The Tea Party had emerged, the previous year, as a grassroots movement of mainly older white conservatives. It soon drew the attention of the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and other powerful Republicans, who lavished it with money and publicity in hopes of manipulating its voters. While the billionaires’ goals were easy to summarize—the elimination of taxes and regulations on their businesses—the actual Tea Partiers’ agenda was more eclectic. They
