Last year, the Tea Par­ty helped change the course of the Repub­li­can Par­ty when David Brat, an unknown eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor, defeat­ed House Major­i­ty Leader Eric Can­tor in Vir­ginia in the June 10, 2014, Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, despite being out­spent 40 to 1. Brat and his sup­port­ers (includ­ing Ann Coul­ter, Lau­ra Ingra­ham and grass­roots Tea Par­ty groups) unnerved the Repub­li­can Par­ty by clear­ly demon­strat­ing that the right wing could chal­lenge any incum­bent — and win. Brat’s vic­to­ry ener­gized the Repub­li­can Right, lay­ing the ground­work for the con­tin­ued harsh stance on immi­gra­tion reform by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, a poten­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down over Planned Par­ent­hood fund­ing and the recent res­ig­na­tion of House Speak­er John Boehn­er. Boehn­er, like Can­tor, would have faced a Tea Par­ty chal­lenger, J.D. Win­teregg, in his district’s Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in March 2016.

'I think the biggest challenge for the Republican Party is ridding itself of the neoconservative war hawks and corrupt cronyists that make up the establishment.'

Both Brat and Winteregg’s insur­gent cam­paigns were man­aged by 24-year-old Zachary Wer­rell, a 2013 grad­u­ate of Haver­ford Col­lege. Wer­rell, a self-pro­claimed hunter of RINOs (Repub­li­cans In Name Only), recent­ly co-authored a book on the Brat cam­paign with fel­low con­ser­v­a­tive activist Gray Delany. How to Bag a RINO: The Whiz Kids Who Brought Down House Major­i­ty Leader Eric Can­tor is billed as a hand­book for right-wing activists who want to chal­lenge Repub­li­cans in pri­maries in order to ​“take back their par­ty, and the coun­try.” In These Times asked Wer­rell about his cam­paign expe­ri­ences, his analy­sis of the Tea Par­ty move­ment and his vision for the country.

What is a RINO, and how did you come to hunt them?

It’s used to describe lick­spit­tle Repub­li­cans who are all but indis­tin­guish­able from Democ­rats. While they some­times talk a good game on free mar­kets, in prac­tice they are giv­en to crony­ism and shady deal-mak­ing, if not out­right cor­rup­tion. They tend to be sick­en­ing­ly behold­en to the left/​liberal media and undu­ly con­cerned with invites to fash­ion­able din­ner parties.

I was turned on to pol­i­tics in high school by Rep. Ron Paul’s (R‑Texas) 2008 pres­i­den­tial bid. As a hard­core lib­er­tar­i­an, I was appalled by the lack of con­vic­tion and prin­ci­ple in the Repub­li­can estab­lish­ment. I ulti­mate­ly found myself on a career path ded­i­cat­ed to push­ing these more mod­er­ate or out­right lib­er­al Repub­li­cans out of office.

What are the major lessons that you want­ed to share in your book?

Peo­ple need to know more about this his­toric upset than just the head­lines. They need to see the inner work­ings, the strug­gles, the machi­na­tions, so that they too, may, unseat their RINO con­gress­men! This book is very much a how-to in nar­ra­tive form. The biggest les­son is that being right is not enough to win. What was the dif­fer­ence between Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter and Ronald Rea­gan? They were philo­soph­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal, but Rea­gan had a much bet­ter oper­a­tion, and far more activists and orga­ni­za­tions to help him.

What is the Tea Par­ty move­ment to you? How has it been successful?

The Tea Par­ty to me is less a cohe­sive philo­soph­i­cal bloc and more a gen­er­al sen­ti­ment: ​“I am fed up with the Repub­li­cans, the Democ­rats, the gov­ern­ment in gen­er­al.” When I first got involved, it was a few ran­dom Ron Paul sup­port­ers lit­er­al­ly throw­ing tea into bod­ies of water to make a state­ment. Its ranks were quick­ly filled out by more typ­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives — the grass­roots writ large. This sort of pas­sion is use­ful in polit­i­cal races, because the most pas­sion­ate are the most will­ing to work.

