Examining Tea Party Myths: Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat of the New York Times wrote an interesting piece examining some oft-bandied liberal myths about the Tea Party.  He begins with a re-hash of the study done by Emily Ekins, a UCLA grad student, who went to the big Tea Party rally in D.C. about a month ago, and took pictures

of 250 signs.  Her examination of the content of the signs showed that the rally participants were hardly racists or conspiracy theorists (at least not from what they wrote on the signs):

Ekins, a former CATO Institute intern, was examining the liberal conceit that Tea Party marches are rife with racism and conspiracy theorizing. Last week, The Washington Post reportedon her findings: just 5 percent of the 250 signs referenced Barack Obama’s race or religion, and 1 percent brought up his birth certificate. The majority focused on bailouts, deficits and spending — exactly the issues the Tea Partiers claim inspired their movement in the first place.

Douthat goes on to look at four more myths about the Tea Party:

1. THE TEA PARTIES ARE DRIVING REPUBLICANS OFF A POLITICAL CLIFF.
2. THE TEA PARTIERS ARE PUPPETS OF THE SINISTER RICH
3. THE TEA PARTIES ARE JUST THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY ALL OVER AGAIN
4. THE TEA PARTIERS ARE HYPOCRITES

I’d like to think that none of these things are true.  What does Douthat think? Read his de-bunking of (well, almost all) these myths at The New York Times