Noonan: how the tea party saved the Republican party

  Peggy Noonan, who was a speechwriter for Reagan, has had her star tarnished in recent years, as many of us suspected that she has been hiding the fact that she is one of the "elite" who condescend to speak to us rednecks. Initially smitten with the charisma of The One (how many of the Republican elite fell for that?), in recent days she's been backing away from that ardor. 
  Today's article at WSJ has some interesting points about the significance of the tea party to the country club Republicans; here's a smidgen. You can find the article at the Wall Street Journal:

Actually, Maureen "Moe" Tucker, former drummer of the Velvet Underground, has done the best job ever of explaining where the tea party stands and why it stands there. She also suggests the breadth and variety of the movement. In an interview this week in St. Louis's Riverfront Times, Ms. Tucker said she'd never been particularly political but grew alarmed by the direction the country was taking. In the summer of 2009, she went to a tea-party rally in southern Georgia. A chance man-on-the-street interview became a YouTube sensation. No one on the left could believe this intelligent rally-goer was the former drummer of the 1960s breakthrough band; no one on the left understood that an artist could be a tea partier. Because that's so not cool, and the Velvet Underground was cool.