Not my cup of tea
It's not surprising that they [economically hard-pressed workers] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I'm not sure why else you'd join a "grassroots" protest against rising taxes after you just got a tax cut. Or hold up a sign decrying the government bailout of General Motors given the impact the company's failure would likely have on the U.S. auto industry and its 2.9 million jobs - jobs just like yours.
I can't figure another good reason why, as a bluecollar worker in a blizzard of pinkslips, you'd rail against the government serving as spender of last resort in a recessionary cycle, and why you wouldn't complain instead that the direct economic stimulus provided by ARRA was too small by half. Or why the back of your "Maobama Tse Tung" t-shirt wouldn't say "China Leads While We Teabag." Or why you'd show up at an anti-tax rally to protest gun laws, or abortion, or anything else that happened to be on your mind at the time.
Obama nailed it in Pennsylvania last year. None of this teabagging makes any sense otherwise. And the Republican establishment, long on paranoia and short on policy alternatives, are working it for all they can get.
