What is the Tea Party?

Two articles about what the Tea Party actually is.

Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post, What the tea party is -- and isn't. Balz reports on a set of papers on the Tea Party delivered at the recent American Political Science Association conference. He touches on demographics, effectiveness, the history of the Tea Party movement, and expectations for the future.

In response, Don Surber writes The Blind Men and the Tea Party, wherein he notes that a bunch of liberal poli sci profs research the Tea Party and find exactly what liberals have been saying they would find. He notes some rather obvious questions that should have been asked, but most importantly that there was no comparison with anything on the left.