I'm not usually a fan of Frank Rich, but he has a good point here about carpetbaggers in the Tea Party movement:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/opinion/17rich.html

Steele is representative of a fascinating but little noted development on the right: the rise of buckrakers who are exploiting the party’s anarchic confusion and divisions to cash in for their own private gain. In this cause, Steele is emulating no one if not Sarah Palin, whose hunger for celebrity and money outstrips even his own.