Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Neither is the condition of the conservative and libertarian movements.
FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.
“We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.”
FreedomWorks’ board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to dissolve the organization, Brandon said. Wednesday will be the last workday for the group’s roughly 25 employees, though staffers will continue to receive paychecks and health care benefits for the next few months.
The development brings to a close a period of turmoil for the organization. FreedomWorks laid off 40 percent of its staff in March of 2023, and as a result of a drop in fundraising, its total revenue has declined by roughly half, to about $8 million, since 2022, Brandon said.
In an exclusive interview with POLITICO Magazine, Brandon said the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era.
After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.
“A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist,” Brandon said. “So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.”
Some Libertarian Party leaders are fuming over the party’s decision to have former president Donald Trump headline their national convention this month, with national committee members calling on the party to rescind the invitation.
The choice to have the presumptive nominee from another party speak at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention has inflamed growing schisms within the minor party. State and local factions, presidential candidates and critics of the right-wing caucus that controls the party are registering their anger with Trump’s planned appearance. Over the weekend, the party’s leadership debated disinviting Trump from the Washington convention after the treasurer motioned to reverse course, with dissenters arguing there should be a vote over allowing Trump to attend “when over half of the membership is up in arms,” according to emails The Washington Post reviewed.
So the Heritage Foundation has gone full quack. No surprise.
— David Gorski, MD, PhD (@gorskon) May 8, 2024
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