"In this sense, the tea parties are simply the latest manifestation of populism, which has arisen periodically throughout American history. In the 19th century populist anger was based in rural America and directed at the banks and railroads as well as government. Populists thought that free coinage of silver, an inflationary policy that would have raised prices for farm commodities, was the solution to their problems in the same way that today's Tea Party crowd thinks that the Federal Reserve, bailouts to big businesses and a looming government takeover of the health industry are at the root of our economic malaise. Tax cuts are like free silver--a one-size-fits-all policy response."

"Unfortunately for the Tea Party populists, there is no evidence in American history that populism has ever had a meaningful effect on policy. Even when the movement had a charismatic and articulate leader in William Jennings Bryan, the populists only elected a handful of members to Congress and never achieved the presidency. One reason is that the major parties co-opted populist issues and leaders, which bought time until the populist impulse burned itself out like a brush fire."

"Whatever the future of the Tea Party movement in American politics, it's a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one's tax return to see what one is actually paying the Treasury, calculate the percentage of one's income that goes to taxes, and compare it with what was paid last year and the year before. People may then discover that their anger is misplaced and channel it into areas where it is more likely to bring about positive change."

-- by Bruce Bartlett is a former Republican Treasury Department economist and the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action