mind, think i want this guy to be able to go home, my guy. i want him to safely be able to go home, so i'm going to take out this target to allow him to do that. >> host: where did you serve? >> guest: iraq. >> host: for -- when? >> guest: i was over for the invasion in '03, went back in '04 and then was attached to the marine corps for the battle of fallujah, sent back to baghdad and then on to has been knee ya -- habania, did a little bit for the elections and went back in the '06, i spent all that time in ramadi for the battle of ramadi, and went back again in '08, was sent out west, but then they sent out a ca >> he was then out west, and then there was a call for snipers to come to baghdad.

chris, why did you leave the se navy sealsal, in 2009? rce >> being a r navy seal, it is extremely tough on your marriage. there is a bout a 95% divorce rate. my wife struggled to keep them the marriage afloat. even when you are not deployed, when you come home, your training is not at home. you are never truly home. i it caused stress on the marriage. it finally got to the point to where i needed to decide.r is is it going to be god country family or is it going to be gone from the country? buto chose to quit and give everything back to my family. cs >> and is your wife taya? >> yes, that is correct. did

>> did your chewers have a regressive impact on your family, and if so, what did the military do to aid that? >> the first time i went over,go at the time we were really getting the coverage and we were able to watch it. us. as far as all the support behind the troops, it was everyone protesting us.an wh felt like america was against us.ome we thought that this would be a vietnam. when we come home, are people going to spit on his? towards the endan of there of deployment, we were able to getn more channels and see more coverage and all the support. bu it definitely helped. when i came home, it was difficult, because you leave war zone one day, and in your home the very next day. they fly straight home. kno it takes you a little bit. to you have about a month off to

where you react reactivate yourself.af i spent my time with myra idfamy and try to get to know themday. again. you know, i hope that m ey kids were not afraid of me and they remembered that i was there that. saw e the first time, i was a little h upset coming home. iei saw everyone doing their day-to-day normal lives, and i thought, no one even knows there's a war going on. doing there are people dying. so as i continue doing this, came to the realization that that is why we are doing it. we are over there fighting so that everybody can lead their normal day-to-day lives. about.ere in theall >> chris kyle, what was your first confirmed kill?up >> we were in a city ahead of '. the marines, and we were trying to soften up some of the locations for them.now, we were going to make it safe, but as little as possible.

to add something to it.they w while we were in the city, the people came out to show that they were supportive of thewas t military. they were going to fight.out, ad at that time, there was a woman that came out, and she had chif something in her hands. had hewas watching her.at s i was relating back to my cheap everything that she had. was a and what she was doing. they informed me that it was ate chinese grenade. i had to take the shot because she started approaching the marines.t at this point, i have never deft killed anyone. it was definitely -- they definitely made me pause. the fact that it was not a man t -- it was there was difficult. we tried to radio the marines to let them handle that. i did not want to have to be the one to take the woman's life.hag we couldn't reach them on the radio, so i ended up having to take the shot. in my mind, she was dead anyway. she was either going to kill herself by the grenade and being

a suicide bomber, or she was her going to die by my bullet. shoot her than to >> hthere and watch her blow up the marines. organiz benehris kyle writes, as the americans organized, the woman took something from her close.ra it was at grenade.watche i described it as what i saw. it's a grenade, said the chief. i hesitated, someone was trying to get the marines on the radio, but we could not reach them. they were coming down the street and heading towards the woman. the cheap side shoe. i pushed my finger against the trigger, and a fighter. it was the first time i killed anyone while i was on the sniper rifle, and the first time in a rock, and the only time i killed anyone other than a male le com

combatant.n the first call comes from arthur n. virginia. servi guest: thank you for your service and everybody service in iraq and afghanistan. could my guess on 10 question is -- if you could speak to others on behalf of their sons and daughters who died over there, what would you tell them about r the water, -- the war and why tr sons and daughters that?die >> i am very close with thatas s fact, and and some of those songs that died were my friends. i remain close with theacrificen families. as far as telling them was it worth a? where it anymore, no matter where it is, not a single american life is

worth it. safein but for the overall cost, to be able to make a m place safer in the world, these guys and girls out there putting their lives on the line, and they are true heroes. thei there is no pause.r they are out there because theie country sends them out there. to you don't have to believe in the war. you don't get to choose where you go.s untry you have that sense of honor that you were born to serve thio country no matter where congress tells you or the president tellu you'r that you're going to go. you just go create you do your duty. and you are fighting for the guy or the girl on the right u and left of you.te to s i wasn't really fighting for iraq. i wasn't really fighting for america. i was fighting for my guys. i wanted to make sure that every one of those guys came home. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

