Q. Should “tea party” be capitalized? I cannot find it referenced in CMOS, but I’ve noticed that AP news stories lowercase “tea party,” “tea partiers,” and so forth.
A. Initially, we too lowercased phrases denoting that movement and its proponents. But because the term “Tea Party” is modeled on names for established parties, we now apply initial caps, in line with Merriam-Webster’s entry for “tea party,” sense 3. See CMOS 8.68.