The tea party movement is interesting. On one hand, it's been stunningly effective at what it's needed to do for the republicans thus far. Take a group of americans who are largely fed up with republicans due to 12 years of persistent failure and make them side with republicans again by focusing their anger and hatred towards heavy taxes and a raising deficit, while painting the cause of their economic woes as 'wealth redistribution', 'socialism', and my personal favorite, 'government handouts'. (aka, 'welfare', the thing that does not actually exist in the way most americans actually think it exists)
On the other hand, it shows the incredible lack of long-term thinking that went into this plan, as now that the tea partiers have a political base they are blocking tax increases to the super wealthy, blocking regulation on big business, blocking tax reform for big oil, cutting social services used by everyone (public education!) and going after unions, who hire blue collar workers, the same blue collar workers who elected them in the first place.
I don't see how they expect to sustain their political power like this.
