down Southern Blvd., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, to protest the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. | Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
By MERIDITH MCGRAW and CAITLIN OPRYSKO
08/22/2022 04:30 AM EDT
In years past, it would have been a political Waterloo moment for Republicans: President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats racing frantically to finalize sweeping legislation to hike taxes on corporations and spend trillions on climate change and health care subsidies.
But instead of mounting a massive grassroots opposition to tank or tar the Inflation Reduction Act, conservatives and right-wing news outlets spent the past week with their gaze elsewhere: the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion.
Hundreds of them gathered instead outside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida to protest what they viewed as an egregious example of federal government overreach. Back in Washington, conservative activists did rally against the bill and targeted vulnerable Democrats in ads. But even the main organizers conceded that they had little time to muster the opposition-party gusto of years past.
“Everything was moving so fast, the tax provisions were being debated on the fly, so there was very little time for groups to do that in-depth grassroots pushback like we saw during
