I’m going to try to be more deferential than I really am in the observation of the Tea Party.  Ostensibly the goal of the grassroots movement is one of fiscal issues, and this is said to be a wise place to start, or is it?  The fiscal issues do give the appearance of capability to deliver on the promise of less intrusive/authoritarian government, but there is a chance that this train could get derailed on those tracks.  It may seem trite to say, but one need go no further for a big tent philosophy than one of strict originalist Constitutional republican government.  What does that mean, you ask?

First and foremost, it means that with any issue the objective is NOT to determine if government can afford to pay for this or that; those are all strictly pragmatic fiscal choices with no rudder to guide the applications–save what we’ve always heard.  It does absolutely nothing to solve the tax & spend, or borrow & spend policies.

The chief object in mind is neither money, nor morality, not what can be done, nor what should be done, nor any other argument except one of “is this power specifically given to the United States Central Government, and should the power rest in the Federal District of Columbia (and not a State or an individual).”  In these terms the Tea Party can be a grassroots success story, outside of these strict terms it’s destined for failure.

The T.V. hosts saying there is no difference between the parties are somewhat correct in that the national party machines have no convictions of their own.  There are however, powerful factions within the parties that can sway, tug, bully, or otherwise scheme to pass agenda legislation.  The Congressional Progressive Caucus is such a one.  You would be hard pressed to find such structure with equal pull over legislation as those factions that exist on the left, and those you find on the Democratic side are all, without exception, believers in government spending–it doesn’t matter how much Dog if they’re still Blue.  The reason I say so is because of what is stated above, fiscal pragmatism is the shared ideal between this Democratic faction and Tea Party goers, but what is not shared is the respect for the strict barriers on authority which are supposed to be in place upon the Federal government.

As for the Tea Party, Fiscal Pragmatism is not an end in itself, and not the goal of good government.  Yeah, you heard me.

The conclusion and the summation is this: The message of the Tea Party, if it’s to be successful and not just a useless movement which lost the message of its redress, is “give us those leaders to send to Congress which will make every decision based not upon their hearts, their goodness, their moral judgement, their fiscal concerns, or their idealism, or their philosophy, and never ever those who cannot be in all ways dispassionate when making this one simple arbitration on domestic policy, by themselves, and without consulting a law firm to justify what can be done, or the outcome in advance, and that judgement is: is it a Constitutional role?”

That’s the onus of the Tea Party, and it is heavy, but if the movement wants to be true to its stated objective then it should pick off the weakest animal in the two party flock that has the most representatives who share that objective.  Then make sure the national party machine knows where the money spigot is along with exactly what to do to get it turned on, that is, restrain all action to doing only those things specifically granted by the states, and if that is no longer adequate to govern this nation, go through the process of amendment not the process of interpretation.  As far as political action groups go, the Tea Party must sell itself as the American Individualists (it is not a party of itself) existing to make sure individual Americans in the silent majority get left alone by the Federal government, and get heard in their State and local government.  As long as it stretches this banner there would be no corporate, private, or public interest group that could buy any congressional legislation without having to immediately answer to the American people.