You talk about putting togeth­er a ​“high­ly moti­vat­ed grass­roots army” in Vir­ginia. How would you describe your basic on-the-ground strat­e­gy to elect Dave Brat and defeat Eric Cantor?

One: Go to events where like-mind­ed peo­ple might be. Two: Intro­duce Dave and sign them up as vol­un­teers. Three: Get them to come door-knock­ing or phone-call­ing, or to host an event. Rinse and repeat. Giv­en our fund­ing dis­ad­van­tage, we had to max­i­mize the resource we did have — manpower.

Dur­ing his last years in office, Can­tor was dis­rupt­ed fre­quent­ly by pro­test­ers. What do you think of this tactic?

Protest­ing, in gen­er­al terms, has nev­er been of inter­est to me, but a well-orga­nized and pop­u­lat­ed protest can be a great way to advance a nar­ra­tive in the media. The Left has been very effec­tive in this, and just because the Left uses a tech­nique, it should not be off limits.

What are your biggest prob­lems with the Amer­i­can Left?

I do not have a prob­lem with the aver­age lib­er­al or left­ist. My moth­er, bless her heart, is very much a lib­er­al, along with my sis­ters. I do have a prob­lem with the intel­lec­tu­al and polit­i­cal dri­vers of the Left. I view them as hav­ing a deeply un-Amer­i­can ide­ol­o­gy, derived not from the Enlight­en­ment and repub­li­can thought, but from Karl Marx and Anto­nio Gram­sci. I view cul­ture and civ­il soci­ety as being equal­ly impor­tant as gov­ern­ment in a repub­lic — yes, we live in a repub­lic, not a democ­ra­cy. Marx and his intel­lec­tu­al ilk must be stopped. I see them as hos­tile to cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, which are the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of America.

How do you see Marx and Gramsci’s influ­ence as being harmful?

Marx had a vision of destroy­ing the fam­i­ly, the church­es and oth­er cul­tur­al foun­da­tions to make way for the col­lec­tive. Gram­sci was more of a tac­ti­cian. He said the way to enact com­mu­nism was not vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion (the way his friends in the Sovi­et Union were going about it), but rather to destroy a society’s cul­tur­al moor­ings. This man­i­fests itself today in move­ments such as the one forc­ing Catholic insti­tu­tions to pro­vide abor­tions. I am not a Catholic, but it is ridicu­lous that a Catholic orga­ni­za­tion is ordered to pro­vide a ser­vice that is clear­ly not allowed in Catholic teach­ings. Remem­ber, reli­gious free­dom cre­at­ed Amer­i­ca, not the oth­er way around.

How do you stop ​“Marx and his intel­lec­tu­al ilk”?

A break­down of strong cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment would help. I sup­port­ed Scotland’s right to secede from the UK. The intel­lec­tu­al heirs of the Enlight­en­ment have not come up with a good response to Marx et al., which is why their advance has been so steady for so long. There have been no great philoso­phers over the past 100 years, unless you include Friedrich Hayek, Lud­wig von Mis­es, etc., who have fur­ther devel­oped Enlight­en­ment thought.

I’ve seen you quote Saul Alin­sky a fair amount. Is he an influ­ence of yours?

He is not an intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence of mine. His ide­ol­o­gy was rot­ten to its core. How­ev­er, he was a bril­liant tac­ti­cian, and I will use what works for my ends.

“Rot­ten to its core” in what way? It seems that his orga­niz­ing the­o­ries are the embod­i­ment of local control.

Any­one who wants to break down the fun­da­men­tals of soci­ety — fam­i­ly, cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty — in order to gain polit­i­cal pow­er is serv­ing a rot­ten ideology.

It seems like the left wing is mov­ing fur­ther left and the right wing fur­ther right, with the Tea Par­ty large­ly respon­si­ble for the GOP’s right­ward drift. As a Tea Par­ty sym­pa­thiz­er, what do you think about our polar­ized pol­i­tics today?

