About the author Michael Swartz


My name is Michael Swartz and I’d like to welcome you to my book site! Like most other things in life, it was a trial-and-error process to become an author, since I am self-taught at the craft.

In my “real” job I have over 25 years of experience in the architectural field. That’s what pays my bills. But I became a writer back in 2003 when, on a whim, I applied for a writing position with an online newsletter called The Patriot Post and was one of 30 selected from 150 applicants. At the time my writing experience consisted of creating and editing newsletters for those living in the precinct I represented at the local political level and for the local Young Republican chapter; in short, I’m basically self-taught. (The same goes for politics: for the better part of two decades I was active in local political circles as an elected party official.)

After moving to Maryland in 2004, I began my website, monoblogue, (the lack of capital letters is intentional) which eventually was named one of the nation’s best state-based political blogs by the Washington Post. Not that it was all politics: since I wrote about what interested me, the website was also infused with a healthy dose of baseball and local music.

That experience came in handy at the end of 2008 when I was furloughed. Fortunately, I upgraded to my present paying position with The Patriot Post (where I appear most Fridays) and parlayed my political experience into covering our 2010 Maryland elections for PJ Media. After the election, I remained an occasional contributor there for another year or so.

I have done a variety of other online writing jobs – like many starting out, I was an Examiner and also worked on a weekly column for the former Liberty Features Syndicate. This mainly went to their website, but sometimes I was picked up by a small newspaper or two.

In 2012 I did a book (essentially an expansion of a series of blog posts I’d done a few years earlier called the 50 Year Plan) called So We May Breathe Free: Avoiding Ineptocracy. It was published through CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, and (quite honestly) if it sold 100 copies I’d be pleasantly surprised. I still have a few if you are interested.

So I’m no stranger to the printed word, but I vowed when I wrote a second book I would try to make it a lot better than the first. This website, then, is for that labor of love I call my second book.

I began the writing process for The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party back in 2016 when I left local politics, figuring the TEA Party had run its course and saddened by its demise, falling for the conventional wisdom of a Hillary victory and four more years of frustration as I watched the America I knew could and should be slipping away. However, as the 2016 campaign went on I got the sense that those who had attended the rallies and were most passionate about the cause had gravitated from a movement without a leader to a leader who was creating a movement of his own – one which adopted the name “Deplorables” after the name given to them by Hillary Clinton. She never knew what happened.

I pray that this book is enlightening as well as entertaining – not just for history buffs but for anyone who cares about what Ronald Reagan characterized as this “shining city on a hill,” the United States of America.