Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute - presumably speaking only for himself - recently smeared the tea parties and showed how clueless he is about who's attracted to their "movement" (econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/09/tea_and_sympath.html).

Do they fit the stereotype of being white, small-town, uneducated racists? Not much racism, but otherwise I would say they fit the stereotype enough to make me skeptical that this is an important political movement. This country is becoming more urban, less white, and more educated. At most, this movement could turn out to be the right-wing equivalent of MoveOn... ...In the 1960's, a Hubert Humphrey or Robert Kennedy could connect with uneducated white voters. The idea of blowing them off was unthinkable, if only because they were such a large majority of the voting population at the time. Now, the elitism of President Obama and his supporters has reached in-your-face levels. They have utter contempt for the Tea Party-ers, and the Tea-Party-ers know it. I wouldn't want the Tea Party-ers at the faculty picnic, either. But my sense of class solidarity with Obama and other educated progressives does not make me want to see them exercise power. If anything, being a member of the educated elite and knowing knowing them as well as I do makes me share the Tea Party-ers' fears.

We know Kling isn't a Marxist because a Marxist would have gotten their class correct. Leaving his low-class, race-card smear aside, those at the "parties" are a subsection of the "bourgeois"; only a small number of them are from the "proletariat". These are "Taxed Enough Already" parties, meaning that those attending are feeling the pinch of taxes. The people at the "parties" aren't uneducated - except in the sense that only a small number attended Ivy League schools.

They don't represent most of small town America, only a subset. They're small-time, non-elite (except in their towns) professionals, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and the like. In a small town, they'd be the accountants, the guy who owns a drugstore, and so on. They might be the richer people in town, but they won't be the poorer and they probably wouldn't be one of the town bosses. They don't represent a cross-section of middle America; not too many factory workers are going to be attending a protest against taxes. The people at the "parties" don't represent - for instance - the majority of Republicans who support FDR-style programs.

The "partiers" share Kling's extreme philosophy: some form of libertarianism, whether they know it or not. They're his country (to a good extent) cousins, whether he wants to acknowledge them or not.