theda skocpol and vanessa williamson present a study on the tea party and the remaking of republican conservatism. they report that tea party supporters are predominately middle-class older americans. who according to the authors, enjoy medicare and social security benefits, but are reticent to pay taxes to a those that they think are undeserving. this is about one hour. >> thank you. we are delighted to be here in durham, north carolina today. and we look forward to a lively discussion after we have introduced our research and our book. just to remind you all, the tea party in its contemporary manifestation, verges on being very rapidly and amazingly, just

weeks after barack obama was not greeted as president of the united states, following an election, that itself was rather amazing and historic. on february 19, 2009, rick santelli, commentator on cnbc, went onto a rant in denouncing obama and his administrations policies to help underwater mortgage holders who he called. [inaudible] he invoked the founding fathers, that they would feel and that all good americans would feel what is happening to our country. within days, conservatives who had been quite dejected following the 2000 election recognized rhetorical goal. the symbolism and begin to

organize, using the internet and all kinds of face-to-face methods in communities and regions across the country. they were also cheered on. within weeks they were mistreating within various regions. they were denouncing obama is a socialist or communist or not sumac. within months, they were mounting a hue huge demonstration in in washington d.c., and set to work what eventually became about 1000 regular meetings in states across the united states. by 2010, the mainstream started to take more notes because they were affecting the dynamics of the republican primary, bringing

marco rubio three victory over the previous establishment candidate, charlie crist. they weighed in on the massachusetts elections, they won a victory that shocked the democratic party in my one-party state. by november 2010, the tea party was riding the wave of massive gop victories at the national level in the states, and helping to elect much more conservative republicans. we all know that they pushed many of those republicans to refuse compromise with the obama administration throughout 2011, and the push for big cuts and change of direction in national policy. we see tea party voters waiting in during the course of the 2012 primaries. in a way that i will discuss at the end of my remarks. having reminded you of that huge phenomenon that changed the

focus of national debates and created a lot of new energy on a formerly detective right, let me mention how we got involved. vanessa was doing a social paper and noted that it was on the right that a lot of protest energy was happening around health care reform. i was finishing up a book on the first two years of the obama presidency in 2010, and i cannot help but notice that the agenda had been shifted by a remarkable manifestation that i did not quite understand. it was out of curiosity that we teamed up to write an article on the book function tea party. we analyzed surveys, we look at media coverage, we tracked votes in the congress and the national electorate.

we also went out and visited and sat in on tea party meetings in new england, arizona, and virginia, and we did one-on-one in-depth interviews with people who really answered somewhat differently when it's not just a pool at dinnertime or a matter of talking to her reporter at an angry event. we put all that together and came up with the conclusion that we will be sharing with you today. before i turn it over to the nasa to talk about the grass roots, let me just say that one of the big findings of our book that you should take away from this with you on this occasion, is that although we all talk about the tea party, and we will do, it is not one thing. it is not one organization. it is not one coordinated network. it is not entirely top-down or

bottom-up. the tea party has always gotten force, energy, ability to impact national politics, and to remake the republican party from the fact that it is an interaction of three forces working sort of together, but not entirely. grassroots protesters, and their 1000 local tea party groups are one force. another force that we identify in the book are right-wing media cheerleaders who played a very important role, particularly in the beginning, and getting the word out and creating a common sense of value and information. fox news, to be sure, but also right-wing bloggers and talk radio hosts, who are key figures and civic rights supporters on the right. and also, ultra- right premarket professional advocacy and

political funding groups. these were groups that already existed for many years, in most cases, but when the grassroots energy broke out, they relate those parts of themselves -- the tea party expressed, they put their spokesmen in front of the cameras to prevent themselves -- present themselves for a movement. and they see and are backed by billionaires who don't feel tied to any particular organization but channel their money where they think it counts. for right-wing causes. these are the three forces. their interaction is what makes the tea party work in the 2010 election and in a slightly different way in the 2012 election cycle that i will talk about at the end. now i will give vanessa a chance

