Tales of the Tea Party

[Demeter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/opinion/18douthat.html

...THE TEA PARTIES ARE JUST THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY ALL OVER AGAIN. In a recent issue of Mother Jones magazine, Kevin Drum arguedthat the Tea Parties are nothing new: whether the president is F.D.R., L.B.J. or Bill Clinton, a batty conservative populism flourishes “whenever a Democrat takes over the White House.” Writing in The New Yorker, the historian Sean Wilentz made a similar point, linking Glenn Beck’s daffier ideas (and the Tea Partiers who love them) to the cold war-era paranoias of the John Birch Society.

These parallels are real. But there’s a crucial difference. The Birchers only had a crackpot message; they never found a mainstream one. The Tea Party marries fringe concerns (repeal the 17th Amendment!) to a timely, responsible-seeming message about spending and deficits. Which is why, for now at least, it’s winning over independents in a way that movements like the Birchers rarely did...

READ IT ALL--IT CAN BITE US IF WE IGNORE THIS.