QOTD: What is the Tea Party?

Quote of the Day:

Pew has another survey of Tea Party sympathizers, and it's clear once again that the movement is nothing more or less than conservative Republicans:



The Tea Party is essentially a re-branding campaign for the GOP base. It's a successful effort, and one that springs largely though not entirely from the grassroots itself. Conservatives like to imagine that the Tea Party is some incarnation of the popular will, asleep for many years and finally awakened under Obama, and bristle at any analysis that diminishes the world-historical import of the phenomenon. So let me be clear. The Tea Party represents a significant minority of Americans. It's influential. (It allowed conservatives to disown the failures of the Bush administration and to lend them a populist imprimatur.) But it's not anything more than an organizing rubric for the GOP base. - Jonathan Chait