to share some of our findings about this. >> i wanted to talk to you today about the tea party or sarin what they believe. for someone to point something out that this research was a lot of fun. it was enjoyable to go at across the country and talk to americans about politics and do so in a way that was not mediated by, you know, the confrontations that happen in a protest or the limitations of a television interview or looking at surveys. all of these things can be valuable, but the chances of them people was very a great pleasure, i think, for both of us. so who are the tea party or three these are older white middle-class citizens. above all, they are conservatives. that was across the board. even if they hadn't been involved in politics before, and many have not been engaged, it

was clearly the case throughout their lives that they were conservative people. a surprising number of people told us that their first political experience that they remember was in the goldwater campaign. these are republicans are long-standing. as older, middle-class people, they tend to be more wealthy and educated than the average american. the thing that i think really strikes you if you go to a tea party meeting is that the demographics in the age of the group. almost without exception, the youngest person in the room, i remember, a good meeting i went to in minnesota winter in arizona, i come in, and the host of this meeting takes a look at me and says oh, you brought a young person. and i am 30. so i almost don't think of myself that way. it was reassuring to me

personally. the groups tend to be near retirement age or at retirement. we often see stay-at-home moms, people involved with the pta, that kind of thing. there are a lot of demographic similarities. the distinction of the tea party's is that there are more religious members and there are libertarians. in our experience, most people were socially conservative. the most central people in the organization were socially conservative. there were libertarians attending the meetings, but they tended to be on the outskirts of the meeting. in arizona, social conservativism -- it can cause tension within the group. sometimes, libertarians are more

secular than the other members of the group. so that was some of the division we saw the twin groups. we also saw a lot of similarities. i want to tell you about what the tea party was believed. from the outside, what you know about the tea party was believed? you might have seen some of the signs and survey results that appeared in the media, the talk about deficit and tax news and overall concern about the economy. what was really nice, we don't use those things, but also use more in-depth interviews to get a better sense, i think, of what was motivating people. like most americans, they have complicated views of government. it's not true that they don't like every government programs or they don't perceive medicare or social security as part of the government. they do know that.

occasionally, you would see a sign that the government hands off medicare, and that was not widespread. people know where that money comes from in the tea party. they have complicated views of government. the thing that explains why some programs are okay -- some programs they support, and other programs are those they object to, is a fundamental belief that some americans are hard-working and have contributed to the system, and therefore have earned government benefits like social security and medicare. while other americans are freeloaders. they haven't done their part and want to get something for free. so you see support for programs and objections to welfare at large. not just programs like food stamps, but pell grants. so who is in each group, right?

we would ask people, who are these undeserving people? i'm sad to tell this audience, but the number one thing we would here is young people. there is a sense that the younger generation isn't entering the workforce and working as hard and making the same contributions that their generation has made. that is why you see these concerns about tell grants being treated as welfare, as opposed to equal opportunity. the other object of concern besides young people is minorities, particularly unauthorized immigrants. there was widespread concern that people were coming to america and taking advantage of welfare and health care programs, despite the fact that they're not actually legally in america. of course, these two categories

overlap. young america is more diverse than old america. these two ideas about concerns about the young and minorities and immigrants were part of a larger concern, we thought, about how the country has changed good vacancy, and sometimes, it is true, the country they live in now is not the country they grew up in. that is something that, in a way, whether or not you agree with the policy prescription that people are supporting, you can still understand where that sentiment might come from. the country has changed a great deal in the last 50 years. that brings us to president obama and the sparks that launched the tea party activism. for people in the tea party, obama is a symbol of this cultural change. in person, people are more circumspect. he they would say things like, i just can't understand him. they don't know where he's coming from.

they don't understand his background. he is at this nexus. he had huge amounts of support from younger voters. he was up america's first black president. he is perceived as foreign. he has a foreign father. he is perceived as not of this country. that was something that made people nervous. worst of all, he was a college professor. so he was the nexus of these three concerns. this was, in a fundamental way, what drove the tea party spark right at the beginning of the obama administration. it is what inspired their continued activism. they can help us think about what might happen to the tea party after the 2012 election. >> all right. so this up slowing swelling of anger and fear and determination

to checkmate a democratic liberal president, that is a bad thing in conservative thinking in and of itself, who also had the added qualities that the message is talked about. there was a lot of energy injected on the right through the 2010 election cycle. we talk about the way in which this has helped to boost the republican party and propel it rightward. people talked about pragmatic politics, and in the grass-roots circles, there was a willingness to turn away from the party instead, to hold the seat to the fire of republicans already in

