| The venerable New York Times decides to look into those teabagging loonies, discovers the leaders are unemployed members of the middle class, who found something more important than job-hunting. The journalist's confusion is palpable: the people she interviewed are all benefitting from Social Security and other government programs, so how can it be they are working to force the government to give them less? This is the same confusion the New York Times has felt in the past, when Americans have voted in large numbers for Republican candidates, clearly against what the NYT feels to be their best interests, |
When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.In the last year, he has organized a local group and a statewide coalition, and even started a "bus czar" Web site to marshal protesters to Washington on short notice. This month, he mobilized 200 other Tea Party activists to go to the local office of the same congressman to protest what he sees as the government's takeover of health care.
| He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact. |
Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party's fight for lower taxes and smaller government.
The Great Depression, too, mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times. Though, as Michael Kazin, the author of "The Populist Persuasion," notes, they tended to push for more government involvement. The Tea Party vehemently wants less -- though a number of its members acknowledge that they are relying on government programs for help.
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck's "Arguing With Idiots" and Frederic Bastiat's "The Law," which denounces public benefits as "false philanthropy."
"If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own," Mr. Grimes said.
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