A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes

Free-market think tank P.R. man O'Hara, a veteran of political campaigns and the latter Bush administration, provides an informative rundown of the populist Tea Party movement he helped create, including a chronicle of its emergence and a breakdown of its methods and goals. Denying similarities to past populism (which directed anger at corporations), or the current state of the GOP (where ""fair-weather dedication to capitalism is all too common""), O'Hara declares the Tea Party a standard bearer for the Reagan revolution: ""opposed to vast government expansion, huge spending, entitlements, and intervention."" Crying tyranny, O'Hara predictably draws parallels between the Obama administration's financial policies and those that led to the original Boston Tea Party, but also castigates Republican leaders like John McCain (ignorant of free-market principles), the Bushes (closet liberals), and Newt Gingrich (whose mid-1990s ""revolution"" was a mirage). O'Hara spends much time dissecting the sins of the Left (which ""wants to take, control, and distribute as it sees fit""), and doesn't minimize the contention between Tea Party-style libertarianism and pseudo-Right neoconservativism. Anyone looking for a cogent explanation of this year's most visible grassroots political movement will find this a clear-headed, though highly opinionated, insider's account.