office to make sure that they don't compromise with democrats, and that they hold firm and carry through tea party priorities. ranging from cutting spending on freeloaders, to cracking down on illegal immigrants, and a variety of other priorities that tea partiers mayhap. in the 2010 election, they were going with the flow. a midterm election is an election when two out of five eligible voters vote, and they would normally be skewed towards older more conservative people. a midterm election that is held after one party takes the presidency and both houses of congress is always going to lead to a pushback in the other direction. this election was also occurring during a prolonged economic downturn that was alarming to many. that has to account for why the

tea party was much touted in the media, and the media was having a lot of impact on the kinds of republicans that run. we show this one. during 2011, grass-roots tea partiers change their tactics after the election. they stopped mounting public demonstrations as often, and the right-wing media wasn't as interested in covering public demonstration. the media, as a whole, was more interested in finding national spokespeople to tell them what the tea party wanted. they would put the head of freedom works, a former business lobbyists, a former leader of the republican party in the 1990s, on the camera to speak for the grass-roots insurgency that he said he was

representing. we should not imagine that the grass-roots tea partiers went away. what they did for the most part was to dig into their local groups and monitor very closely the state legislators and the congresspeople that they helped to elect or were in the republican party and, therefore, were supposed to listen to them. they are constantly contacting your legislators and pressuring against compromise. meanwhile, the right-wingers are busy and have sent checks to overly moderate republicans in places like indiana, where dick lugar is in the fight of the most current movement. what all this tells us about 2012. we have to keep in mind that 2012 is going to be an election

were closer to three out of five eligible voters will go to the polls. all the actors in this drama, republican strategists, democratic strategists, leaky partiers, and many grass-roots tea partiers understand that the dynamic is a bit different in this election. it is also true that as the general american public has figured out that style of politics labeled with the tea party, the legal tea party has become unpopular. with the general electorate. a lot of what is going on is not celebrated as much as tea party activism. yet, it has had a terminus impact on the republican primary. not by picking out one horse in the horse race to endorse, because the tea party is not one organization, is not disciplined

and central united, they have no capacity to select a tea party candidate. tea party voters looked around and tried try to find somebody they could get behind. there have been waves of enthusiasm from one after another, as a possibility. but it isn't surprising in many ways that when tea party voters go to the polls, along with other conservatives, some of them vote for libertarian and other voters vote for other more conservative candidates. there has been no united selection for a non-romney horse. when we interviewed tea partiers in the spring 2011, we found no consensus on who they wanted to be their candidate. we found a lot of pragmatism about finding somebody unlike serbia when, who could actually have a chance to win. they knew she couldn't.

we also found universal suspicion of mitt romney is not authentic. that is what they think. in that, they probably agree with many liberals in the state of massachusetts. there is not a settling on one of these people. but to say only that, it is to miss the forest and the trees. because the impact of tea party thunder and candidates has been tremendous. all of the candidates have competed to use code words that speak to the tea party believes that obama is not a real american, that we have to take our country back, they have all endorsed hardline anti-immigration policies. not this border control, but removing undocumented people

from the country who are already here. they have all signed on to very large additional tax cuts towards business and the rich, and less spending on anything. above all, obamacare, that can be construed as a new series of benefits for lower income or younger people. all of the republican candidates have signed on to that. that means that even though the tea party funders and activists, who are have of the republican identified voters, and the more attentive half, they have had a very big impact on the republican party, even though they have not settled on one candidate in the field to support. i will wrap it up by saying, what does all this mean for the future? when i presented this research at cornell in the fall, a

20-year-old student got up during the question-and-answer period and said, well, you are telling us that these are mainly old people, so they won't be a problem for long, right? >> after everyone left just like this, very nervously, i said, hey, you are talking about my age group. i blended right into that tea party meetings that i attended. the fact is that 55, 60, 70 year olds are not going anywhere. there is medicare and social security and better benefits. veterans benefits. their activism is whether the tea party stays or not, fox news will talk about tea party protests -- leading into november, because they know it's not a popular label, but the

urges and beers and determination and political savvy that have gone into this remarkable movement, are not going anywhere at the grassroots for some time, and it is a big deal to turn one of the major political parties away from compromise and in the direction of some pretty hardline policy priorities by the standards of just three years ago. including anti-environmentalism, which is another tenant. the tea party funders, who have seen this as an opportunity to push long-standing policy goals, like tax cuts for the rich, gutting environmental regulations, privatizing the very social security and medicare programs that many grass-roots tea partiers depend upon. they are not going anywhere either. i think for some time to come, we are going to see a clash, which in many ways is

generationally brooded, between an older america that experienced life in one way, life and work and patriotism in one way for many years, and now they see a different america. an uncertain economy with young people who don't think the same way. including young people in their own families that many of the older tea partiers used as examples to us. examples of the horrors that could come. from changes that they don't approve of. i think that this is a phenomenon in american politics for some time to come. with understanding, certainly, we had a very interesting time coming to terms, trying to figure out for ourselves what this is all about. we also enjoyed many of the people we met who we like, person to person in almost every case, very much.

