By David A. Graham
To hear some commentators tell it, the tea party represents an unprecedented development—a vast, populist, grassroots conservative movement that uses the tactics liberals have used since the 1960s. Columnist David Brooks went so far as to say that “the similarities are more striking than the differences” between the tea party and the New Left counterculture warriors of the ’60s. Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau is on the same wavelength. Not so fast: the United States has a long tradition of reactionary, conservative, populist movements, dating back to before the Civil War. Here are a few of the most important and influential.
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