Academic

TEA PARTY rocks the right and the left. ?The irony is great here. A cadre of pundits cautioned the ?

By Glenn Reynolds

TEA PARTY rocks the right and the left. “The irony is great here. A cadre of pundits cautioned the GOP after the 2008 wipeout to move to the center, to accommodate Obama?s agenda, and to recoil from the small-government philosophy that, the self-appointed gurus told us, had no sell with voters. With a big assist from Obama, the Tea Partiers have proved themselves much savvier than the punditocracy (damning with faint praise, I know). An entire populist movement built not on specific positions (e.g., anti-war) but on philosophical principles is a remarkable phenomenon; even more remarkable is the degree to which those principles have resonated with the public at large. . . . The left understood all too well what the Tea Party was about, tried its best to strangle it in its political crib, and now has seen its worst fears come true.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on October 17, 2010 (boomark / email).