>> let's take some questions now. if you have a question, we have a microphone on the ground floor in the back. there is also another one on the second floor. >> good afternoon. i am actually in anthropology grad student from chapel hill. i just completed about a year of research among eight chapters of the tea party here in north carolina. >> what's the name of the one-year? >> i was with seven different ones in counties around green girl, winston-salem. actually, one of your research assistants came down over the summer and started talking to some of the people. >> will egger, he put together the database. north carolina plays a big role

in his research. >> i'm glad your research is not publishing the data including my research. [laughter] >> i read the book, and was very happy to see how you separate the tea party into those three different areas, which i think is one of the most crucial things for people to understand. but i also found in my research, these chapters were amazingly autonomous. only one of them was on regular communication, for instance, with an american prosperity person. others were passively with broader groups. i'm curious whether that was something unique to the south or unique to north carolina, or whether you saw that strong autonomy on the part of these chapters in the other areas? >> pinky for that question. obviously, because i have worked on the history of americans

activism. one of the things that i wrote about was troops that operate at the state and national level, which was almost the key to success for almost 150 years of american history. we were very interested in learning not only there was participation going on, but from top to bottom. we found the same thing. local tea party groups in some ways remind me of the new left groups that i saw when i was a young person many decades ago. they are very persnickety and suspicious of higher manipulation. that goes for the republican party, certainly, but it also goes for outside groups that tried to speak in their name.

we found varying levels of awareness in the groups and local groups of different regions, of tea party patriots, which is the one that tries to reach out to the local groups and create more of a state presents. presence. some of them usually had heard from them. but some in virginia were not willing to join the conference calls and not willing to be part of it, where as others were. things like americans for prosperity him a freedom works, the cato institute and heritage foundation in washington, we found and mentioned on websites and tallied that, but it was usually just a link and not a presence. i think there is a lot of variety in this. i have to believe that americans for prosperity has some outreach organizers and has established a presence in the midwest. in wisconsin. we found certainly that groups were trying to send speakers

out. that is a big mechanism. the local groups wanted to bring in speakers. if free speakers were offered, they will do that. they don't see that as control. we have a whole place where we talk about how that works as a sort of lever system. the final thing i will say is that we looked for signs of federation from below. that is groups forming state federation -- as you know, they did in virginia. that is quite remarkable. there might be some examples of that in michigan. oftentimes, local groups to go their own way. they don't even perceive when they've been influenced from outside. >> i would like to make a point that if there was a national organization that we saw that had national program approval, it was fox news.

so some of these groups had some influence. >> hello, my name is patrick. it is my perception that the media has tried to frame the antithesis of the tea party to be the occupied movement. and that would require a whole another study in and of itself. my question is in your interactions with members of the tea party, what were their perceptions of the occupied movement, or if you were interviewing people for the movement, before it got started, what with their sentiment -- what was their sentiment that the occupied movement was making? >> that is very interesting. i don't have any first-hand accounts, but i have visited every local tea party website since then. there is widespread distrust.

there is an example of young people wanting something for free and being dangerous. it really resembles closely to that narrative most of the time. demographically, they are very different groups. they're much older and much more established as a group. the occupied movement is considered a younger group. in terms of the ideological overlap, some people, i think, would like to believe that there is some sort of similarity between what they believe, in the sense that both people in the tea party and people in occupied are concerned about corporate, power, and government. i can't think about the occupied movement, but i do think that is true for the tea party reprint. i wanted to be able to understand the mindset of it. many people in the tea party are small-business owners. so they tend to perceive large businesses -- there are

successful examples of small businesses come up so they don't have as much concern about corporate power as you might expect in people in finance, for instance. when they were concerned about, for instance, the bailouts, they tended to focus on the auto bailout and blame it on the unions. or they blamed government officials for being corrupt. but the blame was really never centered on the corporate sector itself. >> we didn't find a sentiment at all. i will say one more thing. some of the tea party people that i got to know and some i remain in touch with through e-mail, particularly, one gentleman in virginia, he regularly sends me e-mails

