The most dangerous group of "right-wing extremists" today is not the grass-roots tea party.

[Swede]

In recent days the mainstream media has been rapidly converging on a new common wisdom -- a set of clichés that they will use to frame the rest of the campaign for the Republican nomination and the election of 2012. This new common wisdom portrays the intra-Republican struggle as one between more moderate and extreme wings of the party, with "pragmatic" Republican elites seeking a candidate who can beat Obama in opposition to the more "extremist" fringe elements and candidates of the grass-roots Tea Party.

It is inevitable that the mainstream media will find this image utterly irresistible. It not only serves their personal and professional needs but also reinforces their ideological preconceptions.

The image of "Republican elites as pragmatic, the tea party fringe as extreme" suits commentators' personal and professional needs because it allows them to be publically disdainful of "extremism" without ever having to actually use the term to describe any powerful and significant figure in the Republican coalition who might be in a position to retaliate. A suggestion of "extremism" directed against anyone in this latter group is a social - and possibly career-damaging - faux pas that mainstream journalists will take every imaginable step to avoid.

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2011/10/wake_up_commentators_the_most.php

[saras]

1. Wall Street is full of fanatical extremists. As are the boards of most major corporations.

[meow2u3]

2. The Tea Party are being played for suckers

They're either too unsophisticated and/or too blind to realize that they're tools of the real extremists: the Wall Street vampires. They've been brainwashed into thinking the government, as opposed to the corporate takeover of government, is the problem.