Jared A. Goldstein (Roger Williams): The Tea Party Movement and the Contradictions of Popular Originalism. Braaaains: Sarah Jaffe on how pop culture's hunger for zombies reflects the Tea Party nation. Special Needs: Janet Malcolm reviews Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Rebecca Mansour is Sarah Palin's low-profile, high-impact advisor. Noreen Malone on why conservatives turned on Sarah Palin (and more). Man on Book: Bardford Plumer on Rick Santorum’s intellectual reinvention. Paul Waldman on what the new books by Republican presidential hopefuls tell us about the state of the conservative movement. An intellectual autopsy of the movement: Liberals are going the way of the American Prohibition Party — it is time for someone to tell them: "Rigor mortis has set in, comrades" (and a response, and more by Conrad Black). Thomas de Zengotita on the politics of pastiche and depthless intensities: The case of Barack Obama. Obama must resist the Republican push to cut federal spending or else face voters in 2012 with continued high unemployment. From TAP, the Republican attack on public-sector workers hurts recruitment efforts — and that hurts liberals in the long run; and Republicans aren't just attacking Democrats' policies — they're attacking the fundamentals of what it means to be a Democrat. A look at how the conservative corporate advocacy group ALEC is behind voter disenfranchisement efforts. William Galston and Elaine Kamarck on the Still-Vital Center: Moderates, Democrats, and the renewal of American politics. How do you make someone more likely to click through on a political link offering more information on Facebook? Make them angry! A new study of word frequencies in political blogs finds that equations describing earthquake evolution fit the eruption of topics onto political blogs.
