The tea parties should not have taken anyone by surprise.

Populist uprisings go hand in hand with economic hardship in America, and this one has been brewing for years, according to political pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen.

They argue that the grassroots surge is here to stay, using interviews and polls to back up the claim in their new book, "Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remarking Our Two-Party System."

The duo also takes reporters and D.C.-based political pundits to task for not giving tea partyers enough credit. The activists have legitimate concerns and are making strides in changing politics as usual, they write.

The authors shared their findings with Congress.org:

How did you go about studying such a decentralized movement?
SCHOEN: The research that Scott has done both for the book and separately is among the most in-depth research not only on the tea parties but what animates it—what he calls, quite correctly, the difference between the political class and the political mainstream.

RASMUSSEN: A lot of what we found is that more than specific policies, people have a sense that nobody is listening to them. Voters are supposed to be in charge, and they don't think that anybody from either party is listening. And that's why they are mad as hell.

Why do you believe the tea party hasn't been fairly acknowledged?
RASMUSSEN: One of the reasons it's under-acknowledged is people want to wrap it up in the same trappings. Who is the leader, where is the organization? They want to know functionally how it is.

I think this is more of a movement than an organization and it taps into a lot of feelings that are deeper than a membership aligned with a political party.

So where are we in the tea-party life cycle?
SCHOEN: The tea party has a clear agenda, as we try to point out in the book. If, as it appears likely, there is a Republican Congress elected [in November] and they address the agenda of the tea party, I think it could potentially address a number of their concerns.

If, as is more likely, we have a divided government and a gridlock, I think the most likely result is that the tea parties and the forces that animate it will grow stronger after this election.

If Republicans address their concerns, will the movement subside?
RASMUSSEN: You have to factor in the high level of distrust. Three out of four Republicans say the Republicans in Congress are out of touch with their base.

When you talk about the tea party movement, if they have a positive impact and they start to see some legislative accomplishments, they're not going to instantly assume that Congress has changed. They're going to be skeptical for a long time. It will take several years before that anger would dissipate.

What role are outsiders like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity playing?
SCHOEN: Our research was pretty clear that you could have thrown millions and millions of dollars into this, but if it wasn't the right message and it didn't resonate, you wouldn't have any response on this.

RASMUSSEN: I think the underlying issues have been building for decades. People are frustrated and fed up. We've had a number of things over the years that have been minor displays of frustration. Right now, the groups that you are describing—and there probably will be more to come—as well as some of the individual candidate are trying to tap into this.

I don't think the movement and the drive is coming from the visible organizations as much as it is from the grassroots, and people are just trying to figure out how to channel it.

Part of your book focuses on populism on the Left. What do they have in common with the tea parties?
RASMUSSEN: Both sides think nobody is listening to them, that the system is somehow ignoring them or is biased against them. There is a sense that the political system is broken, and that is the biggest common thread between them.

You talk about the impact tea parties are having on elections at all levels. Is this primarily an electoral movement, or do you see tea parties getting involved in policy making?
SCHOEN: I see it less as policy and more as anger. But it is anger with the system that leads to an electoral involvement as one of the tactics to change government. You pass a couple of bills, the tea parties don't go away. I think this is just people getting mad, saying that they have had it. They are expressing their anger by going to rallies, going to town hall meetings, and voting in primaries.

RASMUSSEN: I don't know that I would call it an electoral or a policy group. For a lot of these people, they believe the way things are supposed to be is that they can make the decisions in their own lives and that's what they should be doing. They are getting involved now because they feel there are some roadblocks being put up. They have to defend themselves. It's more of a defensive reaction than anything else.

And many of these people don't want to be involved in politics. They don't like the nature of the game. They don't want this to be something they do 24/7. They look forward to a time when their involvement isn't necessary.

Is this a new phenomenon?
RASMUSSEN: This is clearly a different version of a phenomenon that has been seen throughout American history. The nation was founded with basic instincts that are distrustful of concentrations of power, whether that power is in corporate hands or in government hands. You can't read through the Federalist Papers without seeing some echoes to what we're seeing in the tea-party movement today.

I do think the current version has very strong ties to the Ross Perot era. Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and the majority of Democrats in Congress lost control of Congress. George W. Bush came in, and he lost control of Congress. That's never happened in back-to-back administrations before, and it's a rejection of both political parties.

We saw the same thing accelerate in 2006, 2008, and 2010. All three cycles, voters were voting against whoever is in charge. I tend to look at their actions as enormously consistent rather than flipping from one party to another. They are simply saying, "We don't like the way things are going, and we want to take down whoever is in charge."

In the end, do you think the tea parties are going to make a structural difference in how the government runs?
SCHOEN: They already have. On the Republican side, there was a recognition of the enormous power of the tea parties. If I'm wrong, then there is going to be a huge tidal reaction, because the tea parties will get even more vibrant. I don't think there has been much impact on the Democratic Party, and that is to its detriment.

I can tell you, having been in the White House in 1995 and 1996, that Ross Perot was the single most powerful person not in Washington. Bill Clinton knew he needed the Perot vote in order to get reelected. Hence, we did the balanced budget, and hence we did the deal with Newt Gingrich. That was in response to the Perot movement.

I haven't seen the Obama administration respond similarly. But unless they do, it is going to be a much more difficult reelection in 2012 than it would otherwise have to be.

So can we expect a tea-party candidate in 2012?
RASMUSSEN: Four years ago, nobody expected Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee. We all knew it was going to be Hillary Clinton. Right now, we don't have any sense of who the Republican nominee would be. I would suspect that tea-party activists would have a significant role in determining that nominee. So you may have a tea-party person nominated as the Republican candidate.

If there is something some other approach taken by Republicans, I'm not quite sure what happens. But even in that scenario, if things go along in 2012 and don't really change, all that would do is increase the possibility for 2016 of a third-party candidate.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Ambreen Ali writes for Congress.org.

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