Lim: Tea Party’s Rise Echoes Obama’s ’08 Campaign

Writing for Forbes, Trevor Butterworth cites Elvin Lim’s book The AntiIntellectual Presidency as one of the most insightful books on presidential oratory and its role in politics, and Lim’s blog as a font of edifying political commentary. Butterworth is particularly interested in a recent blog entry by Lim which draw parallels between the rise of the Tea Party and the rise of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

“His latest post points to the horror that much of the yellow dog Democrat pundit class want to avoid thinking about – and no, it’s not simply the impending electoral drubbing: it’s that the Tea Party is a rhetorical phenomenon not unlike the Obama campaign, with its own brand of hope that people can believe in: change.”

Lim goes on to say that this message saddles the Tea Party with the same risk as the candidate-turned-President: they will now have to deliver on that promise, and quickly given the increasingly short patience of the electorate.