The Past, Present, and Future of the Tea Party

by Conor Friedersdorf

The indispensable Dave Weigel has published an enormously informative take on the Tea Party movement. It's here, and if you've been observing the phenomenon from afar it probably answers most of your questions.

An excerpt:

The politician who's rightly seen as the ideological vessel of the tea party movement is Sen. Jim DeMint. I'd argue that he's more important to the movement than its bigger star, Sarah Palin, because DeMint has actually gotten specific about what he...