Using a see-saw model for our country, the Tea Party is on one side, building outdated hierarchies which benefit a few. The other side represents everyone working to bring our history of hierarchies to a close.
The Tea Party members who want to conserve hierarchies can hold on to power on this see-saw in two ways:
1. Gain weight
2. Increase distance
They can't gain weight because fewer and people agree with them, even fellow Republicans. So they must go farther out in their hierarchy ideology to keep the balance. But they can only go so far as eventually they will fall off the end and be out of the game.
In the New Yorker article "The G.O.P's Dixiecrat Problem," the current Tea Party is compared to other hierarchy builders who wanted to stall African American civil rights by aligning against Democrats and with Republicans. The last lines of the article predicts the fate of our modern-day hierarchy-holdouts:
"Sixty-five years ago, the Dixiecrats spearheaded a movement toward the G.O.P. The Tea Party is an echo of that same movement, save for one distinction: in 2013, the rebels have nowhere left to go."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/10/the-gops-dixiecrat-problem.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
