From the Tea Party Movement (2009) to Donald J. Trump (2016): Nostalgia, Utopia, Populism and the Transformation of the Republican Party

This thesis examines how populism in the twenty-first century of the United States evolved from the decentralized Tea Party Movement in 2009 to the leader-centered political style of Donald J. Trump during his presidential campaign from 2015 to 2016. While both movements share a distrust of elites, emotional appeals to 'the people,' nostalgic visions of a lost national ideal, and a utopian dream of restoring that nostalgic past, they differ in structure, style, and rhetorical strategy. This study asks: How have nostalgia, utopian ideals, and populism evolved from the Tea Party Movement to the first presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump? The context for this transformation is rooted in economic, political, and cultural anxiety. The Tea Party Movement emerged as a grassroots protest movement grounded in anti-establishment sentiment and constitutional nostalgia but lacked centralized leadership. Trump absorbed these energies and turned them into a media-driven, charisma-based movement now referred to as Trumpism. To analyze this evolution, the thesis uses a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis on books, social media posts, and televised performances. Theoretically, the study draws on the definition of populism by Paul Taggart in combination with populism as political style by Benjamin Moffitt, and the concept of charismatic leadership as explored by Clemens van Herwaarden. The analysis reveals three major transformations. A shift from decentralized protest to personalized leadership. An evolution from anger and opposition to emotionally resonant, future-oriented charisma. And from spontaneous, reactive media engagement to sustained political performance across platforms. While the Tea Party Movement was fragmented and anti-institutional, Trump rebranded this style of conservative populism into a coherent spectacle of leadership, using nostalgia and utopian ideals to unify grievances under his personal brand.