Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent offers "The Best and the Rightest/ The Top Ten Conservatives of 2009" (link).

1. His #1 choice is Ron Paul, about which Weigle says "at the close of 2009, Paul seems less like an outsider and more like a pioneer... [h]is rhetoric and some of his imagery (like Revolutionary War re-enactment) have been copied wholesale by the Tea Party movement". That fails to note that Paul's post-campaign organization is involved with tea party organizing and that many "partiers" no doubt supported - or worked or volunteered for - Paul during the campaign. It also fails to note that Weigel was near the center of the January 2008 effort to drive Paul out of the presidential race.

2. Sarah Palin is not on the list, for an unknown reason.

3. About Rick Santelli's rant that launched the tea parties, Weigel says "liberals from the blogosphere to the White House attacked Santelli directly as either a know-nothing or an agent of fiendish libertarian strategists. (The latter charge was immediately found to be bogus.)" That links to the Playboy "expose" (openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11934), which indeed had several problems and which they later removed from their site. And, apparently Santelli isn't such an agent. Where David Wiegle isn't telling the whole truth is that the Playboy article was on the right track: there are indeed links between the tea parties and the "Kochtopus", i.e., those persons and groups that are funded by or linked to the Koch family. One major member of the Kochtopus is Americans for Prosperity, which is also a major tea party organizer. While the Playboy article might have gotten some things wrong - particularly about Santelli - their article was not "bogus" in the main, no matter what Weigel says. Note of course that David Weigle used to work for Reason Magazine, which is... part of the Kochtopus.