Is the Tea Party of today really a remake of the John Birch Society?

Here are some of the reasons why it’s worth asking:
•     Historian, Sean Wilentz’s The New Yorker article, ’‘Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War roots.’’
•     Right Wing Watch‘s ’‘The John Birch Society’’
•     blogger Upper West’s Daily Kos article, ’‘Doesn’t Anyone Remember the John Birch Society?’’

So what’s your opinion? Same song, new singers? Is the Tea Party just a new way of find willing foot soldiers to advance the fortunes of a few billionaires. Was it a legitimate grassroots movement that got subsumed? Or is it a whole new ballgame? Is the Tea Party something new under the sun; or something old perhaps, but still entirely separate of the Birchers?

Birchers and Birthers? Just an amazing coincidence, or a confluence of the “usual crazy suspects”?