Conor Friedersdorf repeats an adage about the Tea Party that I have heard before but I find hard to swallow:

The Tea Party wasn’t just a reaction to President Obama or the financial industry bailouts. As Jonah Goldberg puts it, “a major motivating passion of the tea-party movement was a long-delayed backlash against George W. Bush and his big-government conservatism.” Support for the War on Terrorism and the invasion of Iraq caused many conservatives to stay loyal to Bush. But that didn’t mean they liked No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, the attempt at a guest worker program, TARP, or the Harriet Miers nomination. Especially after the defeat of John McCain, many on the right insisted they’d never again support Bush-Rove conservatism.

How convenient that all of this opposition to Bush policies only came to head when Dubya was safely back in Texas, especially when you consider the fact that Medicare Part D passed six years before (with the support of Tea Party favorite Paul Ryan, by the way) angry mobs began protesting against socialized medicine.

If foreign policy kept the Right in line all of those years, why doesn’t it mute their criticism of Barack Obama? In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the President hasn’t exactly turned out to be a George McGovern “Come Home America” style peacenik.