attacking occupied. it is much more on his mind than anybody i know. i think that occupied is isn't anti-symbol for the tea party yours. they resented very much, as far as i can tell from my e-mail traffic. it got a lot of attention from the media for a while lists that peterson means our list of criminal acts in occupy camps. but they are list that they send that she sends me lists that obama is doing and it was that horrible things that the union and the naacp are doing. the principle here is that any organized force perceived to be on the left is keyed upon as an enemy. >> i am bruce cunningham. i was wondering if you could

talk about the question raised that is implicit in a lot of things. it may be difficult to talk about in the context of your interviews, but for a lot of people, it is they are in many different guises. i was wondering if you could talk about that a bit. >> i will start. we will both say something about that. of course, the context in which we did this research, for example, one of the tea party people in virginia said that where you come from, everybody thinks that we are a bunch of ignorant racist rednecks. that is a bit of an exaggeration, but not entirely. there is a widespread perception, which came from some of the coverage of the more extreme things that people were saying at rallies. and a small number of signs that said truly disgusting things

with obvious racial overtones. in our interviews, we were listening. in fact, in our listening, if you were going to come from cambridge, massachusetts, just listen, you better be in a respectful, listening mode. our interviews started with tell us about yourself and how you came to the tea party. and then we moved onto things like, what do you like about government would you not like about government -- which surprised everyone when we asked them if they -- what they liked. we listened to why they feared and hated barack obama and who were the freeloaders and moochers that they didn't want

to get benefits. there is no question but that language that has been historically associated with black, white, racial stereotyping came up in the interview spread usually, not deliberately, but this was, of course, people who knew not to step on that. local leaders that we interviewed and observed went out of their way to try to make sure that racial accusations did not come up during their interviews. that was true during the public meetings that i attended incognito. in some ways, language is more loaded about immigrants who assumed to be mostly illegal. that is not actually true at all.

muslims and muslim americans, nobody tried to disguise their hatred in any way about those categories of people. young people, quite a few, some not so nice things were said. we really do believe that long historical tensions about race play a role in this. for many of these older people, seeing barack obama elected president must have been shocked due to the color of his skin. but we don't think it was namely that. we think it was the combination of that with the foreign father, the muslim middle name, the fact that young people saying obama, obama, obama. you could see her perception of the young people screaming his

name at the inauguration. the fact that she was a college professor, very bad. college professors are seen as coming up with schemes for americans. all of those things were said, so next to those businesses, next to those prejudices, the black-white comments were down there. and what we heard. >> i will just say quickly that they were definitely being careful in the interviews. one moment in particular, there was a man who was saying he was a member of the john birch society. he was saying, we asked the opening question. he said i first became aware of the problem -- and then he

stopped, and then he said i love foreigners, and changed the subject. [laughter] [laughter] >> obviously, you are being careful. you know you're talking to harvard academics coming to your town. people were being very careful. but i do think that concerns about mexican-americans, there is an assumption that they really lie in the category of illegal immigrants. there are not well distinguished categories. they are very deeply concerned about sharia law. also, islamic takeover. it is a very large idea in tea party circles. those were sort of the visceral feelers that i recall hearing. >> yes, my name is brad bolton. my interest is in the religious

composition of the tea party movement and the rule religion plays. he made a distinction between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, implying that there is more social conservatives in the midst. when i look at the priorities, they seem to be primarily fiscal, fiscally conservative priorities. so the latest composition and the role religion is plain. >> that was a question that we were interested in very much. we were interested in it, partly because -- the academic literature that we were familiar with going into this research, it would suggest that it is very hard for people to organize brand-new groups in a short period of time. in fact, given where american civic life has been over the last several decades, it is unusual to see regular local media groups form. going into the research, i thought many of these are going to be relayed as libertarian or

christian conservative groups. religious conservative groups. we did not bind, for the most part, that the groups were relabeled. most of the groups seem to have genuinely come about through efforts of organizers and sets of people who met one another at protests or letters to the editor in the newspaper -- and then they decided to use technology to meet up for announcements on local talk radio to bring together a group. the groups are internally diverse. on the line of secular and libertarian versus religious conservatives who place a high priority on fighting abortion and gay rights. i would say that, for the most part, that is a divide that runs through the middle groups. groups that local organizers have to manage. that is quite a thing to manage.

