USA Today does some polling and reporting. Some thoughts. There is still no positive set of proposals on offer. What you get are complaints but no solutions; we know what they are against. They wanted no stimulus, no bailouts of the banks, no new access to private healthcare insurance for millions … if any of these meant government action. My own view is that unemployment could be well over 12 percent by now – and probably worse – if this had occurred. But one can see how they have a no-risk position: if that had happened, they would have blamed Obama anyway. Nonetheless, I like their broad philosophy:
"We've been running deficits for years, and we've been saying we're doing it to win the Cold War or to fight terrorism and fight poverty," says Michael Towns, 33, a linguist from Tallahassee who was among those surveyed. "I think our Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves because they never would conceive that we would do this."
I just don't think the movement merits serious examination until it fleshes out what it's actually for. Then this:
Citing links to the Revolution has been a mainstay of American politics since the nation's beginnings, Lepore says, but the way the Tea Party uses those symbols and language is original. "It is a fundamentalist way of thinking of the past: The founding documents are gospel; they come alive for us," she says.
This is a form of secular fundamentalism – the analog to "originalist" versions of constitutional interpretation. Now, I feel I understand it better. Having tried Biblical fundamentalism, the GOP is now trying secular fundamentalism. As a psychological response to a bewildering modernity with lots of least-worst options, this is a powerful force. As a practical politics, it is just performance art.
The Dish 