Core Dump

Saturday's Globe and Mail had a long article about the Tea Party, the US populist fringe party that's holding its convention in Nashville this weekend. It's making mainstream US politician's quite nervous.

Though their gripes are not always coherent – they're against Mr. Obama's “government-run” health-care proposal, but cling to publicly funded Medicare for seniors – the Tea Partiers are promising to shake up U.S. politics in ways that leave almost no elected official safe. Indeed, often dismissed by liberal foes as Republican-financed “Astroturf” – or fake grassroots – the hundreds of Tea Partiers gathered here seem as mad, if not madder, at the GOP.

They intend to stay angry – at least for the election cycle that culminates with this fall's midterm elections. The Tea Partiers' strong anti-incumbency inclination means that dozens of senators, congressman, governors and judges from both sides of the aisle are facing the toughest re-election battles of their careers.

The Globe article manages to gloss over the extremist side of this movement. For more on that, see this post and this one.

Labels: politics