one of the way they manage it is by placing emphasis in the overt statements -- things that they all agree about. opposing obama, getting rid of obamacare, ingrid of immigrants, and cutting spending. but, in an actual meeting, the meeting may be held in the church. it might start with a christian prayer along with the pledge of allegiance, which all tea party was start with the pledge of allegiance. some start with a christian prayer, some don't. and the meeting i attended in virginia, where the leader was a remarkable organizer, lovely woman in many ways. she learned to organize groups by organizing theater -- volunteer theater productions in charlottesville. she is such a good organizer. she contacted me the day after the meeting when i visited to say that my observation of a

member standing up to say how wonderful it was that the virginia legislature had just voted through the law that harasses the medical clinics that provide access to abortion by forcing them to retool themselves as hospitals, she said, which would drive them out of business. the whole room was excited about that. i observed that. she knew that i deserved it. she e-mailed me the next day to assure me that the tea party doesn't really prioritize social conservative causes. and i think that tells us something. the organizers tried very hard to play it down because they are casting a broader umbrella. and they formed a group that isn't just a local church group or church network. but the people, many of them, probably 60 to 70%, depending on the region of the country, are often evangelical protestant conservative believers.

>> jonathan real. i did a dissertation on the subject of society -- federal society, which is a membership of conservative lawyers,. [inaudible] inviting that i've continue to do on conservatism, the interesting thing that i have heard from folks of the goldwater and reagan era, and i'm curious about your reaction. i've heard a lot of resentment towards the tea party. from folks in federalist society circles, which tend to be intellectual and a different demographic as well. you get a lot of young conservatives who pride themselves in following in the

footsteps of goldwater reagan. sometimes come off the record, there is a amount of disdain. it's not coming from the left. it's coming from this different category of people who try to hold the torch of william f. buckley. look at these folks as -- as you were saying, as some of the left look at the tea party was as radical rednecks who are racist, etc. in your research, he found -- did you encounter a strand of moran intellectual conservative thought? it really sounds like there is a disjunct emerging here. when you think about that kind of best be intellectual side of conservatism and the movements, versus what you are describing as this new wave. >> there was a lot of focus -- and the same way there wasn't a

lot of focus on elite groups that were really trying to link to the tea party. there wasn't a lot of focus on that kind of thing. about 200 tea party is that i remember, i remember their website and catalog somethings about them. about 200 were related to the cato institute. it is not that there is not some leagues to some of the dc-based libertarian tradition, but people in general in very focused on local affairs. >> this isn't an intellectual movement. one of the things that happens when you go out and spend time with tea party people, and listen to them and speak with them, they have the same kind of divisions and prejudices about one another that you might expect. i would not be at all surprised if many of the elite, old-line libertarian conservatives order

buckley style conservatives look at this and think, my goodness, -- there are a fair number of elite groups that look at this and say wow, we can use this to knock out barack obama and take the trifecta in 2012. that is what they're doing. now they are finding that they get to the point where they are supposed to tell these people to sit down and they're not sitting down. what else is to present their? this is america. in virginia, which i got to know very well, because i visited tea party say more than one part of the state and also did an interview with some state-level leaders, there are scary parts about each other. the tea party was around charlottesville referred to that bunch in the party around

lynchburg in very disdainful ways. a leader from central virginia to me that the tea party or was in fairfax and alexandria were a bunch of rhinos. >> they've got an internal geography about themselves, as much as you might find on the liberal left about the date function varies different strands. >> i'm just curious, what percentage of the people would you say actually joined the groups, versus were at the tea party rallies themselves. the reason i ask that is because i have been a tea party member since the beginning. maybe the people are not in groups because of kids -- i would like your perspective on that. we were more concerned, at least the rallies i went to, about fiscal responsibility and they

get just as angry at at republicans as democrats. the corruption. >> there is no question that they are angry at republicans. if i didn't stress that, i meant to. we need to make a distinction here. are these people who vote for democrats? no, they are not. and they never did. what are they distrustful of the republican party as it was under george bush? are they on enthusiastic about john mccain's of this world? are they suspicious that republicans often sell out the principles that they believe in? absolutely. i will say that her statements about the demography of the tea party are not based on interviews and meetings we attended. if they were, they would not be good social science. what we did in our research was to gather all of the national service that reported on tea party sympathizers and people who said that they had done one or more things -- like attend a rally or