Beck, whose views were shaped by W. Cleon Skousen, the fringe theorist whose political paranoia had inspired the John Birch Society, reached a daily audience of some two million, disseminating the ideas of early conservative extremists like Fred Koch on a whole new scale. Frank Luntz describes the impact as historic. “That rant from Santelli woke up the upper middle class and the investor class, and then Glenn Beck woke up everyone else. Glenn Beck’s show is what created the Tea Party movement,” he said, adding, “It started on Tax Day 2009, and it exploded at town hall meetings in July.
