Ezra Klein may be young, but he’s not young enough to miss how recycled it is to smear the Tea Party as haters in every category. Nevertheless, Klein sought out and interviewed Christopher Parker, a political scientist at the University of Washington, is co-author of the book "Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America".

After rigorous, professorial study, Parker found people don't fully appreciate why Tea Partiers won't compromise: “when I looked at it empirically, I found that people who supported the tea party tended to be more racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and anti-Obama.” Klein then professed that this made him bristle a tiny bit: