No. I'm judging the tea party movement from the tea parties I attended, along with the statements from tea party websites, comments from self-identified tea-partiers, youtube videos, and the signs I see waved at tea party protests.

You earlier claimed that I did not seem to have an interest in engaging with people who disagree with me. God knows what you based that on. I post my essays here for the very reason that I expect to get some level of push-back on them that I won't get on the liberal blog where they are first published. If I were not interested in debating people with differing political viewpoints, I'd spend all my time at Daily Kos or Democratic Underground.

The fact is, I do make a point of speaking with people who disagree with me, either offline or on. (Something which, as you may have noticed, bothers the H*ll out of people like Gunsinger.) That's why I went to both of the Tea Parties I've seen here in San Francisco -- to see or myself. That's why I read right wing blogs -- and sometimes comment on them, and frequently debate the people there.

So no, my view of the tea party movement, and the right wing in general, does not come from merely reading liberal websites or watching news coverage. It's from talking to people. People who disagree with me.