US Politics: Why the Tea Party Is Far More Dangerous Than Progressives Give It Credit For

The Tea Party is nothing new. It is merely the latest incarnation of the right-wing fringe that predictably overheats whenever a left-of-center reformer is elected to the presidency. It was the John Birch Society and the National Indignation Convention in the early 1960s, the Moral Majority and other “New Right” groups in the late 1970s, and Rush Limbaugh’s “dittoheads” and the militia movement in the 1990s.

But the difference between now and the 1960’s or even the 1990’s is that the fringe of the right-wing has now spread to the whole carpet. Sure, only 18 percent of the electorate self-identifies as a Tea Party supporter, but that’s a huge percentage of the Republican electorate (and, yes, they are almost all Republicans). Fringe has built upon fringe.

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