Your grandparents’ Tea Party
“The Rant” took place on Feb. 19, 2009, less than a month after President Barack Obama’s inauguration. CNBC host Rick Santelli denounced the federal mortgage assistance program on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as an effort to “subsidize the losers,” and thus was an affront to the nation’s founding principles. Santelli called for “another tea party” like the one that helped to spur the American Revolution, and within days protesters took to the streets. By the fall, hundreds of Tea Party groups had sprung up across the country. A year later, the movement fostered a conservative surge in the 2010 congressional elections. To conservatives, the Tea Partiers are patriots; to liberals, they’re a scourge on progress and civil society. Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, used different words to describe the activists to undergraduates gathered at Sever Hall Wednesday: grandma and grandpa. “These are older men and...