The Tea Party has just begun

A little over a year ago, Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, launched an attack on the "un-American" Tea Party movement. "We call it Astroturf," she said. "It's not really a grassroots movement." Today Pelosi is former Speaker and a carpet of what she dismissed so haughtily as Astroturf is being laid on the floors of both chambers of Congress. Tea Party-backed politicians – Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, the list goes on – are no longer shouting into megaphones in windswept parking lots; they are packing their bags for Washington and sharpening their flick-knives for the bloody battles ahead. The Tea Party movement, which 21 months ago did not exist, and which has been widely derided and ridiculed by those who thought they knew best, can no longer be ignored. Once seen as little more than fodder for Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show, it is now a voice that will dominate congressional debates and direct budget deliberations...more