(general interest) Tea Parties vs. (special interest) Labor Unions

From John Fund in the WSJ...

Elections this month have enhanced the political clout of two groups widely separated on the political spectrum. The tea party movement stands to play an outsize role in the fall elections now that outsider Rand Paul has swept Kentucky's GOP Senate primary, while unions provided the muscle for Democrats to win a key special election in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Paul's victory comes just after Utah Sen. Bob Bennett was denied a place on the primary ballot by a GOP state convention dominated by tea party activists....

Liberal attacks on the tea party have flipped completely. Largely gone are dismissals that they are rednecks and rubes. After a New York Times survey found tea partiers are generally better educated and wealthier than the general public, they are now attacked as aloof and out of touch with the concerns of average voters.

The criticism will only mount because tea party activists represent an injection of fresh blood and enthusiasm that threatens Democratic incumbents....

The rise of the tea party makes Democrats even more dependent on organized labor....In contrast to the tea party, there has been far too little scrutiny of the SEIU, whose membership of government and health-care workers is the fastest-growing of any union in the country....The SEIU's close ties to the discredited group Acorn have largely been ignored. The same is true for the violence perpetrated by some of its members...

You can expect friction between tea party activists and union members in coming months....

This is interesting, because demographically, there is some overlap between the two-- often in a category usually called "Reagan Democrats".