http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/09/the_rights_new_left.html
After its primary victories this week in Delaware and New York—following ones in Kentucky, Arizona, and Alaska—there is no longer any question about whether to take the Tea Party seriously. Come 2011, we are likely to have Mama Grizzlies in the House and Senate, and the movement's gravitational pull is sucking in traditional Republicans by the day. While the Tea Party doesn't control the GOP, it's likely to remain the largest force acting on it for some time.
So who are these people and what do they want from us? A series of polls, as well as be-ins like Glenn Beck's Washington rally last month, have given us a picture of a movement predominated by middle-class, middle-aged white men angry about the expansion of government and hostile to societal change. But that profile could accurately describe the past several right-wing insurgencies, from the California tax revolt of the late 1970s to the Contract with America of 1994—not to mention the very Republican establishment that the Tea Party positions itself against. What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns.
In this sense, you might think of the Tea Party as the Right's version of the 1960s New Left. It's an unorganized and unorganizable community of people coming together to assert their individualism and subvert the established order. But where the New Left was young and looked forward to a new Aquarian age, the Tea Party is old and looks backward to a capitalist-constitutionalist paradise that, needless to say, never existed. The strongest note in its tannic brew is nostalgia. Tea Partiers are constantly talking about "restoring honor," getting back to America's roots, and "taking back" their country.
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