Looking back on the past decade or so we've had something like two major calls for change in the US from "the people" The first being the Tea Party and the Second being Occupy Wall Street. Both groups went almost nowhere. Why? My thought is that both managed to get pulled into one of the two big parties, the opposite party then attacked them and everything they did, and eventually they just were subsumed into either the democrat or republican party. Is this the way it's always going to be? Every time the people have tried to come forward they've gotten sucked into the morass that is washington and their motivation and ill gets ground into the dirt.
The Tea Party has been very effective at changing national discourse. They are still going strong. Occupy people ended up being nothing but thugs and quickly fizzled out once people realized what they actually stood for. The Tea Party people did not get sucked into anything. They are strategically using the republican party to further their agenda and are politically motivated to support those candidates that are aligned with their views. There are many republicans that the Tea Party hate and are not shy about saying so.
