They don't like people who appear foreign to them, people outside of "white culture," so they tend to harbor various prejudices. Beck is their hero. Beck is being hailed as the new Oprah (for his book selections). What some big-time reporter needs to do is explore Beck's and other conservatives' ties with gold. Somewhere there is a deep profit motive.
Tea partiers are taking over where conservatives failed, in their view. Tea partiers tend to believe in the notion of doomsday. Tea partiers are a fearful bunch of people. David Weigel explains them best.
Another thing about tea partiers, they don't like Newt Gingrich and they don't like republicans. Some republicans are tea partiers, such as Michele Bachmann. Some are more underground about their fringeyness. Tea partiers are tempting republicans to go all the way.
Most Americans don't know much yet about the idiosyncratic ideology of the Tea Party crowd, beyond their conviction that President Obama was born in Kenya (and that his birth announcement in the Hawaii newspapers is therefore part of a plot that dates back to the Kennedy era). But what they have seen so far, they don't seem to like: The more that Beck, Palin and kindred spirits appear to represent the Republican brand, the less appeal that brand possesses.Tea partier says the healthcare bill takes away freedom:
From the perspective of Gingrich and other veteran Republicans, there is deep irony in these untoward developments. Many of the Tea Party types actually hate Republican politicians, unless, like Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, they are already dead. They hate Democrats, too, of course -- and lots of other people -- but their invective against Republicans is suffused with special outrage.
If they have their way, every Republican who doesn't adhere to the Beck canon will be driven out at the end of a pitchfork, just like poor Dede Scozzafava.
Fifteen years ago, when Newt rode to power on the resentments of the religious right, the gun lobby and the economic royalists, he celebrated their extremism as the political style of "normal Americans." Today when he hears the violent rhetoric, the hateful threats and the fanatical intolerance, he knows they are talking about him, too.RCP
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