This project was undertaken with walt stone and with meredith who will present it. Meredith has been involved since she was a sophomore at william and mary. She graduated in may. She is with the education Advisory Board after a stint as an intern where she was the resident expert on the tea party for the pew center for people in the press. Meredith is going to take this and go with it and make it sound far more intelligent than i could. Thanks. To give you an idea of what is coming, we will look at divisions within the local party and then we will compare rank andfile republicans to Tea Party Activists using that Freedom Works sample. Once again looking at issues and political style. Finally, we look at the response of the tea party to the 2012 elections, including perceptions of why romney lost, change over time and willingness to time and willingness to compromise, and evaluation of the Republican Party and its leaders. We begin by examining the actual conflict between Tea Party Repu