With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Can the Tea Party endure? CNN asks Michael Kazin

(CNN) -- The midterm elections dealt a powerful blow to President Obama and the Democratic Party as the country appeared to shift decisively to the right, moved by mass anger, "due to a combination of two kinds of fear," historian Michael Kazin told CNN....

Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History and author of "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" and other books, spoke to CNN last week.

CNN: Would Republicans have captured the House without the Tea Party?

Michael Kazin: We historians hate counterfactual questions! But clearly, the aura of a grass-roots rebellion helped to obscure the fact that most of corporate America was rooting for the GOP and helping finance Republican campaigns. The specific policy ideas of the Tea Partiers mattered less than did their anger at the perceived sins of "big government" and of President Obama. As [political writer] Kevin Phillips once wrote, much of political conflict comes down to the question of "who hates whom."...
Read entire article at CNN.com