After emerging like hibernating cicadas on the American political landscape during the health care debate, the Tea Party has quickly convinced us they are for real and they plan to stick around for a while.  They’ve been able to quickly take control of a Republican Party in disarray and with the midterm elections just around the corner, the pundits have all but declared victory for the Party of No.  So just who’s coming to the Tea Party and what's on the menu?

The truth is, the movement is not new at all but is just the latest manifestation of an extremist right wing political life cycle that has emerged periodically throughout our history.  All of the progressive aspects of American government and society that we take for granted from the American Revolution itself, abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, recognition of worker rights and labor unions, social security, civil rights, etc. were hard fought battles opposed by a vocal extremist right wing minority.  In this incarnation, the Tea Baggers have campaigned on numerous populist-sounding slogans including, Cut Deficit Spending, Stop Big Government,  Get Government Out of Health Care, Create More Jobs and on and on.  But as Rachel Maddow, Politico and others have been pointing out, Tea Party candidates don’t exactly practice what they preach. 

While campaigning against government spending, Tea Party candidates Michelle Bachman (U.S. Representative from MN) and Stephen Fincher (candidate for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee), have each received huge sums from the federal government in the form of farm subsidies ($250,000 and $3 million, respectively).  Kristi Noem, a Republican and Tea Party candidate for the House in South Dakota is campaigning that government spending  is a “direct threat to our liberty” while her congressional district received more than $4 billion over the past 15 years in farm subsidies and her family personally received more than $3 million in  corn, soybean and wheat subsidies since 1995.  Rand Paul, Tea Bag Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky is an ophthalmologist and receives about 50% of his business from patients receiving “government run" Medicare.