I dis­agree with the premise. The Tea Par­ty is not dri­ving this divide, it is an out­growth — a chick­en-and-egg ques­tion, if you will. Polar­iza­tion hap­pens from time to time in any func­tion­ing body politic. Some­times it is slight, some­times it is dra­mat­ic and some­times it erupts into civ­il war. I do not think we are at that stage yet, but there is a great deal of ten­sion in our soci­ety between the Enlight­en­ment and Marx, between con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als. A lot of that can be traced back to the decreas­ing reliance on local­ism and fam­i­ly or neigh­bor rela­tions. This trend is dri­ven, or at least exac­er­bat­ed, by the rise of con­stant screen time and social media.

What are the biggest chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the near-and long-term future?

I think the biggest chal­lenge for the Repub­li­can Par­ty is rid­ding itself of the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive war hawks and cor­rupt crony­ists that make up the estab­lish­ment. The biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty is embrac­ing the philo­soph­i­cal roots of the par­ty, either clas­si­cal con­ser­vatism, lib­er­tar­i­an­ism or some com­bi­na­tion. When vot­ers per­ceive you as an embod­i­ment of a mes­sage, instead of a pow­er-hun­gry emp­ty suit, they believe you and get energized.

What about the Tea Par­ty — what chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties do you see?

I think the Tea Par­ty has been so vicious­ly maligned by the media that its biggest chal­lenge is rebuild­ing its col­lec­tive image, which is very hard for a decen­tral­ized grass­roots move­ment. The biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty is har­ness­ing the fact that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is absolute­ly bro­ken; the Amer­i­can vot­ers are sick of the rul­ing elites; and there is a very strong anti-estab­lish­ment move­ment bub­bling up.

You were work­ing on a pri­ma­ry cam­paign chal­leng­ing Boehn­er from the right in Ohio. Do you think that played a role in his resignation?

We had polling show­ing Boehn­er to be in pret­ty bad shape in his dis­trict, and I am sure he had sim­i­lar num­bers. I think resign­ing was the hon­or­able way to avoid being humil­i­at­ed in Con­gress or in his home dis­trict, or both.

Where do you hope to see the nation in 20 years?

I would like to see a coun­try that has decen­tral­ized some pow­er back to the states, that is on a sus­tain­able fis­cal path (with a bal­anced bud­get and low­er over­all tax bur­den), that has renewed eco­nom­ic growth, and where indi­vid­u­als have redis­cov­ered the pow­er of local gov­er­nance, instead of ask­ing their con­gress­man to fix every prob­lem for them.

Devolv­ing pow­er back to the states seems like a big pri­or­i­ty for you. Many on the Left point to fed­er­al deci­sions that made the coun­try more equi­table: the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, the Civ­il Rights Act, Oberge­fell v. Hodges, etc. Could those large-scale legal changes have hap­pened otherwise?

Per­haps in an abstract sense, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment act­ed in an egal­i­tar­i­an way, and I think there are peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed. But remem­ber, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment could just as eas­i­ly do things you view as rep­re­hen­si­ble. There have been equal­ly bad deci­sions: Dred Scott, etc. The more local­ized the pow­er, the bet­ter in the long run. Con­cen­trat­ed, dis­tant pow­er that is beyond reproach is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous. Just because it has not done some­thing harm­ful yet does not mean it will not.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has its rules set forth in plain Eng­lish in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Any pow­er not specif­i­cal­ly grant­ed to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is a pow­er of the states or the peo­ple. The states are the lab­o­ra­to­ries of democracy.

If Wash­ing­ton state wants to be a social­ist haven, let it, and if Texas wants to be, well, Texas, then let it be Texas. Do not try to take over the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and force your views upon the nation as a whole. It is tox­ic and dan­ger­ous. Let the peo­ple, their local offi­cials and their state offi­cials make these deci­sions. They are infi­nite­ly bet­ter at respond­ing to the needs of their con­stituents than are the plu­to­crats in Wash­ing­ton and five lawyers in black robes.