Will’s ironic questions about Rand Paul’s tea-driven victory have been given actual earnestness by Timothy Egan, the Times’s version of Thomas Frank, blogging some silliness in the New York Times. Egan’s penetrating question: “Who makes up the Tea Party? At their rallies, you see a lot of people on Medicare and Social Security . . .”
Hmm. That does sound suspicious. People on Medicare and Social Security, you say? As I note today in The Fortnightly Review, it must have shocked Egan to realize that people with strong opinions are as old as Frank Rich.
My view is that the kind of American populism seen at tea-party rallies beats the kind of European populism seen in the streets of Athens.