My liberal friends have picked up the idea that the Tea Party is a conservative front organization, "astroturf" designed to fool the media into thinking that right-wing ideas have a popular following. But this narrative is straight-up BS. Dozens of GOP candidates with establishment backing, endorsements, and money have been defeated by Tea Party insurgents in primary races as high up as the senate. It's a bona-fide populist movement that traces its roots to a Ron Paul "Tea Party" moneybomb in 2007. Tea Party activists contributed to the historic landslide in the 2010 elections. And it is still alive and kicking. A GOP insider candidate for the Senate in Texas, endorsed by Rick Perry no less, was defeated by a Tea Partier a few days ago.
There is chaos in the GOP because the people are revolting and not voting like they're told, and it is the tea party that is doing it. Maybe you don't know any Tea Partiers where you live, but they are a true grass-roots force.
The presence of money is a matter of fact of US politics - it can't, on it's own, be used as an argument for or against any particular movement being legitimate or not.
You might not be disagreeing. tytso appears to be using populist in the European sense of "demagogue" or "pandering to the uninformed masses," not the neutral or positive sense of "for the people" that it has in American English.
Oh, that is an interesting distinction. In the American newsmedia, "Populist" is definitely used to describe wealth-redistribution / pro-nationalization of resources, a la Evo Morales.
It's a little more complicated than that. The original movement was plodded and pushed by astroturfers but most people would agree that it developed into a bona fide grassroots movement.
In the sense that populism can be defined as concerned with the interests of the great masses obviously it's always failed that test.
