Tea Party Thoughts...

Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe have an interesting piece in today's WSJ.  This caught my eye:

While the tea party is not a formal political party, local networks across the nation have moved beyond protests and turned to more practical matters of political accountability. Already, particularly in Republican primaries, fed-up Americans are turning out at the polls to vote out the big spenders. They are supporting candidates who have signed the Contract From America, a statement of policy principles generated online by hundreds of thousands of grass-roots activists.

Published in April, the Contract amounts to a tea party "seal of approval." It demands fiscal policies that limit government, restrain spending, promote market reforms in health care—and oppose ObamaCare, tax hikes and cap-and-trade restrictions that will kill job creation and stunt economic growth. Candidates who have signed the Contract—including Marco Rubio in Florida, Mike Lee in Utah and Tim Scott in South Carolina—have defeated Republican big spenders in primary elections all across the nation.

I'm not the first to observe this: the Tea Party, taken as a whole, seems to be animated by a mixture of libertarian and conservative philosophy, perhaps leaning toward the latter.  Some things about it remind me strongly of Heinlein's libertarian manifesto The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  It's going to be quite interesting to see how much the Tea Party does (or doesn't) influence November's results...