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You said you were writing a history. A history would include what went on PRIOR to Santelli’s rant. You did sort of mention it in an offhand manner in your article, you mentioned that it set off a tinderbox, but what was that tinder? Where did it come from? It came from opposition to TARP (not some later proposal to distribute some of the TARP funds to “subsidize the losers’ mortgages”).

I’ll tell you why I think this is important.

1. How things happen historically is linear. You can pick a point in time to start talking about something, but you are not telling the whole story that way. Or you can emphasize one aspect over another thereby slanting the nature of an entire group.

2. By not placing the emphasis on where the real anger was (anger Santelli tapped into I grant you) you make the whole tea party movement seem like petty people who did not want homeowners to get some of the TARP money. That was not what was important at the time .... even Santelli has since railed many more times and more often about TARP itself than the homeowner proposal which came later, and which sparked his famous rant.

3. By promoting that TARP was “Bush spending”, you hide the actual Congressional vote tally ... which clearly shows that it was the Democrats who are majority responsible for TARP passing. Whether you are for it or against it, those are the actual facts.

3. By placing the timeline in 2009 and the emphasis on Santelli’s one rant you play into the left’s claim that the tea party is/was first and foremost anti-Obama, rather than anti-crony capitalist ... which is much more important overall than one line item proposal that came out later as an afterthought of the TARP.

4. Many of the people who were voted out in 2010 were Republicans who voted for TARP. But you add to the other side’s narrative that the entire tea party got started AFTER Obama was elected ... ergo it is simply anti-Obama (and therefore racist yadda yadda).

5. The status quo Republican establishment has distanced itself from the tea party in part because they don’t want to be seen as anti-business ... which they ascribe to the tea party ‘extremists’ in their midst ... when in fact the tea party is/was not anti-business, but rather anti-crony capitalists and anti-subsidies, pork etc.

6. The Republican party is dividing into two factions ... one is for the status quo (including bailouts, more government spending, subsidies, pork etc) and the other ostensibly against those things. But the media lumps us all together as being in the first camp. Many of us are not in the first camp and haven’t been since BEFORE Santelli’s rant. We were/are the people who are the most distinct from the GOPe.

In short, your ‘history’ by placing the emphasis on that one event (which was pivotal I grant you) misses the larger point conservative ‘extremists’ have been trying to get across for 8 long years now ... we are against crony capitalism, government favoritism, picking winners and losers ... basically fascism. The Dems and the GOPe are for government/business collusion ... eg fascism.

There have since been even more abuses (Obamacare and more) but you have to go back to the beginning if you are to write a history of the real start of the breakup of the GOPe.