Authors of Tea Party book speak at Duke

Two authors of a book about the Tea Party will discuss the political phenomenon at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at the university’s Sanford School of Public Policy. It will be videotaped by C-SPAN.

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, and Vanessa Williamson, a Harvard grad student, wrote “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.” They conducted interviews with members and attended meetings around the country for their research.

Among their findings: The Tea Party isn’t uniformly against big government – they just don’t like the idea of spending public money on those they consider undeserving: illegal immigrants, low-income people and youth, according to Duke.